Extraordinary Claim With a Dash of Hype: The Quantum Experiment That Simulates A Time Machine

Physicists have simulated a photon interacting with an older version of itself in an experiment that could help reconcile quantum mechanics and relativity

One of the curiosities of general relativity is that it seems to allow time travel. Various physicists have discovered solutions to Einstein’s field equations that contain loops that return to the same point in space and time. Physicists call them closed time-like curves.

At first glance, these kinds of time machines seem to lead to all kinds of problems, such as the grandfather paradox. This is where somebody travels back in time and kills their grandfather meaning they could never have been born and so could not have gone back to kill the grandfather.

That’s just bizarre so physicists have attempted to find ways to prevent these paradoxes. In the early 90s, for example, cosmologists showed that a billiard ball entering a wormhole that leads to a closed time-like curve must always meet its older self coming out of the wormhole. What’s more, the resulting collision always prevents the ball entering the wormhole in the first place. In other words, the billiard ball would simply bounce off the entrance to a closed time-like curve.

So much for classical objects and time travel. But what would happen if a quantum particle entered a closed time-like curve? In the early 90s, the physicist David Deutsch showed that not only is this possible but that it can only happen in a way that does not allow superluminal signalling. So quantum mechanics plays havoc with causality but in a way that is consistent with relativity and so prevents grandfather-type paradoxes.

Deutsch’s result has extraordinary implications. It implies that closed time-like curves can be used to solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time and to violate Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

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Extraordinary Claim: A Stable Wormhole Compatible With General Relativity

Example of a stable wormhole in general relativity

Authors:

Bronnikov et al

Abstract:

We study a static, spherically symmetric wormhole model whose metric coincides with that of the so-called Ellis wormhole but the material source of gravity consists of a perfect fluid with negative density and a source-free radial electric or magnetic field. For a certain class of fluid equations of state, it has been shown that this wormhole model is linearly stable under both spherically symmetric perturbations and axial perturbations of arbitrary multipolarity. A similar behavior is predicted for polar nonspherical perturbations. It thus seems to be the first example of a stable wormhole model in the framework of general relativity (at least without invoking phantom thin shells as wormhole sources).

Perfect Bit Commitment Through Quantum Mechanics AND Relativity for 15 ms?

A breakthrough in quantum cryptography demonstrates that information can be encrypted and then decrypted with complete security using the combined power of quantum theory and relativity - allowing the sender to dictate the unveiling of coded information without any possibility of intrusion or manipulation.

Scientists sent encrypted data between pairs of sites in Geneva and Singapore, kept "perfectly secure" for fifteen milliseconds - putting into practice what cryptographers call a 'bit commitment' protocol, based on theoretical work by study co-author Dr Adrian Kent, from Cambridge's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.

Researchers describe it as the first step towards impregnable information networks controlled by "the combined power of Einstein's relativity and quantum theory" which might one day, for example, revolutionise financial trading and other markets across the world.

'Bit commitment' is a mathematical version of a securely sealed envelope. Data are delivered from party A to party B in a locked state that cannot be changed once sent and can only be revealed when party A provides the key – with security guaranteed, even if either of the parties tries to cheat.

The technique could one day be used for everything from global financial trading to secure voting and even long-distance gambling, although researchers point out that this is the "very first step into new territory".

This is a significant breakthrough in the world of 'quantum cryptography' – one that was once believed to be impossible. The results are published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

"This is the first time perfectly secure bit commitment – relying on the laws of physics and nothing else – has been demonstrated," said Adrian Kent.

"It is immensely satisfying to see these theoretical ideas at last made practical thanks to the ingenuity of all the theorists and experimenters in this collaboration."

Any signal between Geneva and Singapore takes at least fifteen milliseconds – with a millisecond equal to a thousandth of a second. This blink-of-an-eye is long enough with current technology to allow data to be handed over encrypted at both sites, and later decrypted – with security "unconditionally guaranteed" by the laws of physics, say the team.

The researchers have exploited two different areas of physics: Einstein's special relativity – which interprets uniform motion between two objects moving at relative speeds – combined with the power of quantum theory, the new physics of the subatomic world that Einstein famously dismissed as "spooky".

Completely secure 'bit commitment' using quantum theory alone is known to be impossible, say researchers, and the "extra control" provided by relativity is crucial.

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Is Time an Artifact of Being the Restricted Observer?

Time is an emergent phenomenon that is a side effect of quantum entanglement, say physicists. And they have the first exprimental results to prove it

When the new ideas of quantum mechanics spread through science like wildfire in the first half of the 20th century, one of the first things physicists did was to apply them to gravity and general relativity. The result were not pretty.

It immediately became clear that these two foundations of modern physics were entirely incompatible. When physicists attempted to meld the approaches, the resulting equations were bedeviled with infinities making it impossible to make sense of the results.

Then in the mid-1960s, there was a breakthrough. The physicists John Wheeler and Bryce DeWitt successfully combined the previously incompatible ideas in a key result that has since become known as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. This is important because it avoids the troublesome infinites—a huge advance.

But it didn’t take physicists long to realise that while the Wheeler-DeWitt equation solved one significant problem, it introduced another. The new problem was that time played no role in this equation. In effect, it says that nothing ever happens in the universe, a prediction that is clearly at odds with the observational evidence.

This conundrum, which physicists call ‘the problem of time’, has proved to be thorn in flesh of modern physicists, who have tried to ignore it but with little success.

Then in 1983, the theorists Don Page and William Wooters came up with a novel solution based on the quantum phenomenon of entanglement. This is the exotic property in which two quantum particles share the same existence, even though they are physically separated.

Entanglement is a deep and powerful link and Page and Wooters showed how it can be used to measure time. Their idea was that the way a pair of entangled particles evolve is a kind of clock that can be used to measure change.

But the results depend on how the observation is made. One way to do this is to compare the change in the entangled particles with an external clock that is entirely independent of the universe. This is equivalent to god-like observer outside the universe measuring the evolution of the particles using an external clock.

In this case, Page and Wooters showed that the particles would appear entirely unchanging—that time would not exist in this scenario.

But there is another way to do it that gives a different result. This is for an observer inside the universe to compare the evolution of the particles with the rest of the universe. In this case, the internal observer would see a change and this difference in the evolution of entangled particles compared with everything else is an important a measure of time.

This is an elegant and powerful idea. It suggests that time is an emergent phenomenon that comes about because of the nature of entanglement. And it exists only for observers inside the universe. Any god-like observer outside sees a static, unchanging universe, just as the Wheeler-DeWitt equations predict.

link.  paper link.

So, someone who is outside the universe, all observing, doesn't see squat.  um.  theological problem, maybe?