It has been one of the most captivating and wonderful fantasies of quantum physics. Since H.G Wells, it has almost been the topic of discussion even among the common men who walk the street and have no clue about what modern day physics is all about. It has been a fantasy of the common man and minds like Einstein and Stephen Hawking alike. ‘Time Travel’ is probably the most over done concept of theoretical physics on both the big screen and television. Now a couple of scientists from CERN are saying that the fantasy machine is soon going to be ready, be it by accident. Or are they? CERN - What is the first thing that comes to mind when I mention it? Not able to guess? I’ll give you a bit more of a clue. CERN, Geneva, Particle Accelerators, collision of particles and Large Hadron Collider; Now maybe? I don’t know about you, but the first time I heard about this, I did honestly think that it was a rip-off from Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons. But apparently it is not.
Two Russian mathematicians, Irina Aref’eva and Igor Volovich, have suggested that the giant atom-smasher being built at the European centre for nuclear research, CERN, near Geneva, could create the conditions where it might be possible to travel backwards or forwards in time. The Large Hadron Collider being built at CERN is a particle accelerator that allows us to understand the properties and behavior of the most basic sub-nuclear particles that are the building blocks of the universe. It is ironic to think about it, but these unimaginably small particles will shed some light and help us understand the nature of the unfathomably vast universe that we are a microscopic part of.
The particle accelerator is supposed to create worm holes that allow time travel. Obviously, till today the existence of worm holes and parallel universes has been limited to just theory and some speculation. Now Einstein’s theory will be put to the ultimate test in the grandest fashion on the smallest stage in the universe. If the fact that space and time do bend with mass is true to the care, then the LHC at CERN will at least produce worm holes for a fraction of a second with the size of sub-nuclear particles. It is these worm holes that would enable us to travel through time.
So is the time machine now going to be all set and ready? Well, not quite. For starters, the worm holes are not going to be large enough for an atom to fit through them, let alone a human being. Moreover, that minute fraction of time for which they would be active is too small to really make a study on. Also, there is this limiting factor that one cannot travel back in time beyond the point when the first time machine was created. To put that in a simple language, one cannot travel back beyond the time when the first worm hole was actually opened for us to travel through. So chances are that we will not have any future travelers just yet. It might take a long, long time to still build that first magic worm hole, but this is a start. Despite it being on a tiny scale, the spectrum of possibilities that lie ahead is amazingly exciting. This time though, I hope it has no ‘Strings’ attached, if you get what I mean!
