[Music]
there are places in the universe where
gravity dramatically distorts space-time
most of space-time is nearly flat that
is only in black holes had a strongly
warp professor Stephen Hawking is
renowned as a world expert on black
holes
back in the 1970s his groundbreaking
research brought much attention to the
then theoretical black hole the
gravitational pull of a black hole
stretches and warps space-time around it
to an incredibly deep cone-shaped hole
when scientists analyzed x-ray images of
supermassive black holes they discovered
that they were spinning at close to the
speed of light
this causes the space-time fabric to be
dragged around scientists call this
frame dragging space-time becomes so
distorted that it forms an almost
complete circle
confirmation that black holes rotate was
music to the ears of anyone interested
in time travel the time traveler was
just about to strike gold Richard Gott
is a professor of astrophysics here at
Princeton University he searched the
universe to find anything that could
warp space-time as much as a rotating
black hole what he found led him to make
a bold and ambitious hypothesis which is
based on something that is still
theoretical it’s called
a cosmic string cosmic strings are thin
threads of energy that are left over
after the Big Bang
despite being no wider than an atom
cosmic strings have colossal density a
string just one yard long would exert
more gravity than the earth immense
gravity warps space-time
with his eye on time travel that means
one thing for richard gott please enjoy
your meal i found out that because of
the warping that the strings do in
space-time that if two strings infinite
strings were passing each other at high
speed like this you could use them to
make a time machine the fast-moving
strings warp space-time as they pass so
that they bend it down into a wedge
shape normally a spaceship would have to
take the longer route across space-time
but the time traveler can now take the
shortcut by outrunning a light beam he
can travel back in time if this car were
a huge spaceship and God could find two
cosmic strings he could return before he
departs the space-time around the two
moving cosmic strings is so twisted that
God can circle the strings and come back
before he sets off here’s how cosmic
strings bend space-time and provide a
shortcut by journeying around the
strings God travels faster than light
does across normal space-time you can’t
build a rocket that goes faster than the
speed of light but with curved
space-time you can take a shortcut and
beat the light beam and theoretically
make a time machine in principle the
path of time is no longer linear
instead it forms something like a circle
Richard God’s time machine does however
have a weak link he discovered that at
the very moment he warped space-time
enough to form a circle the whole region
would fall inside a black hole and
that’s not good because a black hole
well that’s a hotel where you check in
but you don’t check out so it looks like
the the time travel region would be
trapped inside a rotating black hole
time-travel theories may sound
far-fetched yet for the last century
pioneers have pushed the boundaries
turning science fiction into reality
they have blended imagination with
knowledge to prove once and for all that
time travel will happen we may have only
journeyed a fraction of a second into
the future but the time travel pioneers
continue undeterred driven by the
knowledge that every epic adventure
begins with a single step
there are places in the universe where
gravity dramatically distorts space-time
most of space-time is nearly flat that
is only in black holes had a strongly
warp professor Stephen Hawking is
renowned as a world expert on black
holes
back in the 1970s his groundbreaking
research brought much attention to the
then theoretical black hole the
gravitational pull of a black hole
stretches and warps space-time around it
to an incredibly deep cone-shaped hole
when scientists analyzed x-ray images of
supermassive black holes they discovered
that they were spinning at close to the
speed of light
this causes the space-time fabric to be
dragged around scientists call this
frame dragging space-time becomes so
distorted that it forms an almost
complete circle
confirmation that black holes rotate was
music to the ears of anyone interested
in time travel the time traveler was
just about to strike gold Richard Gott
is a professor of astrophysics here at
Princeton University he searched the
universe to find anything that could
warp space-time as much as a rotating
black hole what he found led him to make
a bold and ambitious hypothesis which is
based on something that is still
theoretical it’s called
a cosmic string cosmic strings are thin
threads of energy that are left over
after the Big Bang
despite being no wider than an atom
cosmic strings have colossal density a
string just one yard long would exert
more gravity than the earth immense
gravity warps space-time
with his eye on time travel that means
one thing for richard gott please enjoy
your meal i found out that because of
the warping that the strings do in
space-time that if two strings infinite
strings were passing each other at high
speed like this you could use them to
make a time machine the fast-moving
strings warp space-time as they pass so
that they bend it down into a wedge
shape normally a spaceship would have to
take the longer route across space-time
but the time traveler can now take the
shortcut by outrunning a light beam he
can travel back in time if this car were
a huge spaceship and God could find two
cosmic strings he could return before he
departs the space-time around the two
moving cosmic strings is so twisted that
God can circle the strings and come back
before he sets off here’s how cosmic
strings bend space-time and provide a
shortcut by journeying around the
strings God travels faster than light
does across normal space-time you can’t
build a rocket that goes faster than the
speed of light but with curved
space-time you can take a shortcut and
beat the light beam and theoretically
make a time machine in principle the
path of time is no longer linear
instead it forms something like a circle
Richard God’s time machine does however
have a weak link he discovered that at
the very moment he warped space-time
enough to form a circle the whole region
would fall inside a black hole and
that’s not good because a black hole
well that’s a hotel where you check in
but you don’t check out so it looks like
the the time travel region would be
trapped inside a rotating black hole
time-travel theories may sound
far-fetched yet for the last century
pioneers have pushed the boundaries
turning science fiction into reality
they have blended imagination with
knowledge to prove once and for all that
time travel will happen we may have only
journeyed a fraction of a second into
the future but the time travel pioneers
continue undeterred driven by the
knowledge that every epic adventure
begins with a single step
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