| MadSci Network: Physics |
This is a bad page for science fiction, and a bad page of real science. Science fiction mixes fantasy and imagination with plausible science, but it really is an art, be it in the form of literature or film. Science fiction uses scientific terms and ideas to make them sound and look beautiful and interesting, even it they do not fit known scientific facts. The point is to make imagination fly and inspire people to think of other times and worlds in the Universe. In science fiction there is room for parody and comedy as well as drama and horror. Scientific parlance has certain poetic appeal. Terms like "time travel", "big bang", "photon annihilation", "laser beam", "cloning", "quantum entanglement" and the like can make up a good part of a fiction piece of writing. Science has also an enormous visual appeal. Just think of the Hubble photographs or the insides of a particle accelerator or a fusion tokamak. Models of black holes or active galactic nuclei also make for wonderful scenery of fiction films.
Let's see what the Hyperbolic Time Chamber page has to offer. The page says that "A hyperbolic time chamber is a room that uses science to allow the inhabitant to spend a year in a single day." Right now the only way we know how to stretch a day into a whole year is with time dilation in Einstein's theory of relativity. If somebody travels to space on a rocket at nearly the speed of light, 0.99999625 times the speed of light to be precise, people on Earth will see one year pass for every day that the traveler spends in her trip. It is as if the clock of the traveler ticks more slowly with respect to the clocks on Earth. When the space traveler returns to Earth after a day at that velocity, a year will have passed on Earth. The problem here is that the time traveler had a shorter, not longer time on the rocket. I believe that the "hyperbolic time chamber" promises to stretch time for you ("Have to study for the big test? Use the hyperbolic time chamber."). The only way to do that according to the theory of relativity is to invert the situation: you remain at rest and have everybody else travel at 0.99999625 times the speed of light. When they come back one year later, their clocks will show that one day has passed while yours will be one year ahead. Rather cumbersome. Now we can think of some time chamber that will invert the situation the way you like, but I am not a science fiction writer.
Time dilation is a real thing. Nobody has traveled at speeds remotely close to the speed of light, but particles produced in an accelerator, called pions, do travel at speeds close to the speed of light. Pions at rest live for 2 hundred millionth of a second before disintegrating into other particles. However pions in an accelerator traveling at 0.99 times the speed of light live 6.4 times longer because of time dilation. Their "clocks" tick more slowly than the clocks at rest in the laboratory. You can read more about this in Special Relativity by U. E. Schröder, World Scientific (1990), chapter 2, or any other book on special relativity.
The second part of the page talks about methynes and the Lindlar catalyst. Methynes are organic chemical compounds with a carbon atom in a double bond with another carbon atom and a single bound with a hydrogen atom. I do not understand what a "carbon atom with a triple bond with itself" means. A catalyst is a substance that is mixed with chemical compounds to accelerate or produce a chemical reaction that would not occur otherwise. The Lindlar catalyst is palladium on a carbonate surface, and it is used to add hydrogen atoms to complex organic molecules. None of this has anything to do with time dilation.
The third part shows formulae that appear in the solution of Schrödinger's equation. Schrödinger proposed this equation to describe atoms according to the precepts of quantum mechanics. So far it has proven highly successful at that. The R is the radial part of the solution of that equation for a hydrogen atom. The ρ represents the distance to the center of the atom. The following equations show the manipulations to get an equation for H(ρ), which is known as the Laguerre polynomial. All this is quantum physics for the senior year of a college degree, and then again has nothing to do with time dilation or methynes.
One thing that is true on this page is that you will become
good at science if you figure out what this page says.
Unfortunately I do not think that this is the way to learn
science. Science must be interesting and fun. Yes, it can
be hard, but not indecipherable. The writings of H. G. Wells,
Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein
are a better choice to have fun with science. Some or them were
no scientists, but made science a part of fiction and serious
literature. Works like "The Time Machine" by Wells inspired
scientists to think of time travel. "The Sentinel" by Clarke
inspired the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" by Stanley Kubrick,
which in turn inspired computer scientists to start the field
of artificial intelligence. "The Martian Chronicles" by Bradbury
is a classic on the issue of cosmic civilizations. "I, Robot"
by Asimov created the now common stereotype of the robot
with its own cybernetic personality that can turn against its
creators. That is good science fiction.
Enjoy,
Vladimir Escalante Ramírez
Center for Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics
Morelia, Mexico.
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