Deutsch, David The Quantum Physics of Time Travel PDF
Deutsch, David The Quantum Physics of Time Travel PDF
Deutsch, David The Quantum Physics of Time Travel PDF
of Time Travel
Common sense may rule out
such excursionsbut the
laws of physics do not
I
magine, if you will, that our friend Yet, surprisingly, the laws of physics do ocre and concludes that the artist has
Sonia keeps a time machine in her not forbid such adventures. yet to produce those inspired paintings
garage. Last night she used it to vis- Another paradox, which often ap- that so impressed future generations.
it her grandfather in 1934, when he pears in science ction, has been dis- The critic shows the painter a book of
was still courting her grandmother. So- cussed by the Oxford philosopher Mi- reproductions of these later works. The
nia convinced him of her identity by re- chael Dummett. An art critic from the painter contrives to hide this book,
ferring to family secrets that he had future visits a 20th-century painter, who forcing the critic to leave without it,
not yet revealed to anyone. This left is regarded in the critics own century and then sets about meticulously copy-
him stunned, but worse was to follow. as a great artist. Seeing the painters ing the reproductions onto canvas.
When he told his sweetheart over din- current work, the critic nds it medi- Thus, the reproductions exist because
ner that he had just met their future
granddaughter, the ladys response was
both to doubt his sanity and to take of-
fense at his presumption. They never
married and never had the baby who
would have become Sonias mother.
So how can Sonia be sitting here to-
day, telling us of her adventure? If her
mother was never born, how was she
ever born? The real question is, when TIME TRAVELER GREETS DISASTROUS
Sonia returns to 1934, can she or can GRANDFATHER DINNER
she not bring her grandparents ro-
mance to a premature end? Either an-
swer creates problems. If Sonia can
prevent her own birth, there is a contra-
diction. If she cannot, that inability con-
icts with common sense, for what is
to prevent Sonia from behaving as she
pleases? Will some strange paralysis
grip her whenever she tries to enact
certain intentions?
Situations like thisa mild version
of the classic grandfather paradox, in
which the grandfather is murdered by
his time-traveling grandchildare of-
ten regarded as ruling out time travel.
P
ersuaded by such objections, space-time: the tip of the worms tail
on physics and philosophy entitled The
physicists have traditionally in- corresponds to the event of your birth, Fabric of Reality. Lockwood is a fellow of
voked a chronology principle that, and the front of its head to the event of Green College and lecturer at the depart-
by at, rules out travel into the past. your death. An object, seen at any one ment for continuing education; he earned
One-way travel into the future raises no instant, is a three-dimensional cross his doctorate in philosophy, also at Ox-
such problems. Einsteins special theory section of this long, thin, intricately ford, under the late Sir Alfred Ayer. His
of relativity predicts that, with sucient curved worm. The line along which the book, Mind, Brain, and the Quantum, was
published in 1989, and he is currently
acceleration, astronauts could go on a worm lies ( ignoring its thickness) is
writing another on the nature of time.
journey and return to the earth decades called that objects worldline. The authors believe that the real uni-
into the future, while physically aging At any point on your worldline, the verse is far stranger than anything con-
only a year or two. It is important to angle it makes with the time axis is a ceived of in science ction but is also ul-
distinguish between predictions such measure of your speed. The worldline timately more intelligible.
as this, which are merely surprising, of a ray of light is typically drawn as
and processes that would violate phys- making an angle of 45 degrees; a ash
ical laws or independently justiable of light spreading out in all directions not be any arbitrary squiggle. Because
philosophical principles. forms a cone in space-time, called a nothing can travel faster than light, the
We shall shortly explain why travel- lightcone [see illustration on next page]. worldline of a physical object can nev-
ing into the past would not violate any An important dierence between space er stray outside the lightcone emanat-
such principle. To do so, we must rst and space-time is that a worldlineun- ing from any event in its past. World-
explore the concept of time itself, as like, say, a line drawn on papercan- lines that meet this criterion are called
TIME
MACHINE
AND TIME
TRAVELER
NO TIME TRAVELER
BIRTH
BIRTH OF GRANDDAUGHTER
WEDDING OF DAUGHTER (TIME TRAVELER)
D
oes our universe now, or will it
WORLDLINE ever, contain CTCs? We do not
know, but there are various
theoretical conjectures about how they
might be formed. The mathematician
Kurt Gdel found a solution to Ein-
steins equations that describes CTCs.
In that solution, the whole universe ro-
tates (according to current evidence,
the actual universe does not). CTCs also
appear in solutions of Einsteins equa-
tions describing rotating black holes.
But these solutions neglect infalling
HEIGHT
matter, and how far they apply to real-
istic black holes is a matter of contro-
versy. Also, a time traveler would be
trapped inside the black hole after
reaching the past, unless its rotation
rate exceeded a critical threshold. As-
TIME
trophysicists think it unlikely that any
naturally occurring black holes are
spinning that fast. Perhaps a civilization
far more advanced than ours could
WIDTH shoot matter into them, increasing their
rotation rate until safe CTCs appeared,
but many physicists doubt that this
would be possible.
A kind of shortcut through space-
SPACE AND TIME are combined into one four-dimensional entity, space-time. Here time, called a wormhole, has been
we show two space dimensions and time. A worldline connects all events in our mooted by Princeton University physi-
life in space-time; since we have some size, a persons worldline is more like a cist John A. Wheeler. Kip S. Thorne of
worm extending from birth to death than a line. The worldlines of light rays ema- the California Institute of Technology
nating in all space directions from an event trace out a cone in space-time, called a and others have shown how two ends
lightcone. The worldline of any object, such as the navel of this gure, cannot of a wormhole could be moved so as to
stray outside a lightcone emanating from any point in its past.
form a CTC. According to a recent cal-
culation by J. Richard Gott of Prince-
ton, a cosmic string (another theoreti-
timelike. Time, as measured by a watch, Such worldlines would be timelike all cal construct that may or may not exist
increases in one direction along a the way around. Locally they would in nature) passing rapidly by another
worldline. conform to all the familiar properties would generate CTCs.
Einsteins special theory of relativity of space and time, yet they would be We are at present a very long way
requires worldlines of physical objects corridors to the past. If we tried to fol- from nding any of these CTCs. They
to be timelike; the eld equations of low such a closed timelike curve (or may, however, become accessible to fu-
his general theory of relativity predict CTC ) exactly, all the way around, we ture civilizations, which might well at-
that massive bodies such as stars and would bump into our former selves tempt to enact time-travel paradoxes.
black holes distort space-time and bend and get pushed aside. But by following Let us therefore take a closer look at
worldlines. This is the origin of gravity: part of a CTC, we could return to the the paradoxes to see what principles, if
the earths worldline spirals around the past and participate in events there. any, time travel would violate, accord-
suns, which spirals around that of the We could shake hands with our youn- ing to classical and quantum physics.
center of our galaxy. ger selves or, if the loop were large Classical physics says, unequivocally,
Suppose space-time becomes so dis- enough, visit our ancestors. that on arriving in the past Sonia must
torted that some worldlines form closed To do this, we should either have to do the things that history records her
loops [see illustration on opposite page]. harness naturally occurring CTCs or doing. Some philosophers nd this an
T
he real core of the grandfather Sonia could even program a robot to here is not that knowledge-bearing arti-
paradox is not the violation of speak for her : Would it somehow be facts are carried into the pastit is the
free will but of a fundamental forced to disobey its program? free lunch element. The knowledge
principle that underlies both science Within classical physics, the answer required to invent the artifacts must not
and everyday reasoning; we call this is yes. Something must prevent Sonia be supplied by the artifacts themselves.
the autonomy principle. According to or the robot from deviating from what In an inconsistency paradox, physi-
this principle, it is possible to create in has already happened. It need not be cal events seem to be more tightly con-
our immediate environment any con- anything dramatic, however. Any com- strained than we are used to. In a
guration of matter that the laws of monplace hitch will suce. Sonias ve- knowledge paradox, they are less tight-
physics permit locally, without refer- hicle breaks down, or the robots pro- ly constrained. For instance, the state
ence to what the rest of the universe gram turns out to contain a bug. But of the universe before the art critic ar-
may be doing. When we strike a match, one way or another, according to clas- rives does not determine who, if any-
we do not have to worry that we might sical physics, consistency requires the one, will arrive from the future or what
be thwarted because the conguration autonomy principle to fail. he or she will bring along: the generally
of the planets, say, might be inconsis- Now let us return to the story of the deterministic laws of classical physics
tent with the match being lit. Autono- time-traveling art critic. We call this vi- allow the critic to bring back great pic-
my is a logical property that is highly olation of common sense a knowledge tures, poor pictures or no pictures at
desirable for the laws of physics to paradox (the grandfather paradox is an all. This indeterminacy is not what we
possess. For it underpins all experimen-
tal science: we typically take for grant-
ed that we can set up our apparatus in
any conguration allowed by physical
law and that the rest of the universe
will take care of itself.
In the absence of CTCs, both classi- CLOSED
cal and quantum physics conform to TIMELIKE
the autonomy principle. But in their CURVE
presence, classical physics does not, be-
cause of what John L. Friedman of the
University of Wisconsin and others call
the consistency principle. This states
that the only congurations of matter
that can occur locally are those that are
TEAR IN
self-consistent globally. Under this prin-
SPACE-TIME
ciple, the world outside the laboratory
can physically constrain our actions in-
side, even if everything we do is consis-
tent, locally, with the laws of physics.
Ordinarily we are unaware of this con-
straint, because the autonomy and con-
sistency principles never come into con-
ict. But classically, in the presence of
CTCs, they do.
Classical physics says there is only
one history, so try as she might to do
other than what history dictates, con-
sistency requires Sonia to act out her
part in it. She may visit her grandfa-
ther. But perhaps when he tells Sonias TODAY TOMORROW
grandmother-to-be what happened, she
becomes worried about his state of CLOSED TIMELIKE CURVE can be formed if space-time loops around. Entering such
health. He is very touched and propos- a curve tomorrow and moving forward in time, we can end up at today.
O
ne thing we already know about are generally deemed to have succeed-
CTCs is that if they exist, we ed. So we prefer to take quantum me-
need quantum mechanics to chanics at face value and to adopt a
understand them. Indeed, Stephen W. conception of reality that straightfor-
Hawking of the University of Cam- wardly mirrors the structure of the the-
bridge has argued that quantum-me- ory itself. When we refer to quantum
chanical eects would either prevent mechanics, we mean its so-called many-
CTCs from forming or would destroy universes interpretation, rst proposed MULTIVERSE PICTURE OF REALITY un-
any would-be time traveler approach- by Hugh Everett III in 1957. According ravels the time travel paradoxes. Sonia
ing one. According to Hawkings calcu- to Everett, if something physically can plans to enter the time machine tomor-
S
o does Sonia prevent her own out and arrives in an A-universe where other curious phenomenon, which we
birth or not? That depends on she meets a younger version of herself. call asymmetric separation. Suppose
which universe one is referring Once again, she can behave as she likes that Sonias boyfriend, Stephen, stays
to. In the universe she leaves, the one in the past, doing things that depart behind while she uses her time machine
she was born in, her grandfather did from her (accurate) recollections. in one of the ways we have described.
marry her grandmother because, in So in half the universes there is a In half the universes, she enters it and
that universe, he received no visit from meeting between two Sonias, and in never returns. Thus, from Stephens
Sonia. In the other universe, the one half there is not. In the A-universes an point of view, there is a possibility that
whose past Sonia travels to, her grand- older Sonia appears from nowhere, he will be separated from her. Half the
father does not marry that particular and in the B-universes she disappears versions of him will see Sonia depart-
woman, and Sonia is never born. into nowhere. Each A-universe then ing, never to return. (The other half will
Thus, the fact that Sonia is traveling contains two Sonias, the older one hav- be joined by a second Sonia.) But from
in time does not constrain her actions. ing started life in a B-universe. Sonia Sonias point of view, there is no pos-
And it turns out, according to quantum has gone missing from each B-universe, sibility of her being separated from
mechanics, that it never would. Quan- having emigrated to an A-universe. Stephen, because every version of her
row and travel back to today but resolves that if she emerges verse she does not emerge today and so enters the time ma-
from the time machine today, she will not enter tomorrow. chine tomorrow. She then emerges today, but in an A-universe,
She is able to carry out this plan, without paradox. In a B-uni- and meets her copywho does not enter the time machine.
will end up in a universe containing a ing at it, by deducing it from existing source. Extraterrestrial civilizations or
version of himwhom she will have to physical theory. All the claims we have our descendants will have their own
share with another version of herself. made about time travel are consequenc- priorities for its use, and there is no
If Stephen and Sonia follow a similar es of using standard quantum mechan- reason to assume that visiting the earth
planentering the time machine if and ics to calculate the behavior of logic cir- in the 20th century would be high on
only if the other does not rst emerge cuitsjust like those that are used in their list. Even if it were, they would ar-
they can separate completely, ending computers, except for the additional rive only in some universes, of which
up in dierent universes. If they carry supposition that information can travel this, presumably, is not one.
out more complex intentions, each of into the past along CTCs. The time trav- We conclude that if time travel is im-
them could end up in the company of elers in this computer model are pack- possible, then the reason has yet to be
any number of versions of the other. If ets of information. Similar results have discovered. We may or may not one
time travel were achievable on a grand been obtained using other models. day locate or create navigable CTCs.
scale, competing galactic civilizations But if anything like the many-universes
T
could use these asymmetric separation hese calculations denitively dis- picture is trueand in quantum cos-
eects to have the whole galaxy to pose of the inconsistency para- mology and the quantum theory of
themselves. Also, an entire civilization doxes, which turn out to be mere- computation no viable alternative is
could clone itself into any number of ly artifacts of an obsolete, classical knownthen all the standard objec-
copies, just as Sonia did. The more often worldview. We have argued that the tions to time travel depend on false
it did this, the likelier it would be that knowledge paradoxes would likewise models of physical reality. So it is in-
an observer would see it disappear from present no obstacle to time travel. But cumbent on anyone who still wants to
his universe, just as Stephen sees Sonia one cannot make that argument airtight reject the idea of time travel to come
disappear from the A-universe when until concepts like knowledge and cre- up with some new scientic or philo-
her clone appears in the B-universe. ativity have been successfully translat- sophical argument.
( Perhaps this explains why we have not ed into the language of physics. Only
yet encountered any extraterrestrials!) then can one tell if the no-free-lunch
In the art critic story, quantum me- principle we requirethat it takes prob-
chanics allows events, from the partici- lem-solving processes to create knowl- FURTHER READING
pants perspective, to occur much as edgeis consistent, in the presence of CAUSAL LOOPS. Michael Dummett in The
Dummett describes. The universe that CTCs, with quantum mechanics and Nature of Time. Edited by R. Flood and
the critic comes from must have been the rest of physics. M. Lockwood. Basil Blackwell, 1986.
DO THE LAWS OF PHYSICS PERMIT CLOSED
one in which the artist did, eventually, There is a nal argument that is of-
TIME-LIKE CURVES? Kip S. Thorne in An-
learn to paint well. In that universe, the ten raised against time travel. As Hawk- nals of the New York Academy of Sci-
pictures were produced by creative ef- ing puts it, The best evidence that ences, Vol. 631, pages 182193; August
fort, and reproductions were later tak- time travel never will be possible is that 1991.
en to the past of another universe. we have not been invaded by hordes of QUANTUM MECHANICS NEAR CLOSED
There the paintings were indeed plagia- tourists from the future. But this is a TIMELIKE LINES. David Deutsch in Physi-
rizedif one can be said to plagiarize mistake. For a CTC reaches only as far cal Review D, Vol. 44, No. 10, pages
the work of another version of one- back as the moment it was created. If 31973217; November 15, 1991.
THE PARADOXES OF TIME TRAVEL. David
selfand the painter did get some- the earths rst navigable CTC is con- Lewis in American Philosophical Quar-
thing for nothing. But there is no para- structed in 2054, subsequent time trav- terly, Vol. 13, No. 2, pages 145152;
dox, because now the existence of the elers could use it to travel to 2054 or April 1976. Reprinted in The Philosophy
pictures was caused by genuine cre- later, but no earlier. Navigable CTCs of Time. Edited by Robin Le Poidevin
ative eort, albeit in another universe. might already exist elsewhere in the and Murray MacBeath. Oxford Universi-
The idea that time travel paradoxes galaxy. But even then we should not ex- ty Press, 1993.
could be resolved by parallel univers- pect hordes of tourists from the fu- MUST TIME MACHINE CONSTRUCTION VI-
OLATE THE WEAK ENERGY CONDITION?
es has been anticipated in science c- ture. Given the limited capacity of
Amos Ori in Physical Review Letters,
tion and by some philosophers. What CTCs and that our stock of them at any Vol. 71, No. 16, pages 25172520; Oc-
we have presented here is not so much given time cannot be replenished in this tober 18, 1993.
a new resolution as a new way of arriv- universe, a CTC is a nonrenewable re-