Could time travel soon become a reality? Physicists simulate sending quantum light particles into the past
- University of Queensland scientists simulate photons moving through time
- They showed how two wormhole-travelling photons might behave
- Time-travel in the quantum world seems to avoid famous paradoxes
- The experiment shows bizarre behaviour of such quantum particles
- But on larger scales time travel still remains implausible, say researchers
If a time traveller went back in time and stopped their own grandparents from meeting, would they prevent their own birth?
That’s the crux of an infamous theory known as the 'grandfather paradox', which is often said to mean time travel is impossible - but some researchers think otherwise.
A group of scientists have simulated how time-travelling photons might behave, suggesting that, at the quantum level, the grandfather paradox could be resolved
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Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia have discovered that two photons travelling through time can interact. In the simulation a photon stuck in a closed timelike curve (illustrated) through a wormhole was found to be capable of interacting with one travelling through regular space-time
The research was carried out by a team of researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia and their results are published in the journal Nature Communications.
WHAT IS A WORMHOLE?
Space-time can be warped and distorted. It takes an enormous amount of matter or energy to create such distortions, but theoretically, distortions are possible.
In the case of a wormhole, a shortcut is made by warping the fabric of space-time. Imagine folding a piece of paper with two pencil marks drawn on it to represent two points in space-time.
The line between them shows the distance from one point to the other in normal space-time.
If the paper is now bent and folded over almost double - the equivalent to warping space-time - then poking the pencil through the paper provides a much shorter way of linking the two points, in the same way a wormhole would create a shortcut.
The problem with using wormholes to travel in space or time is that they are inherently unstable. When a particle enters a wormhole, it also creates fluctuations that cause the structure to collapse in on it.
A recent study suggests there are unusual-shaped wormholes than may be able to stay open longer than normal.
The study used photons - single particles of light - to simulate quantum particles travelling back through time.
By studying their behaviour, the scientists revealed possible bizarre aspects of modern physics.
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