by T J Neale

Created on: March 28, 2008

Not only is time travel theoretically feasible, but Russian mathematicians Irina Aref'eva and Igor Volovich, have suggested we could be welcoming the first visitors from the future in 2008. The pair, from the Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow, have been speculating on what might happen when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is switched on.

THE WORLD'S BIGGEST PARTICLE SMASHER GOES LIVE

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is expected to commission the LHC in May 2008. It will smash protons together at speeds previously unobtainable. Each proton will have the same kinetic energy as a flying mosquito, but that energy will be concentrated into one a trillionth of a mosquito's volume. Collision like this can do very strange things to the fabric of the universe known as space-time. Space-time can bend and distort into loops that physicists call 'closed time-like curves', known to sci-fi fans as 'wormholes in space-time' or just 'wormholes'.

In the same way as two points on opposite ends of a piece of paper can be can be brought together by folding the paper in half, so a wormhole can provide shortcuts between distant points in space-time. It is these wormholes that Aref'eva and Volovich suggest may be produced by the LHC.

If, and it is a big 'if', such wormholes are created, we are still a long way from building a time machine. Firstly these mini-wormholes will only be big enough to allow sub-atomic particles through. Secondly they will have the tendency to close up. Thirdly, we have no way to manipulate the mouths of the wormhole to act like a time machine.

But that does not mean that a future civilization will not have the technology to solve these problems from their end. Hence if these worm holes are created by the LHC later this year, it could present our decedents the earliest opportunity to come and say hello.

A BUNCH OF DINGOES' KIDNEYS

Many physicists are unimpressed with the idea of time travel. It appears to break the law of causality. This law states that cause must precede effect.

There are paradoxes inherent in time travel. The classic example is what happens if you went back in time and murdered your grandfather before your parent was conceived. You prevent your own birth and so you could not travel back in time to kill your grandfather. So you were born and travel back in time to kill your grandfather etc.

Professor Steven Hawkins is a noted time travel skeptic. In 1992 he suggested that the laws of physics would conspire against time travel. His 'chronology protection conjecture' says that creating wormholes that allow time travel will give rise to physical phenomena that act to block the wormholes.

SAFE FROM YOUR GRANDCHILDREN FOR A WHILE - PROBABLY

Aref'eva and Volovich's work is highly speculative. We simply do not know enough about the fine structure of space-time to predict with any certain what will happen when the LHC is switched on. But 2008 could become the destination period of choice for tomorrow's discerning time tourist.

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