March 07, 2007

Scientists Pour Cold Water On Time Travel Dreams

When I was in high school, I had a physics teacher who would explain quite plainly how every science fiction movie ever made other than "2001: A Space Odyssey" (and its sequel "2010") broke every law of physics in the book.

Yes, it was fascinating. But dammit, it was really a bummer viewing all these films through the cold hard prism of reality. The best you could do was rationalize that they didn't conform to every known law of physics. There are still mysteries in the universe. And there is always the future.

Now here's an article that presents a bunch of astrophysicists' views on the impossibility of time travel, a plot device used (and in some cases overused) in a lot of popular movies and TV shows. The collective wisdom: fuggedaboutit.

Nice. Squash our collective sense of wonder why don't you.

doc brown.jpg
"String Theory? Meh. I invented the Flux Capacitor before you were in diapers!"

Posted by Gary at March 7, 2007 02:48 PM | TrackBack
Comments

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Clarke's First Law

Posted by: Alan at March 7, 2007 03:27 PM

All cultures are pre-warp because there can be no post-warp cultures.

Posted by: Hucbald at March 7, 2007 04:46 PM

Let's do the time warp again

Posted by: rbj at March 7, 2007 08:16 PM

Alan's got it right. Although in fairness to the scientists quoted, most of them weren't saying that time travel is profoundly, metaphysically impossible, like sticking your elbow in your ear. They were just saying that if it's possible, it's certainly far beyond our present abilities.

Just as well, too. If we could travel in time, we'd probably use the ability to shoot a season of The Real World in renaissance Venice or something. Please don't let us discover time travel.

Posted by: utron at March 8, 2007 12:57 PM