Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Back to the Future Wisdom

Scientists have once again shown Back to the Future: Part III to have the correct model of time travel:

New Model of the Universe Says Past Crystallizes out of the Future


"The standard spacetime diagrams used in relativity accord no special status to the past, the present or the future. That's because they assume that everything evolves from time-reversible local physics.… It is possible represent such a universe using a kind of spacetime diagram in which space and time merge into a single entity. 'The universe just is: a fixed spacetime block,' say Ellis and Rothman. In this view, no instant has any special status: 'All past and future times are equally present, and the present 'now' is just one of an infinite number.'"

That's the Back to the Future: Part I and Back to the Future: Part II model. But of course, as everyone's grandmother knows, that's all bunk. Here's the real truth:

"…Today, Ellis and Rothman introduce a significant new type of block universe. They say the character of the block changes dramatically when quantum mechanics is thrown into the mix. All of a sudden, the past and the future take on entirely different characteristics. The future is dominated by the weird laws of quantum mechanics in which objects can exist in two places at the same time and particles can be so deeply linked that they share the same existence. By contrast, the past is dominated by the unflinching certainty of classical mechanics."

If I'm reading this right - which I'm not - it means that the future is wide open. And that it "Crystallizes" into the past via the mechanism we so fondly call the "present."

Or in other words, as spoken from a flying steam train from the past: "The future is whatever you make it! So make it a good one."

No comments: