JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Ori, a physicist from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, has come up with what he says are practical solutions to overcome the hindrances that experts have long regarded as stopping us from traveling back in time. In a paper published in the latest issue of the Physical Review journal, the scientist offers a theoretical model, based on mathematical equations describing conditions that, if established, could help lead to the development of a time machine of sorts. But rather than building an actual device, Ori explains that “the machine is space-time itself.”
Time travel research is based on bending space-time so far that the time lines actually warp back on themselves to form a loop. “We know that bending does happen all the time, but we want the bending to be strong enough and to take a special form where the lines of time make closed loops,” explains Ori. “We are trying to find out if it is possible to manipulate space-time to develop in such a way.” Read more
On November, 2007 the most complex scientific instrument ever built will be switched on. The Large Hadron Collider promises to recreate the conditions in the early universe. By revisiting the beginning of time, scientists hope to unravel some of the deepest secrets of our Universe.
Within these first few moments the building blocks of the Universe were formed. The search for these fundamental particles has occupied scientists for decades but there remains one particle that has stubbornly refused to appear in any experiment. The Higgs Boson is so crucial to our understanding of the Universe that it has been dubbed the God particle.
National Geographic:
March 2008
It’s called the Large Hadron Collider, and its purpose is simple but ambitious: to crack the code of the physical world; to figure out what the universe is made of; in other words, to get to the very bottom of things. Starting sometime in the coming months, two beams of particles will race in opposite directions around the tunnel, which forms an underground ring 17 miles in circumference.
The particles will be guided by more than a thousand cylindrical, supercooled magnets, linked like sausages. At four locations the beams will converge, sending the particles crashing into each other at nearly the speed of light. If all goes right, matter will be transformed by the violent collisions into wads of energy, which will in turn condense back into various intriguing types of particles, some of them never seen before.
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In clear, nontechnical language, string theorist Brian Greene explains how our understanding of the universe has evolved from Einstein’s notions of gravity and space-time to superstring theory, where minuscule strands of energy vibrating in 11 dimensions create every particle and force in the universe.
Why you should listen to him:
Brian Greene is perhaps the best-known proponent of superstring theory, the idea that minuscule strands of energy vibrating in 11 dimensions create every particle and force in the universe.
Greene was a math prodigy and a Rhodes scholar, who has written several best-selling and non-technical books on the subject, such as The Elegant Universe, a Pulitzer finalist, Aventis winner and the basis for a three-hour Nova special. He is a professor at Columbia University’s Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics.
