What is a time chain and where could we find one?



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A period can be considered as a structure that disrupts the flow of time by accelerating it.

Although the idea may seem fantastic, Albert Einstein's pioneering theories of special relativity and general relativity, which were published in the early twentieth century, predicted temporal distortions, reported Live Science.

In summary, Einstein argued that gravity was not a force but rather came from curvatures in space-time – the three dimensions of space and the only dimension of time combined – caused by unequal mass distributions.

So, everything that has a mass is essentially a chain of time. However, the effect is detectable only for large mass objects, such as planets, stars, or black holes, which can create significant distortions in space-time. Objects such as ourselves or, for example, a soccer ball create only extremely minor distortions, which for all intents and purposes are undetectable to us.

In fact, if you were able to place a clock near a black hole and observe it from afar, you might notice that it would seem to run slower than your own watch or another clock that was next to you. This effect is known as gravitational temporal dilation and results from spatio-temporal distortions.

High speed movements can also cause time dilation, with higher speeds producing a greater effect. For example, if you could travel in a spaceship at the speed of light, the time would stop for you, but not for an observer back to Earth. This scenario could be described as a trip back in time as you would go in the future faster than the observer.

These are extreme examples, but the effects of time dilation have real consequences for human activities. In particular, GPS satellites must take into account general relativity and special relativity in order to accurately determine your position on Earth.

"GPS satellites work with extremely accurate clocks aboard the satellite," said Ken Olum of Live Science, of the Institute of Cosmology at Tufts University. "Satellite clocks operate at different speeds, depending on their distance from the Earth, and they also have a different speed depending on the movement of the satellite."

But apart from massive objects that distort space-time, there are other theoretical phenomena that could produce similar effects. One of them is the wormholes, theoretical tunnels connecting two points of space-time, potentially creating important shortcuts that could pass almost instantly.

Scientists have never found a wormhole. But like the black holes, the theory of general relativity predicted them for the first time, although they were not baptized that way until 1957. A recent study, conducted by Harvard physicist Daniel Jafferis, revealed that traversable wormholes could theoretically exist.

"Crossable wormholes are possible, consistent with the known laws of physics," said Jafferis previously Newsweek. "Since space and time are bent and deformed by gravity – as we have known since 1916, when Einstein discovered general relativity – we had long wondered if there could be a tunnel in the space to connect two different places. "

However, for such a wormhole to be stable and traversable, it would take a form of exotic energy, and still unknown, still called "negative energy".

Another possible type of temporal distortion could arise from a theoretical concept called "cosmic strings", first proposed by Richard Gott, Princeton astrophysicist in 1991. According to his hypothesis, these string-like objects – which the Can be found throughout the universe – are almost like one-dimensional analogues to black holes. They are essentially, infinitely thin, but extended.

Explaining this idea in a 2009 lecture, also attributed to his Princeton colleague, Michael Strauss, Gott said, "A black hole is a point, of zero dimension. A cosmic chain is a long, very extended and very massive object, with a spherical non-symmetric gravitational field around a point – like a black hole – but symmetrically cylindrical around a line. Cosmic strings have no end and therefore have either an infinite expanse or closed loops. "

He added: "According to various theories of particle physics, created during the Big Bang, it would exist, but unlike black holes, there is no evidence of observation of their existence. For the sake of argument, we will assume that they do it.

Gott argued that if two of these strings overlapped in a particular way at a speed close to that of light, they could create closed curves in space-time, which could constitute a sort of time Machine.

"You might think that if you could go faster than the speed of light, time would go in the opposite direction. But there is no way to go faster than the speed of light, "said Gott. "Then it will not work. However, in general relativity, the trick we will try to use is to use the space-curve time to take a shortcut between two points to go faster than light. If we are smart, we can use that to go back in time. "

However, this idea is highly hypothetical, and Gott himself said that to go back in time, it would require unimaginable amounts of energy. In addition, you will not be able to return until the date on which the time machine was created.

"For this to work in practice, there are some practical difficulties," said Gott. "First of all, you have to find cosmic strings – a problem because they have not been discovered yet.These must be particularly massive strings, with a mass of at least four times 10 to the power of 16 for every inch of length.You have to move them at 0.9999992 times the speed of light. "

He added, "The energy required to do this is pretty much the resting mass energy of a whole galaxy. So we are not about to ask NASA to build one of these things again! But it is interesting to show that the laws of physics in principle allow travel in time. "

Benjamin Shlaer, a physicist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, told Live Science that our best chance of finding exotic matter or temporal distortions in the future is through cosmology. observation – the study of the structure, evolution and origin of the universe using such technologies. instruments like telescopes.

"It's pretty clear that all our supposedly sure about what really exists is probably not true if you switch to extreme diets," Shlaer told the site. "And we could hope that we could ask these questions and answer them in the field of cosmology."

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