How the Star Wars Kessel Run Turns Han Solo Into a Time-Traveler In what may be my favorite Star Wars-themed science article ever written (and that’s saying a lot), Kyle Hill analyzes Han Solo’s oft-criticized description of completing the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs … and discovers he was probably a time-traveler. The problem arises because a parsec is a unit of distance, not time. So Han’s statement implies that he found a Kessel Run shortcut. In the Star Wars universe, this famous smugglers’ route skirts dangerously close to some black holes. So if the Millennium Falcon can keep from being sucked in, it must be really fast.  And that’s where it gets cool: So for the purposes of calculating the Kessel Run, let’s say the Millennium Falcon is the fastest ship ever. Somehow able to withstand the forces involved (perhaps it has something to do with that sweet tractor-beam tech), we can calculate what happens when Han and his baby go 99.9999999 percent the speed of light, or 0.999999999c. Funny things happen to time when you start traveling close to the speed of light. Time runs normally for you, but everyone else moves forward at an increased rate, covering years while you only experience minutes. What does this time dilation mean for Han? Because the shortened Kessel Run spans 12 parsecs (39.6 light-years), a ship traveling nearly light-speed would take a little more than 39.6 years to get there. Factoring in time dilation, anyone watching the Kessel Run would see Solo speeding along for almost 40 years, but Solo himself would experience only a little more than half a day. If you haven’t picked out the potential pitfall for the Star Wars timeline I’ll spell it out: In the time it takes Han to complete just one Kessel Run, the rest of the galaxy battles, negotiates, and force-chokes its way through almost 40 years — and pushes the date of Solo’s birth 40 years further into the past. It gets better. Go read the rest at Wired.com.
Pop-upView Separately

How the Star Wars Kessel Run Turns Han Solo Into a Time-Traveler

In what may be my favorite Star Wars-themed science article ever written (and that’s saying a lot), Kyle Hill analyzes Han Solo’s oft-criticized description of completing the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs … and discovers he was probably a time-traveler.

The problem arises because a parsec is a unit of distance, not time. So Han’s statement implies that he found a Kessel Run shortcut. In the Star Wars universe, this famous smugglers’ route skirts dangerously close to some black holes. So if the Millennium Falcon can keep from being sucked in, it must be really fast. 

And that’s where it gets cool:

So for the purposes of calculating the Kessel Run, let’s say the Millennium Falcon is the fastest ship ever. Somehow able to withstand the forces involved (perhaps it has something to do with that sweet tractor-beam tech), we can calculate what happens when Han and his baby go 99.9999999 percent the speed of light, or 0.999999999c.

Funny things happen to time when you start traveling close to the speed of light. Time runs normally for you, but everyone else moves forward at an increased rate, covering years while you only experience minutes. What does this time dilation mean for Han?

Because the shortened Kessel Run spans 12 parsecs (39.6 light-years), a ship traveling nearly light-speed would take a little more than 39.6 years to get there. Factoring in time dilation, anyone watching the Kessel Run would see Solo speeding along for almost 40 years, but Solo himself would experience only a little more than half a day.

If you haven’t picked out the potential pitfall for the Star Wars timeline I’ll spell it out: In the time it takes Han to complete just one Kessel Run, the rest of the galaxy battles, negotiates, and force-chokes its way through almost 40 years — and pushes the date of Solo’s birth 40 years further into the past.

It gets better. Go read the rest at Wired.com.

Source: Wired

Wave Your Stamens in the Air Like Ya Just Don’t Care!

I feel like time travel, while perhaps scientifically infeasible, can be achieved technologically by manipulating the scale of time rather than our position along its arrow. This allows us to leave the present behind, and experience a sort of alternate reality.

Those alternate realties are places where flowers are not mere bee-buffets, decorative flourishes and aromatic embellishments. They are dynamic symbols of awakening, floral fireworks, like nature’s way of saying “Good morning! What do you have for me today!?”

I give you Flowers by Katka Pruskova, 730 hours of blooming buds condensed to mere minutes.

Wash it down with an animated version of Richard Feynman’s epic “Ode To A Flower”.

Source: vimeo.com

A Time Traveler In Their Midst?

Something’s fishy here.

When that amazing colorized version of the 1927 Solvay Conference photo came out this week, something didn’t look quite right to me. Something seemed … too perfect. I had my friends at NASA dig into the pixels, past the colorization, and decipher the original scene. Their supercomputers, after hours of calculations, reconstructed not only the original photo, but also the action happening at the time the shutter clicked.

Here is the enhanced, restored version (enlarged for detail here):

Looks like someone else was there. I knew he was good … but I didn’t know he was this good.

Well played, Mr. S.

The Science of Time Travel

“Just imagine if we had the same kind of freedom to move through time as we do to move through space.”

A favorite of sci-fi authors and movie directors, is time travel really possible? What are the scientific and philosophical implications? Dan Falk takes a look at what it would take to move forward through time (you know, faster than we already do), with input from H.G. Wells to Einstein.

He looks at whether moving backward in time could be possible in Part 2.

Bonus: This reminds me of my favorite Harry Potter link on the internet, ever: Temporal Anomalies in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

(via Dan Falk)

Source: danfalk.ca

The physics of time travel

Theoretical physicist Ronald Mallett has put himself on record that time travel will be figured out, despite the fact that most physicists don’t agree. It’s a nice idea, and while I’m skeptical that we will ever be able to accomplish the feat (wouldn’t we have received notification to that end by now?), the physics of how time is malleable is well accepted. It’s all about relativity.

So while you wait for you grandchildren to appear from thin air and tell you that we’ve figured it out, let Dr. Mallett explain Einstein’s time theories as part of the new EPIPHANY video series.

(via Boing Boing)

Source: Boing Boing

Q:Is it even _theoretically_ possible for time travel to exist, without resorting to overly artificial and theatrical rules governing it? If yes, how does one resolve things such as the Grandfather Paradox?

becausefuckthat

Need a refresher on the Grandfather Paradox? Watch this:

The thing about a paradox is that it’s not easily resolvable. That’s why it’s a paradox. In my opinion, you have to do some pretty theatrical backflips in logic to make sense of something like this. Say you go back in time and (try to) kill your grandfather, there either must be a parallel universe where that didn’t happen or you will fail in your attempt in order to preserve the current timeline. The idea the paradox is based upon is pretty artificial. It’s not impossible, just artificial.

Really wanna bend your mind in half? A classical, but imperfect principle of physics states that matter can not be created or destroyed. Then aren’t there more atoms in that universe if you travel back in time and meet yourself, defying the laws of physics? Hmm? I’m not certain, because my understanding of relativity and mass is not that high level.

This is why many scientists think that traveling back in time is impossible. The paradoxes would be infinite and unresolvable. Of course, traveling forward is still fine, in theory (even though we’re doing it all the time, at 1 second/second). Bring me back a sports almanac.

Through the lens, let’s journey through time. Another entry for Friday’s Amazing Journeys. In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, San Francisco was shaken by a massive and legendary earthquake. The quake and resulting fire decimated the city, killing as many as 3,000.  A few weeks after the quake, George Lawrence took the iconic photograph pictured above (top). The aerial panorama shows the true extent of the damage, and it’s darkly fascinating. Click here (do it) to find an embiggened version, to explore down to the pixel, almost to the individual face. Of course, airplanes weren’t even three years old by this time, so aerial photography techniques were quite different than they are today. Airships were expensive and hard to control, so how did Lawrence do it? Kites. That’s quite the setup. Cameras weren’t exactly available off the shelf, either, so Lawrence had to build his own! A century later, a group of photographers and tinkerers led by Ron Klein wanted to recreate the picture, using modern San Francisco as a backdrop. They built a modern version of Lawrence’s camera, attached it to a helicopter, and the result is the bottom version up there. And of course, this journey wouldn’t be complete without an equally embiggened version of Klein’s feat, too. Who says you need a time machine? (images via Ron Klein Photography and USGS, hi-res photo 1 and photo 2)
Zoom Info
Through the lens, let’s journey through time. Another entry for Friday’s Amazing Journeys. In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, San Francisco was shaken by a massive and legendary earthquake. The quake and resulting fire decimated the city, killing as many as 3,000.  A few weeks after the quake, George Lawrence took the iconic photograph pictured above (top). The aerial panorama shows the true extent of the damage, and it’s darkly fascinating. Click here (do it) to find an embiggened version, to explore down to the pixel, almost to the individual face. Of course, airplanes weren’t even three years old by this time, so aerial photography techniques were quite different than they are today. Airships were expensive and hard to control, so how did Lawrence do it? Kites. That’s quite the setup. Cameras weren’t exactly available off the shelf, either, so Lawrence had to build his own! A century later, a group of photographers and tinkerers led by Ron Klein wanted to recreate the picture, using modern San Francisco as a backdrop. They built a modern version of Lawrence’s camera, attached it to a helicopter, and the result is the bottom version up there. And of course, this journey wouldn’t be complete without an equally embiggened version of Klein’s feat, too. Who says you need a time machine? (images via Ron Klein Photography and USGS, hi-res photo 1 and photo 2)
Zoom Info

Through the lens, let’s journey through time.

Another entry for Friday’s Amazing Journeys. In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, San Francisco was shaken by a massive and legendary earthquake. The quake and resulting fire decimated the city, killing as many as 3,000. 

A few weeks after the quake, George Lawrence took the iconic photograph pictured above (top). The aerial panorama shows the true extent of the damage, and it’s darkly fascinating. Click here (do it) to find an embiggened version, to explore down to the pixel, almost to the individual face.

Of course, airplanes weren’t even three years old by this time, so aerial photography techniques were quite different than they are today. Airships were expensive and hard to control, so how did Lawrence do it?

Kites.

That’s quite the setup. Cameras weren’t exactly available off the shelf, either, so Lawrence had to build his own!

A century later, a group of photographers and tinkerers led by Ron Klein wanted to recreate the picture, using modern San Francisco as a backdrop. They built a modern version of Lawrence’s camera, attached it to a helicopter, and the result is the bottom version up there.

And of course, this journey wouldn’t be complete without an equally embiggened version of Klein’s feat, too.

Who says you need a time machine?

(images via Ron Klein Photography and USGS, hi-res photo 1 and photo 2)

My Favorite Harry Potter Moment: Azkaban and the Space-Time Continuum Today is the day, folks. The Harry Potter saga ends, with the release of the final movie installment at midnight tonight. I’ll be there. I didn’t really start out as a super-fan, but there’s one moment in particular that turned me on to Potter. Let me tell you about my favorite part of all the Harry Potter stories (spoiler, it has to do with science, DUH) … In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the climax of the book and movie rests on time travel. More specifically, using magic to bend the space-time continuum in a way that allows Harry and Hermione to go back in time to save Buckbeak, Sirius, and Harry himself. You see, space and time exist as a sort of flexible surface that can be distorted by various forces and behaviors of quantum physics. If you imagine space-time as a sheet, you can see that it could be bent around to a point where distant points could be connected by a tunnel/wormhole/magic device like a time-turner. It’s a common sci-fi principle. Well, the climax of Azkaban relies on this principle, using magic to bend space and time, to literally save the life of Sirius and Harry (and Buckbeak). But because space and time are infinitely bendable, most stories eventually reach some paradox where you say “Waaaaaait a minute, that couldn’t have happened like that, how did they do the … what the?!” Well, this is my favorite Harry Potter link on the internet, and I won’t waste any more time in giving it to you. Behold the very detailed, very intelligent analysis of Temporal Anomalies in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and learn exactly how the book and the movie got time travel and physics right, and wrong. Space-time-magic. Enjoy the movie!
View Separately

My Favorite Harry Potter Moment: Azkaban and the Space-Time Continuum

Today is the day, folks. The Harry Potter saga ends, with the release of the final movie installment at midnight tonight. I’ll be there. I didn’t really start out as a super-fan, but there’s one moment in particular that turned me on to Potter. Let me tell you about my favorite part of all the Harry Potter stories (spoiler, it has to do with science, DUH) …

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the climax of the book and movie rests on time travel. More specifically, using magic to bend the space-time continuum in a way that allows Harry and Hermione to go back in time to save Buckbeak, Sirius, and Harry himself. You see, space and time exist as a sort of flexible surface that can be distorted by various forces and behaviors of quantum physics. If you imagine space-time as a sheet, you can see that it could be bent around to a point where distant points could be connected by a tunnel/wormhole/magic device like a time-turner. It’s a common sci-fi principle.

Well, the climax of Azkaban relies on this principle, using magic to bend space and time, to literally save the life of Sirius and Harry (and Buckbeak). But because space and time are infinitely bendable, most stories eventually reach some paradox where you say “Waaaaaait a minute, that couldn’t have happened like that, how did they do the … what the?!”

Well, this is my favorite Harry Potter link on the internet, and I won’t waste any more time in giving it to you. Behold the very detailed, very intelligent analysis of Temporal Anomalies in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and learn exactly how the book and the movie got time travel and physics right, and wrong. Space-time-magic.

Enjoy the movie!