In Australia, a team of research physicists at the University of Queensland have, apparently, sent a few photons back in time to interact with one another. The research team invented a time loop, a theoretical one of course, in which the photons that were released were able to exist with themselves in a previous point in time.
By accomplishing this feat, the researchers stated that they were able to study a quantum physics concept called a closed timelike curve. Shaped like an elongated “C”, the closed timelike curve can theoretically predict an object’s past as well as future locations. In addition, it predicts these thing all at the same time.
Because of the curved nature of this mathematical construct, it allows time, the scientists state, to loop back on itself so that things can happen simultaneously. The time loop is a closed loop so that everything that is in the loop is there all at the same time.
These are anomalies of a temporal nature and can apparently exist in spaces that are essentially theoretical. Because of this, the force of gravity is such, physicists say, that space and time are able to warp themselves. When the warping occurs, everything becomes a loop that comes back on itself so that objects can go back in time, in the present, and be with itself there.
For this University of Queensland experiment, photons were launched through a barium borate crystal which emptied into a polarizing circuit. The photons were recorded in their quantum state, as well as their location, at the opposite end of the circuit. While the photons were observed, the researchers changed the polarity which caused the photons to change. Changing the states of the photons it their “past” changed their states in the future.
The experiments still remain pure theory and the researchers want to stress that this doesn’t necessarily prove that the photons actually traveled backwards in time.
PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay