Boffins on verge of cracking human time journey after sending particles again into previous
Austrian eggheads have made a huge breakthrough in quantum science by sending particles into the past using a fancy gizmo that works a bit like a remote control
Boffins are on the verge of cracking human time travel after sending particles back into the past. The amazing quantum breakthrough by Austrian eggheads has seen them change the direction of time.
Back To The Future-style travel is now possible for particles using a rewind protocol that reverses time flow. Their breakthrough could lead to the technology being scaled up for eventual use by human Marty McFly wannabes.
They have shown that you can speed up, slow down, and even reverse the “age” of these particles, effectively rewinding time for them. At the centre of this work is a clever device called a quantum switch – like a remote control for particles – that acts a bit like Doctor Who’s Tardis.
Miguel Navascués from the Austrian Academy of Sciences compared it to having control over time itself. He said: “We can rewind to a previous scene or skip several scenes ahead.”
Using crystals and a set-up based on the quantum switch they sent a photon on a journey. They then used the switch to bring it back to the state it was in before the trip began.
The team also found that you can fast-forward time, too. Miguel said: “To make a system age 10 years in one year you must get the other nine years from somewhere.”
In one experiment, they used 10 identical systems. By “stealing” one year of aging from each of the first nine, they gave all nine years to the tenth system, which aged 10 years in just one.
But these discoveries, published online in the journal Optica, won’t let anyone travel back in time or undo mistakes in real life. A human body holds massive amounts of information, and it would take millions of years to rewind even one second of someone’s life.
Miguel added: “If we could lock a person in a box with zero external influences, it would be theoretically possible [to rewind them].
“But with our current protocols, the probability of success would be very, very low.”
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