Six Thomas Worthington Students Catch Wormhole Flaw In Hawking/Discovery Channel Model

When confronted with a thought problem based on a highly publicized Stephen Hawking theory on wormholes that was shown on the Discovery Channel last year, six students from Thomas Worthington High School were able to see why the model doesn't work.
By: Jake Shisler
 
 
Marshall Barnes w/guitar put Hawking to the test.
Marshall Barnes w/guitar put Hawking to the test.
Feb. 29, 2012 - PRLog -- Marshall Barnes, R&D Eng conducted another one of his celebrated Oppenheimer Strain programs Monday, February 27th at Thomas Worthington High School in a physics class run by teacher Erik Thompson. This time, he presented an edited version of the Discovery Channel segment so that it focused solely on the nature of a wormhole that is connected to the past by one minute. He did this after giving the students a crash course on wormholes, black holes, space-time diagrams and two different interpretations of quantum mechanics. All of this was far beyond the high school curriculum, but when the video was shown and Marshall asked what was wrong with it, six students eventually got the right answer without being given any clues.

This is the 5th time that Marshall has conducted one of these exercises and the 4th school that he has done this with. He did two last year at Grandview Heights High School.

After hearing the students answers, Marshall did a first, and conducted an experiment based on what was shown in the Discovery Channel episode where a band demonstrates feedback . Feedback, in the form of radiation, is what Hawking says would happen with a wormhole connected to the past. The wormhole connection, according to Hawking, will generate radiation feedback that will build and destroy the wormhole. However, Marshall brought audio equipment in and performed the experiment, with several students who volunteered to run the equipment, while Marshall played the guitar. At first he had the set-up arranged as Hawking described, with with a microphone in direct line with a speaker. As the student controlling the volume, began to raise it, feedback began while Marshall was playing. Next, they turned the microphone so that it was aimed at the other speaker but not directly in front of it. The volume was raised and Marshall's playing was heard without feedback interruption.

What this demonstrated was that Hawking's feedback model is wrong because any wormhole connection to the past would not be to the same direct past but a parallel one. The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics states that there is only one outcome per measurement. That means that what happens in the present would be what happened in the past. No space-time arrangement can be made to change that because it would equal two outcomes for the same measurement. What had troubled Hawking, and a number of other physicists, is that there doesn't seem to be any rules outlawing time travel, only those that would make it difficult. The feedback based, Chronology Protection Conjecture of Hawking, was his attempt to fix that and make history safe for historians.

Marshall originally presented the audio feedback solution in 2004 to a class run by Sabra Weber, PhD, an associate professor at the Ohio State University,  studying time theories. He reiterated a similar set-up during his presentation to the International Mars Society, later that same year in Chicago, where he showed the audience of engineers, scientists and educators how Hawking was wrong during a presentation on avoiding hidden assumption traps when thinking outside the box - http://www.pressbox.co.uk/detailed/Science/HAWKING_WRONG_AGAIN_RESEARCHER_TELLS_MARS_CONFERENCE_17016.html .

What was significant about Marshall's presentation was that he didn't just end there with a physical experiment, he also introduced another element by showing that a video camera can always disprove paradox theories by documenting what happens before the paradox and after. Checking the footage shot before the paradox reveals that the paradox didn't happen the first time. That means the events after the apparent "paradox" aren't happening in the same universe and thus no real paradox. Furthermore, the reason for Hawking's Chronology Protection Conjecture, the preservation of the past, is still intact because it is not the direct, linear past that is effected but that of another universe. Marshall's solution, which has been discussed originally by a number of physicists, namely David Deutsch and Fred Alan Wolf, however has the unique features of first applying the Copenhagen Interpretation first for clarity that rules out any apparent paradoxes because of the measurement process. He then adds the camera to the end as the final element ruling out a paradox.

In the final analysis:

a. The question was, "what was wrong with Stephen Hakwing's idea that a wormhole connected to the past would cause a feedback loop of energy and collapse itself?"

b. The correct answer is that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics states that there is only one outcome per measurement. An event can be viewed as a measurement as it can be photographed, filmed, audio recorded, etc. which will determine its unique nature. Going back to the past would then demand that such a journey was to a parallel past as described by the Everett/Wheeler hypothesis which states that alternate outcomes to the measurement process are just as real and exist in parallel universes.

c. The experimental proof that Hawking was wrong was in the reenactment of the rock band feedback experiment. When placing the microphone in line with the speaker, feedback eventually developed but when it was aimed to the alternate speaker, which was geometrically placed outside the boundary area determined by Hawking's example, there was no feedback. The position outside the boundary matches the Everett/Wheeler model.

d. The thought model proof that this is correct is the fact that if one is filming an event and then goes back in time, they will see the same event but there will be a double of the camera person also filming the event. However, checking the film that they have, will reveal there was no double originally. That is equal to an alternate outcome and must mean that they are in a parallel past. All time travel theories to the past can be resolved with this simple application, which forces the measurement process into the thought model, thus revealing how it conforms to the Copenhagen interpretation initially but then resolves to Everett/Wheeler. It does not, under any circumstances, conclude with any kind of paradox or backward in time causal catastrophe. Never.

e. The students that got the right answer all framed it within the context of the backward in time event being a separate measurement that would take place in a parallel universe because the paradox scenario presented by Stepehn Hawking violated the Copenhagen interpretation.

The students, who got the right answer, received free mint condition, hard copy editions of physicist Lee Smolin's book, The Trouble with Physics http://www.thetroublewithphysics.com , a $26 value, through a special arrangement with, and courtesy of publisher, Houghton Mifflin.

Marshall Barnes, while not a physicist, professionally deals with physics in doing advanced concept research and development work. He joins a long list of non-phyicists who have done work in the area, including Nikola Tesla, Bertrand Russell, Kurt Godel, and, like Thomas Edison, he is an inventor and engineer without any degrees. His bio http://informalscience.org/member/show/8498 has an extensive list of his accomplishments and endeavors in a wide variety of fields, dating as far back as the late 1970s.

Marshall plans on demonstrating his experiment live at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, DC, April 27th at the sneak preview, and may do so again on the 28th and 29th during the regular event - in addition to a number of other works that have earned him a return invitation to the nation's largest science festival.

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Source:Jake Shisler
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Tags:Thomas Worthington High School, Stephen Hawking, Marshall Barnes, Wormholes
Industry:Science, Research
Location:Ohio - United States
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