Saturday, 24 September 2011

Neutrinos

It would be a good idea to stockpile these now, if you can source some.  It seems that experiments at CERN have sent these cheeky little fellows some 400 kilometres to somewhere in Italy, at a speed slightly greater than that of light.  This is causing some consternation, and the scientists responsible are being rightly cautious (they’ve only repeated the results some 15,000 times, so it’s early days); but it appears that, if suitably peer-reviewed and confirmed, this opens up the possibility of time-travel. 

I haven’t yet developed the theoretical framework which would support any practical implementation of this, but I’m sure the guys at Apple are working on the iTime as I write.  It shouldn’t be too hard – after all, photons, when organised properly, can carry vast amounts of information (including these words), so why shouldn’t neutrinos be trained to do the same?  It’s already commonplace to ‘print’ three-dimensional inorganic objects following a blueprint, so organic ones, like people, can’t be far behind.  All we need to do is send an organic printer back to a pre-determined temporal location, scan oneself at this end, and hit ‘send and print’.  The neutrino waves will do the rest, and there we’ll be, watching ourselves conduct that first fumble in the bus shelter.  Or looking over Einstein’s shoulder as he gets special relativity wrong.  Or observing that butterfly flapping its wings in the Brazilian jungle.

Of course, we mustn’t ever intervene.  It’d be tempting though, wouldn’t it?  There are quite a few things I’d be tempted to change given the chance.

PS To my regular silent watchers, greetings, you are very welcome.  Feel free to say hello.

2 comments:

  1. It's that pesky space/time continuum that we have to watch out for, or so Doc Brown assured us.

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  2. The experts have spoken - http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2011/09/27/guest-post-not-so-fast-3/

    ReplyDelete