Scientists from th University of Maryland, using a device that simulated the birth of the universe by bending light in unusual ways, have arrived tat the conclusion that time traveling is probably impossible.
This new big bang simulator is tiny and is made of fragments of gold metal and plastics that form a meta-material, which can manipulate light. According to the article, scientists have been using these meta-materials in the past years to recreate science-fiction artefact's, like invisibility cloaks, and lenses which allow scientists to see things smaller then the waves of light. Igor Smolyaninov and Yu-Ju Hung from Maryland University say their model is what the universe looked like some 13,7 billion years ago, when the big bang presumably occurred.
The model and its material allows light to move in such a unique way that it represents the movement of light through time, and thus what occurred after and during Big Bang. To simulate the Big Bang the scientists passed a green laser though the meta material which made the gold atoms release plasmons, quantum particles created by waves of free electrons.
These plasmons moved out from that single point, like the Big Bang theory states. But the farther out they went the sloppier the movement was, and the more unpredictable the movement became. This is consistent with the second law of thermodynamics that states that any system becomes more disorderly with time. Scientists call this disorder entropy, so with the passing of time, entropy increases.
For time travel to be possible these plasmons would need to follow the same path always, and complete it in a circle so that moving back could be possible, but once the plasmons strayed off path, like they did in the experiment, then they could not move back. Thus the scientists arrived at the conclusion that time travel is impossible.
I find this article to be extremely interesting because I had sometimes thought about time travel and found the theory so improbable that it could only occur in science fiction. But this article puts it in a completely different light. To me it does not prove that time travel is impossible but just brings the concept closer to us, and makes it something more visible and probable, and this article takes something from a science-fiction book, and turns it into something real. I find this really amazing.
This has to do with chemistry because these scientists took gold and plastic and made material that light is passed though it, scatters it to the will of the scientists. who manipulates it. This is a fascinating concept, and it is amazing to see it in action, proving and disproving concepts and theories.
Reading on, I also found the article about the invisibility cloak, based on the same concept which is interesting, heres the link if you want to read about it:
1 comments:
Interesting article. Glad you can make connections to chemistry. What would you do if you could time travel...Would you change anything?
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