patentNumber: "US-IMP-3,091,447" title: "Temporal Locomotion Apparatus" titleRu: "Аппарат для перемещения во времени" filingDate: "April 14, 1947" issueDate: "September 2, 1952" inventor: "Dr. Eleanor M. Vaszquez" inventorRu: "д-р Элеанор М. Васкес" inventorSlug: "eleanor-vaszquez" classification: "Causality Violations" status: "Provisionally Impossible" abstract: "An apparatus for the conveyance of a human operator through the temporal dimension by means of induced closed timelike curves within a gimbaled, exotic-matter-stabilized toroidal field. The invention comprises an outer gravitational gimbal frame (1) supporting a triaxial array of intersecting field coils (2) enclosing an inertial chamber (3) within which a single occupant may be seated upon a chronometric pilot's chair (4). Operation of the chronometric console (5) sets the displacement vector both in calendar years and in proper-time minutes, whereupon the field coils inject negative-energy density along the geodesic of the chamber, folding the local light cone such that the chamber's worldline returns upon itself. The invention is intended for both forward and retrograde temporal transit and is fitted with safety interlocks to prevent simultaneous occupancy of intersecting worldlines." abstractRu: "Аппарат для перевозки оператора-человека через временное измерение посредством наведённых замкнутых временных кривых внутри подвешенного на кардане тороидального поля, стабилизированного экзотической материей. Изобретение состоит из внешней гравитационной кардановой рамы (1), несущей триаксиальный массив пересекающихся катушек поля (2), окружающих инерциальную камеру (3), внутри которой в хронометрическом пилотском кресле (4) может располагаться один оператор. Работа хронометрической консоли (5) задаёт вектор смещения как в календарных годах, так и в минутах собственного времени, после чего катушки поля впрыскивают плотность отрицательной энергии вдоль геодезической линии камеры, складывая локальный световой конус так, что мировая линия камеры замыкается сама на себя. Изобретение предназначено для перемещения как в прошлое, так и в будущее и снабжено предохранительными блокировками, исключающими одновременное занятие пересекающихся мировых линий." citations:

• "US-IMP-3,144,902"
• "US-IMP-4,221,008"
• "US-IMP-5,019,447"

Field of InventionОбласть изобретенияField of Invention

The present invention relates generally to the field of chronometric engineering, and more particularly to apparatus and methods for conveying a single human occupant from one temporal coordinate to another along a continuous, closed timelike curve, while preserving the occupant's biological, mnemonic, and inertial integrity throughout transit. The invention pertains further to the safe regulation of negative-energy density required to deform the local Lorentzian metric so as to permit such conveyance, and to the means by which the operator may select, with calibrated precision, both the magnitude and the direction of the temporal displacement.

BackgroundПредпосылкиBackground

The mechanical conveyance of persons across spatial intervals — by carriage, by locomotive, by aeroplane, by submarine — has been a fixture of industrial civilization since the late eighteenth century. The conveyance of persons across the temporal interval, however, has resisted reduction to practice notwithstanding three centuries of theoretical effort. The principal difficulty resides in the asymmetric character of the temporal dimension as it presents itself within the framework of accepted physical law: although displacement in the three spatial dimensions is symmetric under translation, displacement in the temporal dimension is permitted, under standard interpretation, only in the forward direction and only at the proper rate of unity.

Prior art has attempted to circumvent this asymmetry by various means, including (a) the deceleration of the operator's local time by means of relativistic transit at velocities approaching that of light, which permits forward travel only and at prohibitive energetic cost; (b) gravitational time dilation in the vicinity of a sufficiently dense body, suffering the same deficiency; and (c) the proposed but unbuilt apparatus of Pellington (1923) employing a rapidly rotating cylinder of indefinite length, which, while in principle permitting closed timelike curves, requires a cylinder of infinite axial extent and is therefore manifestly unsuited to terrestrial deployment.

The instant invention addresses these deficiencies of the prior art by confining the requisite metric deformation to a small toroidal region enclosing the inertial chamber, by means of an exotic-matter-stabilized field, such that closed timelike curves may be traced by the chamber's worldline without recourse to infinite material structures.

Summary of the InventionКраткое изложение изобретенияSummary of the Invention

In one embodiment, the invention comprises:

• An outer gravitational gimbal frame (1), of welded steel construction, dimensioned to maintain the inertial chamber in a state of mechanical equipoise during metric distortion;
• A triaxial array of closed timelike curve field coils (2), wound from superconducting filament of compositional formula to be supplied by counsel for the assignee, arranged in three mutually orthogonal toroidal loops centered upon the chamber;
• An inertial chamber (3), of substantially spherical geometry, of nominal diameter three meters, evacuated to a residual pressure not exceeding 10⁻⁶ torr;
• A chronometric pilot's chair (4) mounted upon a central pedestal within the chamber, configured to receive and restrain a single human occupant of standard proportions;
• A chronometric console (5) within reach of the seated operator, comprising calibrated dials for the entry of calendar year, ordinal day, and proper-time displacement;
• An energy injection port (6) at the upper pole of the gimbal frame, by which the negative-energy density required to deform the local metric is supplied from an external generator described in U.S.-IMP-4,221,008;
• A thermodynamic exhaust manifold (7) at the lower pole, by which entropy generated incidental to operation is vented to the operator's local future light cone, in the customary manner; and
• A plurality of mounting struts (8) coupling the gimbal frame to a fixed terrestrial reference, said struts being releasable upon engagement of the displacement vector.

U.S.B.I.P. Drawing №Чертёж У.С.Б.И.П. №U.S.B.I.P. Drawing №

Sheet 1 of 1Лист 1 из 1Sheet 1 of 1

Detailed DescriptionПодробное описаниеDetailed Description

Referring now to FIG. 1A, the temporal locomotion apparatus is shown in sectional elevation. The outer gimbal frame (1) is constructed of structural steel of yield strength not less than 250 megapascals and is mounted upon four mounting struts (8) anchored to a reinforced concrete plinth. The frame is dimensioned to permit angular displacement of the inertial chamber in three rotational degrees of freedom, such that the chamber's spatial orientation remains constant in the operator's local inertial frame throughout the temporal transit.

Within the gimbal frame are disposed three intersecting field coils (2), each forming a closed toroidal loop centered upon the geometric center of the chamber. The coils are wound of superconducting filament cooled to a temperature not exceeding 4.2 kelvin by means of a circumambient bath of liquid helium, supplied through the energy injection port (6) at the upper pole. Upon energization, the three coils establish a triaxial field of negative-energy density not less than −10²⁰ joules per cubic meter within the toroidal region, sufficient to produce the requisite curvature of the local Lorentzian metric.

The inertial chamber (3) is a hollow sphere of three-meter nominal diameter, fabricated of copper sheet bonded to an inner shell of leaded glass, and is evacuated to a pressure not exceeding 10⁻⁶ torr to eliminate atmospheric scattering of the operator's worldline. At the geometric center of the chamber is disposed the chronometric pilot's chair (4), upon which the operator is seated and restrained by means of a four-point harness of webbed canvas, in the customary aeronautical manner.

Forward of the pilot's chair is the chronometric console (5), comprising three calibrated dials. The first dial selects the calendar year of destination, in the range of 0 to 9999 of the common era. The second dial selects the ordinal day within the selected year, in the range of 1 to 366. The third dial selects the magnitude of proper-time displacement to be experienced by the operator during transit, in the range of zero seconds (instantaneous) to sixty minutes. A toggle switch beside the console selects the polarity of the displacement: forward (toward later coordinates) or retrograde (toward earlier coordinates).

Upon engagement of the displacement vector, the field coils energize in the prescribed sequence and the local metric is deformed such that the chamber's worldline departs from the foliation of the surrounding spacetime and traces a closed timelike curve, returning to the spacetime foliation at the operator's elected destination coordinate. The mounting struts (8) are configured to disengage automatically prior to the deformation, so that no material structure is required to be conveyed across the metric discontinuity.

ClaimsФормула изобретенияClaims

What is claimed is:

1. An apparatus for the conveyance of a human operator from a first temporal coordinate to a second temporal coordinate distinct therefrom, comprising: a gimbal frame; a plurality of field coils carried by said gimbal frame; an inertial chamber enclosed within said field coils; a pilot's chair disposed within said chamber; and a console operatively coupled to said field coils for the selection of said second temporal coordinate.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said field coils are configured, upon energization, to establish within said inertial chamber a region of negative-energy density sufficient to deform the local Lorentzian metric such that the worldline of said chamber traces a closed timelike curve.

3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein said negative-energy density is not less than negative ten-to-the-twentieth (−10²⁰) joules per cubic meter.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said console comprises a first dial calibrated in calendar years, a second dial calibrated in ordinal days, and a third dial calibrated in minutes of proper-time displacement.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising a polarity selector operable to direct said second temporal coordinate to a value either greater than or less than said first temporal coordinate.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising a safety interlock configured to prevent the engagement of said displacement vector when said second temporal coordinate falls within an interval previously occupied by the operator's worldline.

7. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein said safety interlock is operable through an autograph-recognition mechanism.

8. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising a thermodynamic exhaust manifold disposed at the lower pole of said gimbal frame and configured to vent waste entropy to the operator's local future light cone.

9. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising mounting struts releasable in advance of metric deformation.

10. A method of operating the apparatus of claim 1, comprising the steps of: selecting a second temporal coordinate; engaging the polarity selector; releasing the mounting struts; and energizing the field coils in the prescribed sequence.

Why This Violates Physics (For Now)Почему это нарушает физику (пока)Why This Violates Physics (For Now)

The invention as claimed is, at the date of issuance and on the best information available to the Bureau, provisionally impossible under at least three independent counts.

First, the apparatus requires the establishment of a region of negative-energy density sufficient to support a closed timelike curve. While quantum field theory permits localized negative-energy densities in such configurations as the Casimir effect, these are subject to the Quantum Inequalities of Ford and Roman, which place a strict upper bound on the magnitude and duration of any such density. The negative-energy density required for the present invention exceeds this bound by approximately forty orders of magnitude and persists for a duration incompatible with the inequalities under any presently understood field configuration. No known matter, ordinary or exotic, satisfies the engineering specifications of claim 3.

Second, even assuming arguendo that the requisite negative-energy density could be established, the resulting closed timelike curve would permit the operator to influence events causally antecedent to the engagement of the displacement vector. This invites the well-known grandfather paradox: the operator, returning to a coordinate prior to his own conception, may by act or omission prevent that conception, with the consequence that the apparatus is never built and the operator never returns. The standard responses to this paradox — the Novikov self-consistency principle, which holds that the worldline of any object traversing a closed timelike curve must be globally self-consistent and that no inconsistent action can in fact be performed; the many-worlds interpretation, which holds that the operator emerges in a branch of the wavefunction distinct from his point of origin; and the more austere position that closed timelike curves are themselves forbidden — remain matters of active dispute and have not been reduced to experimental test. Until such test is performed, the safety interlock of claim 6 cannot be calibrated, and the apparatus cannot be certified for human occupancy.

Third, the apparatus appears to come into conflict with the chronology protection conjecture of Hawking (1992), which holds that the laws of physics conspire — through the divergence of vacuum polarization energy in the neighborhood of any incipient closed timelike curve — to prevent the formation of such curves in the macroscopic regime. The vacuum polarization divergence is of such severity that it is expected to destroy any apparatus capable of producing it before the apparatus can in fact produce it; that is to say, the invention is expected to be unbuildable not by reason of any limitation of materials but by reason of its own operation upon those materials. The Bureau notes that the chronology protection conjecture remains a conjecture only and has not been formally proven.

The Bureau holds, accordingly, that the present invention is not impossible in principle, but is impossible under the laws of physics as presently understood. The application is therefore filed and held in trust, in the customary manner, against such future emendation of those laws as may render the apparatus reducible to practice. The Bureau notes that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is also implicated, the operation of the apparatus permitting the construction of an entropy-decreasing cycle by the operator's selection of a sufficiently early destination coordinate, but considers this implication to be subsumed within the principal grounds of provisional impossibility set forth above. Citations: Hawking, S. W., "Chronology Protection Conjecture," Phys. Rev. D 46, 603 (1992); Ford, L. H. and Roman, T. A., Phys. Rev. D 51, 4277 (1995); Gödel, K., "An Example of a New Type of Cosmological Solution," Rev. Mod. Phys. 21, 447 (1949).