Who will win the time travel race, Scotland or Wales?
In March 2016, a team of scientists announced that they had succeeded in sending a particle back in time by just a fraction of a second. The experiment was conducted at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, near Geneva in Switzerland.
The news made headlines around the world and sparked a debate about the feasibility of time travel. Could it really be possible to travel back in time and change the course of history?
The team of scientists, led by Dr. Ronald Mallett, used a device called a “time machine” to send a particle back in time. The time machine is based on a principle first proposed by Albert Einstein in his theory of special relativity.
Einstein’s theory states that time is not absolute, but relative to the observer. This means that time can flow at different rates for different observers.
The time machine at CERN makes use of this principle by firing a laser beam through a rotating cylinder of glass. The glass refracts the light, and the rotation of the cylinder causes the light to travel in a spiral.
This creates a “time vortex” which can bend space-time and cause time to flow at a different rate for the particles inside the vortex.
In the experiment, the team sent a pulse of light through the time machine. The pulse was split into two, with one part going forwards in time and the other going backwards.
The backwards-traveling pulse was sent through a second time machine in the opposite direction, so that it arrived back at the first time machine a fraction of a second before it was sent.
This meant that the pulse had effectively traveled back in time by a fraction of a second.
The experiment was only able to send the pulse back in time by a very small amount, but it proved that time travel is theoretically possible.
The team is now planning to build a larger time machine that could send people or objects back in time by larger amounts.
There are many potential applications for time travel, if it can be made to work. For example, it could be used to send messages back in time, or to travel back and witness historical events.
It could also be used to change the past, although this raises ethical concerns about the possible consequences.
The race is now on to build a working time machine. There are teams of scientists working on the problem all over the world, including in the UK, US, and China.
It is not yet clear who will be the first to succeed, but the race is certainly on.