I was wondering if anyone saw the show on discovery last night about the time machine some Physist is attempting to create? For starters, this show did the absolute BEST job of explaining relativity in a way that folks like me can understand. For that alone, it was worth watching. Anyway this physisist theorizes that while he can't actually travel through time, he can send particles through time and eventually, communicate both forward and backwards through time.

As best as I can understand, one cannot exceed the speed of light, however, one could appear to exceed the SoL to a static observer by travelling near an event horizon.

Apparently, he theorizes that he should be able to send subatomic particles through time. To accomplish this, he states that he can create a type of vortex using lasers that will cause particles to behave in odd ways. This is where he lost me. I was under the impression that Gravity was the thing that caused matter to behave oddly around a black hole. Frame dragging I believe is what they called it. Apparently he says it can be done just with circular lasers.

Did anyone see this show, and if so, can you help me understand this?

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I didn't see the show, but I agree; It's hard to see how lasers could do the job of a black hole.
And, again, I agree, frame dragging is something black holes do...

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I think I saw the show you're talking about, several months ago. Was the physicist's name Ronald Mallett? This article describes his...interesting...idea:

Mallet Hopes to Use Laser Technology to Develop Time Machine

Yes, thats him. The guy seemed pretty amazing. His method of explaining obscure (obscure to me that is) theories reminded me a lot of Carl Sagan.

Thanks for the link. I'll muddle through it.

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ok I found this in that article Tassel posted...

Thats what I was having a hard time understanding.

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I saw the show; part of it at least.

The energy you would need in those lasers was never specified, but it would be staggering. Far beyond anything humanity could hope to produce or control.

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Not so, according to this 2001 popular press article.

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I dare not go to the site above, but maybe some brave soul could explain what 'circulating light' is?

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Feynman
>~~~~<
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.

It would seem as though scientist have already figured out how to slow down a beam of light.

Scientists put a light wave on hold

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I saw a few minutes of it. Not a bad show, but I didn't see enough to really have an opinion on it, nor was I paying too close attention.

While I staunchly disagree with this "physicist's" time travel theories, it's actually quite easy to obtain "staggering" local intensities from laser beams.

This isn't smoke and mirrors, for the smoke causes too much attenuation. But it does involve mirrors...

Imagine a single laser beam with intensity x. Direct that laser beam through point A(x,y,z), then bounce it off two mirrors. The first mirror reflects it from a point located at a distance D from point A, to a second point at distance D from point A. The second mirror, located at the second point, reflects the beam back to point A, such that the peak amplitude at point A is in phase with the original beam's peak amplitude at point A. In short, the distance between point A, the first mirror, the second mirror, and point A, would be an integer multiple of the wavelength of the laser beam.

Repeat about a thousand times. Or, expand the sphere and repeat about a million times.

The point is that the larger the sphere, the greater the in-phase reinforcement of peak amplitude, accounting for the usual attenuation through atmosphere and mirror reflectivity.

So, use many lasers, somehow synched in phase, and a reduced number of mirrors.

Bottom line, using this method, one could achieve unbelievably high localized amplitudes of E-M activity.

I still have a problem accepting that the energy density could be enough to distort space-time in the way that the concentrated mass of a black hole does. Light does not really slow in a non-vacuum medium like glass. Its rout isn't straight, so it takes longer to arrive at its destination. I see the claim that light's inertia increases if you slow it down as dubious. There will be limiting factors to the increase, if it exists. It would not be infinite.

Suppose that you could space mirrors far apart and amplify a light beam between them by a million times. No, a trillion trillion (10^24) times. Ignoring losses, would that be enough? How much light energy do you need to have the gravitational equivalence of one gram? 9 billion (10^10) joules. How many grams do you need to have the gravitational equivalence of a small black hole? If it's more than a hundred million tons then even your amplified light, which is a million million million times stronger than you propose, would not do the trick.

If your black hole needs four stellar masses, 10^34 grams, then you need 10^44 joules in your laser system. You aren't going to pick that up at Radio Shack.

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A ring laser. (not sure why it's on the NI site, but it's the first decent diagram I could fine) Often used as gyros/rotation sensors, since a rotation induces a phase shift between the clockwise and anticlockwise beams, and you can see this as interference fringes.

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I met him. He is a professor (possibly the physics head) at UCONN university, and is quite the professor. He is extremely articulate, a great teacher, and his theories have quite alot of math to back them up.

Anyone who thinks he is a wacko or calls him a "physicist" (in quotes) is just plain wrong. He remined my of Carl Sagan, too, and meeting him almost made me swear off engineering and do Physics at Uconn.

He doesn't actually think that his 'time machine' will alow time travel, but thinks it may allow him to one day send a few bits of information back in time a couple seconds. At very least, i think he hopes it will cause some interesting spacial twisting.