Wired Aug 2003

[BucFanLostinNC]

So I made the orginal post on Lost.com about the Wired magazine that just hit stands featuring JJ Abrhams a Lost creator. And much to my suprise we all catch a glimpse of a old issue of Wired on Dans couch it is from Aug 2003 entitled Being Invinsible. I read articles on the Wired Page and was very happy to find this article here you go Losties.

[BucFanLostinNC]

http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/11.08/

A User's Guide to Time Travel
All it takes is a grasp of theoretical physics, control of the space-time continuum, and maybe a ball of cosmic string.

By Michio Kaku

Did the tech bubble burst in your face? Were you one of those unlucky outsiders who missed the Yahoo! IPO or got stuck with Enron stock long after the execs had dumped theirs? Wouldn't you like to be, just once, in the right place at the right time? Now you can. Follow a few simple instructions to relive the bull market and bail out just in time - then go on to march with Pericles or meet your great-great-great-grandchild.

Once confined to fantasy and science fiction, time travel is now simply an engineering problem. Physicists schooled in Newton's laws believed that time moved along a straight, steady course, like a speeding arrow. Then came Einstein in the early 1900s. His equations showed that time is more like a river. The more mass or energy you possess, the more the current around you varies. By moving at high velocity, for instance, you can make time slow down, and when you come to a stop, you'll be younger than if you'd remained at rest. Thus, a speedy spacecraft makes a fairly basic time machine.

Even after Einstein, most physicists believed the clock ticked in only one direction. While moving faster than the speed of light could, according to Einstein's equations, reverse time's arrow, such motion was impossible, because any object that reached that velocity would become infinite in mass. Trips to the past were preposterous.

Not anymore. Having examined Einstein's equations more closely, physicists now realize that the river of time may be diverted into a whirlpool - called a closed timelike curve - or even a fork leading to a parallel universe. In particular, the more mass you can concentrate at a single point, the more you can bend the flow.

In recent years, new designs for time machines have been flying off drawing boards at the world's top science labs. Exact specifications depend on where in time and space you wish to travel. You'll need a hefty CPU to solve the relevant equations for your machine's precise size, shape, motion, location, surroundings, and so on; the more accurately you can nail down these variables, the closer you'll come to your intended destination.

The designs that follow don't have the panache of Doc Brown's DeLorean in Back to the Future or even H. G. Wells' brass and quartz dream machine, but they do put time travel within reach of anyone with a couple of fast spaceships, a supercomputer, and a solar-system-scale machine shop. Warning: Time-space distortions may not be stable and may collapse as you enter, so approach them at your own risk. Also, when going back in time, do not - repeat - do not kill your parents before you are born. Wired takes no responsibility for parallel universes in which you find yourself trapped for eternity.
When Carl Sagan was writing his 1985 novel Contact, he asked Caltech physicist Kip Thorne how to abbreviate the lengthy flight time required for a trip to a distant star. Thorne suggested a wormhole, a shortcut through space-time that almost certainly exists as a consequence of Einsteinian principles, although one has yet to be detected. A few years later, Thorne suggested that a wormhole's entrances could be positioned in space and time as desired. Unlike some other time machines, this Thorne-inspired design allows round trips. However, it can't take you back to a time before the machine was built. Here's how it works:

•Obtain four large conductive plates at least a few miles in diameter. Arrange them in parallel, very close together. The space between each plate will teem with negative energy - a proven phenomenon known as the Casimir effect - creating slices of identical space-time.
•Separate the plates into two pairs. A wormhole will connect the pairs like an umbilical cord.
•Place one pair in a rocket ship and accelerate to almost the speed of light, preferably in a circular path so the rocket doesn't stray too far. Time will nearly freeze for that set while the other, still on the ground, ages at the usual rate. With each passing moment, the space-borne plates will go farther back in time relative to the others.
•When a sufficient amount of time has passed - preferably decades - step between the earthbound plates. You'll immediately be transported back in time and across space to the other pair.

Fine print: To activate Thorne plates, the distance between each plate must be less than the width of an atom. The resulting wormhole will be equally small, so getting in and out might be difficult. To widen the portal, some scientists suggest using a laser to inject immense amounts of negative energy. In addition, Thorne believes that radiation effects created by gravitons, or particles of gravity, might fry you as you enter the wormhole. According to string theory, however, this probably won't happen, so it's scant reason to cancel your trip.

[BucFanLostinNC]

Miracle Studios
Many scientists believe the big bang that created the universe left behind cosmic strings - thin, infinitely long filaments of compressed matter. In 1991, Princeton physicist J. Richard Gott discovered that two of these structures, arranged in parallel and moving in opposite directions, would warp space-time to allow travel to the past. He later reworked the idea to involve a single cosmic-string loop. A Gott loop can take you back in time but not forward. The guide to building your own:

•Scan the galaxy for a loop of cosmic string.
•When you find one, fly close to it in a massive spaceship. Use the ship's gravity to shape the string into a rectangle roughly 54,000 light-years long and .01 light-years wide. Gravity exerted by the longer sides of the rectangle will cause it to collapse, bringing the sides closer and closer together at nearly the speed of light.
•As the two sides approach within 10 feet of each other, circle them in a smaller ship. When you return to the start of the circle, you will have traveled back in time.

Fine print: To take you back one year, the string must weigh about half as much as the Milky Way galaxy. You'll need a mighty big spaceship to make that rectangle.
In essence, a Gott shell is a huge concentration of mass. The shell's sheer density creates a gravitational field that slows down the clock for anyone enclosed within it. Outside, time rolls along at its familiar pace, but inside, it creeps. Thus the Gott shell is useful for travel into the future only. If you're planning a jaunt to the past using a Gott loop, you might want to bring along a Gott shell for the return trip. What to do, step by step:

•Salvage scrap planetary matter to assemble a mass equal to or greater than Jupiter's.
•Working slowly so as not to produce sudden gravitational disturbances, assemble the matter around yourself in a sphere. For your comfort - and to avoid inadvertently creating a black hole later in the process - be sure to leave a cavity larger than 18 feet in diameter at the center.
•Stock the cockpit with lots of food, drink, diversions, and back issues of Wired. Your journey might take a while.
•Using a high-powered energy source, compress the shell. The greater the compression, the faster you'll be transported - up to five times the pace of ordinary time for a Jupiter-sized mass, faster for a larger ball of matter.
•After waiting the desired interval - several decades works best - slowly decompress the shell and emerge. You'll find yourself in the same place but in a distant epoch. Welcome to the future.

Fine print: This is a relatively slow method of time travel, and life inside the shell could become tedious.
Mass and energy act on space-time like a rock thrown into a pond: the bigger the rock, the bigger the ripples. Physicist W. J. van Stockum realized in 1937 that an immense cylinder spinning at near-light speed will stir space-time as though it were molasses, pulling it along as the cylinder turns. Although Van Stockum himself didn't recognize it, anyone orbiting such a cylinder in the direction of the spin will be caught in the current and, from the perspective of a distant observer, exceed the speed of light. The result: Time flows backward. Circle the cylinder in the other direction with just the right trajectory, and this machine can take you into the future as well. How it works:

•Using a high-performance spacecraft with tractor beams, or at least heavy-duty cables, trawl the galaxy gathering planets, asteroids, comets, and the like. Collect as much matter as you can.
•With a galactic-scale forge, extrude the planetary matter into a long, dense cylinder.
•Use an industrial-strength electromagnetic field to spin the cylinder along its central axis. Accelerate it to the speed corresponding to your destination time.
•Orbit the cylinder in the direction of the spin. With each circuit you make, you'll return at a time before you left.

Fine print: The cylinder must be infinitely long, which could add slightly to its cost.
When Karl Schwarzschild solved Einstein's equations in 1917, he found that stars can collapse into infinitesimally small points in space - what we now call black holes. Four decades later, physicist Roy Kerr discovered that some stars are saved from total collapse and become rotating rings. Kerr didn't regard these rings as time machines. However, because their intense gravity distorts space-time, and because they permit large objects to enter on one side and exit on the other in one piece, Kerr-type black holes can serve as portals to the past or the future. If finding one with the proper dimensions is too much trouble, you can always build one yourself:

•Gather enough matter to equal Jupiter's mass.
•Compress it into a ring about 5 feet in diameter. This can put a lot of stress on mechanical tools, so a high-energy electromagnetic field is recommended.
•As you compress the ring, set it spinning. Increase its velocity to nearly the speed of light. A black hole will form at its center.
•Step through the hole and you'll be transported instantly to another time (and, possibly, place), potentially as far back as the big bang or as far forward as the end of the universe as we know it. Bon voyage!

Fine print: The Kerr ring is a one-way ticket. The black hole's gravity is so great that, once you step through it, you won't be able to return.

[notsolost42]

That, BucFan, is completly awesome! Thank you!!! So, I may have just called it right a long, long time ago then! HA! I posted so much about CTC's!!!! And I was off though, as I thought it was a Schwartzchild's Black Hole and missed it as a Kerr Black Hole. At least I have been calling it a black hole and not a wormhole. Ah well, can't win 'em all! Gosh, this is so exciting!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! I can't wait to see if this really comes to fruition!!!!! Ph, and Michael Kaku, awesome astrophysicist! Love listening to him. He was just on a tv news program the other day talking about this stuff! I posted about it somewhere...

[BucFanLostinNC]

NotSo this is the part I like remember that randomly the code name is Fork in the outlet what if it is this from the article.

"Not anymore. Having examined Einstein's equations more closely, physicists now realize that the river of time may be diverted into a whirlpool - called a closed timelike curve - or even a fork leading to a parallel universe. In particular, the more mass you can concentrate at a single point, the more you can bend the flow."

[LissaMarie]

Very cool, Buc! Thanks for sharing those with us.

Now, if I could only remember where I put those conductive plates?!:)

[notsolost42]

NotSo this is the part I like remember that randomly the code name is Fork in the outlet what if it is this from the article.

"Not anymore. Having examined Einstein's equations more closely, physicists now realize that the river of time may be diverted into a whirlpool - called a closed timelike curve - or even a fork leading to a parallel universe. In particular, the more mass you can concentrate at a single point, the more you can bend the flow."

Ah, a good observation! Know another little ditty about a CTC? The person responsible for discovering them? His name is Willem JACOB van Stockum. His mother or wife was named EMILY. He died in a plane crash....There are no coincidences on LOST!!!! And, a CTC is the answer to Einstein's Field Equation. Which was actually a question put forth in the show. I wish I could remember that part. I also wish I could find the thread I wrote about CTC's. It wasn't too long after I joined I think.

[BucFanLostinNC]

Good ? maybe in the Shadow of the Statue, the Orchid , the Swan and the Mystery Door that leads into a wall of Time portal

[notsolost42]

Very cool, Buc! Thanks for sharing those with us.

Now, if I could only remember where I put those conductive plates?!:)

I remember Lis! Here ya go....

[notsolost42]

Good ? maybe in the Shadow of the Statue, the Orchid , the Swan and the Mystery Door that leads into a wall of Time portal

Hmmm....the dirt was just a coverup? Interesting....and that was right by the statue, wasn't it? The time portal is opened by the exotic matter heating up and producing that real powerful blast of EM. I keep saying that. The controled release in the Swan kept it closed. Turning the wheel opens it also. The failsafe key opens it, that's why I keep saying Desmond time traveled at that point. He actually kind of time bounced back and forth from his past to the island to the future to the island, etc. That's how he knew about Charlie and his other visions. They were not visions at all. Geezzz, no one ever listens!!! LOL!!!

[BucFanLostinNC]

I def think it was a portal or Box as Ben referred to where Locke's father came from. I remember a screen cap of Ben standing in a door with no walls when he visted Sayid maybe a lil hint to the mystery.

[notsolost42]

I def think it was a portal or Box as Ben referred to where Locke's father came from. I remember a screen cap of Ben standing in a door with no walls when he visted Sayid maybe a lil hint to the mystery.

Absolutly! And....don't forget the cover of the Geronimo Jackson album. A door standing there in the middle of a field next to the band.....

Here's the link about CTC's if anyone is interested. I know I also made one before this but I can't find it. Oh well, this one is probably simpler anyway. I get to decriptive sometimes in the science stuff!

http://www.lost.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4448

[LissaMarie]

I remember Lis! Here ya go....

Sweet! I'm off to create a wormhole and then I'm outta here!!!:D

[notsolost42]

Sweet! I'm off to create a wormhole and then I'm outta here!!!:D

Take it easy Lis!!!!!!

[BucFanLostinNC]

NotSo thanks for the pic of the Jackson cover this is really starting to add up. I cant belive that article was in Wired and randomly shows up in the Varible right after JJ coedits the last edition. That was a very clever move Wired strives on puzzles and hints from the simple puzzles to the deepest enigmas. I think the Mag was a huge clue maybe a huge spolier. But hats off to JJ a very creative way to interesting way to see whos paying attention to the show.

[notsolost42]

NotSo thanks for the pic of the Jackson cover this is really starting to add up. I cant belive that article was in Wired and randomly shows up in the Varible right after JJ coedits the last edition. That was a very clever move Wired strives on puzzles and hints from the simple puzzles to the deepest enigmas. I think the Mag was a huge clue maybe a huge spolier. But hats off to JJ a very creative way to interesting way to see whos paying attention to the show.

Awesom find by you BucFan. Thanks!!!!!

[LissaMarie]

NotSo thanks for the pic of the Jackson cover this is really starting to add up. I cant belive that article was in Wired and randomly shows up in the Varible right after JJ coedits the last edition. That was a very clever move Wired strives on puzzles and hints from the simple puzzles to the deepest enigmas. I think the Mag was a huge clue maybe a huge spolier. But hats off to JJ a very creative way to interesting way to see whos paying attention to the show.

I agree! Great catch and thanks for posting this, Buc!

Why is it that I never noticed the door on the Geronimo Jackson cover? Great catch to you too, Nots!!

[krakup]

Awesom find by you BucFan. Thanks!

[danielle]

Sweet! I'm off to create a wormhole and then I'm outta here!!!:D

If you wait until season 6 has aired and then do the calculations correctly you can travel back 6 years in time and start watching 'Lost' all over again as though it had never happened. That should solve the problem of what we can all do with our time after 'Lost' has finished. Might need to start work now on collecting the materials needed for the trip as it could take a while.......:o

[danielle]

For those of you who can understand the science better than I, is there anyway this could explain how those that are dead ie Charlie etc are able to appear to others after their deaths?

[krakup]

For those of you who can understand the science better than I, is there anyway this could explain how those that are dead ie Charlie etc are able to appear to others after their deaths?

thats for the writers to answer danni. i wonder about the whispers and if they are connected

[notsolost42]

For those of you who can understand the science better than I, is there anyway this could explain how those that are dead ie Charlie etc are able to appear to others after their deaths?

That's the fiction in science fiction!

[Pung]

You know those methods of time travel sound real feasible. I bet you would have better luck jumping on Superman's back and flying backwards around the earth until it changed time:rolleyes:

[kabzilla]

This sounds spot on and it can't be coincidence, not with the magazine appearing on the episode.

Next question, I suppose, would have to be whether the application of the Kerr Black Hole was discovered far in the future, and the Island was sent back to ancient Egypt, or if the Egyptians somehow made the discovery themselves...

I really like the idea from Notso that Desmond was time travelling when the Swan imploded... is Eloise is going to be really close to the EM when the Incident happens, which is why she seems to be so cognizant of the events going on?

[BucFanLostinNC]

NotSo where are ya. How crazy would it be that Ben took Anthony Cooper from a different time before he steals Lockes Kidney. Would the death of Anthony Cooper on the Island give Locke his Kidney back. And even more would that save Locke from being paralyzed since his father would already be dead is this the reason Locke can walk off the Island after turning the wheel. I recently posted the new Wired where JJ says his fav Twilight Zone Episode is Walking Distance where a man travels back in time to only scare his self off of a Carosel which causes him to walk with a limp when he returns to the future. Forget the healing powers of the Island and focus on the Course Correction.

[notsolost42]

NotSo where are ya. How crazy would it be that Ben took Anthony Cooper from a different time before he steals Lockes Kidney. Would the death of Anthony Cooper on the Island give Locke his Kidney back. And even more would that save Locke from being paralyzed since his father would already be dead is this the reason Locke can walk off the Island after turning the wheel. I recently posted the new Wired where JJ says his fav Twilight Zone Episode is Walking Distance where a man travels back in time to only scare his self off of a Carosel which causes him to walk with a limp when he returns to the future. Forget the healing powers of the Island and focus on the Course Correction.

I posted a long time ago that Anthony Cooper time jumped....everyone here jumped on me for it! lol! Yeah, it would be cool. It opens up lots of different variations of the story...again, something I posted about...Stephen Hawking String Theory and a different dimension for every possible outcome of a situation....again....no one would listen....oh well! It still remains to be seen but all I will say is 'He who laughs last, laughs best." lol

[BucFanLostinNC]

I posted a long time ago that Anthony Cooper time jumped....everyone here jumped on me for it! lol! Yeah, it would be cool. It opens up lots of different variations of the story...again, something I posted about...Stephen Hawking String Theory and a different dimension for every possible outcome of a situation....again....no one would listen....oh well! It still remains to be seen but all I will say is 'He who laughs last, laughs best." lol

That is very true I read a few more of your post Im glad Im not the only one who has for got about Thomas , Aarons dad I still think there is alot more to hime whether it be a brief explanation about what he did. In the end I think everyone will be alive along with the Dharma Initative. Paths would have crossed but not enough to affect there futures. Nothing more than a simple Hi and bye.

[notsolost42]

That is very true I read a few more of your post Im glad Im not the only one who has for got about Thomas , Aarons dad I still think there is alot more to hime whether it be a brief explanation about what he did. In the end I think everyone will be alive along with the Dharma Initative. Paths would have crossed but not enough to affect there futures. Nothing more than a simple Hi and bye.

Why do I get the strange feeling that whatever we think is happening now, will kind of be confimed at the end of the season, or at least big hints that we're on the right track, and then next season....completly different!!! HA! They like to really mess with your head so much, those two...Damon and Carlton that is. I think the season finale is going to blow us away in a few weeks! Whoa....and leave us with our jaws wide open and saying...but..but...but that can't be, that can't happen!!!! Oh, and then the lines will really be drawn in the sand between the WHH and the TCC!!! LOL!!!! It's gonna get real interesting around here!

[BucFanLostinNC]

Why do I get the strange feeling that whatever we think is happening now, will kind of be confimed at the end of the season, or at least big hints that we're on the right track, and then next season....completly different!!! HA! They like to really mess with your head so much, those two...Damon and Carlton that is. I think the season finale is going to blow us away in a few weeks! Whoa....and leave us with our jaws wide open and saying...but..but...but that can't be, that can't happen!!!! Oh, and then the lines will really be drawn in the sand between the WHH and the TCC!!! LOL!!!! It's gonna get real interesting around here!

Well from Mattew Fox's Late Night interview he said ppl would probably be pissed off with the so called cliffhanger to this season. Im expecting a shot of the Statue from a side view or aerial view casting a shadow and the LOST on the screen before anything serious is shown.

I have also heard of a scene that was shot between Jack and Walt in the first season that will come back into the show later but who knows about that one.

[notsolost42]

Well from Mattew Fox's Late Night interview he said ppl would probably be pissed off with the so called cliffhanger to this season. Im expecting a shot of the Statue from a side view or aerial view casting a shadow and the LOST on the screen before anything serious is shown.

I have also heard of a scene that was shot between Jack and Walt in the first season that will come back into the show later but who knows about that one.

I hadn't heard of either of those. I was thinking more along the line of complete and utter innialation of the island. That would get people peeved! I can just hear the WHH's now!!! lol. I think they will be the ones most ticked off when all is said and done though. Mark my words.

[Pung]

I hadn't heard of either of those. I was thinking more along the line of complete and utter innialation of the island. That would get people peeved! I can just hear the WHH's now!!! lol. I think they will be the ones most ticked off when all is said and done though. Mark my words.

The island can be destroyed in 2007 thats fine. but we know that it cant until then because we have already seen Locke and Co. there after 316 crashed.