About time travel research, with founder of the most popular astro web in the world
Few months ago we published an article The evidence of time travel on the Internet? in which we inform about Robert Nemiroff's research dealing with possibility to find the evidence about the time travellers. The research was very popular not only between our readers but worldwide. We are bringing you an interview with Robert Nemiroff.
pc.sk: Could you, please, explain in few sentences the idea and the results of your research about the time travellers?
Robert Nemiroff: In sum, we searched for evidence of time travel by looking for "unknowable-at-the-time" information posted to the Internet. We did not find any. This did not surprise us.
pc.sk: How did the idea for such approach come up? Is there any story behind?
Robert Nemiroff: Time travel is one of the most popular themes in fiction, yet little had been done to actually test for evidence. On one hand, time travel is a wonderful plot device to explore emotions and relationships, but wouldn't it be interesting to know how solid is the scientific ground on which all of this fiction stands? So I posed this as a scientific question to my summer (2013) research group - what real scientific evidence might there be? Is there a clear and verifiable method to search for evidence of time travel? This summer group of graduate and undergraduate students at Michigan Technological University (USA), they LOVED to discuss this question. We started brainstorming possible methods -- it was quite fun. A student would suggest some method, for example, only to have the conversation turn to how difficult it would be to really implement this search method, or how non-verifiable this method might be.
pc.sk: Did you believe, even for a second that there is a non zero probability of finding any traces left by a time traveller?
Robert Nemiroff: Practically, I did not expect to find anything. Scientifically, one should not assume the answer to a question one is investigating. Also, time travel is allowed in Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, and many a famous physicist has seriously contemplated its possibility. Still, if we had found something, we would have to at least double check our results because, to paraphrase Carl Sagan, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
pc.sk: What were the reactions after your article was published?
Robert Nemiroff: We tried to publish the article but three different physics journals would not even send our manuscript out for review. Now major journals in all academic fields will only publish papers that have been peer-reviewed. One way to think of this is that the journal editor employs a referee, like in football, to see if the paper has committed any scientific fouls. If the referee's report is not good, the paper does not get published. Here, even though we were so careful to approach the topic in as scientific manner as possible, we could not get journals to considered it seriously.
There is a service arXiv.org that one can upload a manuscript even before it is submitted to be published. This service can also reject manuscripts, but we were lucky that did not happen in this case. We successfully uploaded our manuscript to arXiv.org in 2013 December. I didn't expect anything much to happen. Over the years, I have uploaded many manuscripts to arXiv.org and received only an occasional email. It was a non-event. Or so I thought.
A couple of days later my wife and I spent a few days driving across part of the USA to visit relatives and go to a scientific conference. While on the road, my cell phone rings. It was a major news organization. They want to know about "the time travel paper." What? I say that the paper was only uploaded to arXiv.org and has not been released. The news person replies that the manuscript has already gone viral and is all over the Internet. Oh my. Over the next three weeks I spoke with many media people, gave many interviews, did live radio interviews, and even sold the movie rights -- all because of a manuscript that had never been published. Nor even publicized.
Oddly, when at the scientific conference, several notable scientists came up to me to tell me that the LIKED the manuscript. I was surprised they even heard about it. But apparently almost everyone at the conference had heard about it. Even some journal editors approached me and said that they, too, admired the manuscript -- but then quickly added that their journal could not publish something so out-of-the-ordinary.
This double standard I have seen recently at my own university. Some colleagues have come up to me to say they really like the work. Others are sick that the university continues to pay my salary.
pc.sk: Do you know about other researchers using your method for another databases?
Robert Nemiroff: No, but I do hope that researchers with better access to larger databases do continue on this line of work.
pc.sk: Is it possible that publicity about your time traveller article will lead to fake records in some databases? Kind of pranks or social hacks. No one will/would guess the name of the next famous comet, but someone can/could guess new pope's name.
Robert Nemiroff: I do expect pranks and fake records to surface. Because of this, I am glad that our viral publicity bubble occurred only after this work was complete.
One might consider this not only a test of time travel but a test of ANY method that people might claim to use to know the future. This includes magic, crystal balls, clairvoyance, astrology, fortune tellers -- if any of these methods actually worked, practitioners might have been able to put "unknownable at the time" information on the Internet. But they did not -- at least not with our search terms. So one implication goes beyond science-fiction based time travel -- humans, at least in these instances, have not shown the ability to know the future by ANY method.
pc.sk: Time travelling is not your usual research field (like gamma ray bursts for exmple). Was it, let us say it, little bit for fun? Or as a student motivation with attractive research topic?
Robert Nemiroff: Besides being labeled as a crackpot, it was a lot of fun! And yes, I do think it motivated the students to better understand the nature of research.
pc.sk: What topics or subjects are you currently working on and/or planing to work on in the future?
Robert Nemiroff: I have another student research group formed already for this summer (2014). Who knows what we will come up with!
About most popular astronomical web page in the world
pc.sk: Astronomy Picture of the Day web site is very popular also between our readers. You found APOD 18 years ago with Jerry Bonnel. How many readers do you have actually? Could you tell us about this successful story of APOD in few sentences?
Robert Nemiroff: Thank you -- Jerry Bonnell and I are quite proud of APOD. Currently, our log files at NASA typically record over one million page views each day. We are fortunate enough to have our daily paragraphs translated into over 20 languages by volunteers. I think key ingredients to APOD's longevity include its simplicity and its endurance. APOD didn't get to one million page daily views overnight -- it was built gradually over 6,000 nights!
pc.sk: How is the figure for every day chosen?
Robert Nemiroff: The images are just what either Jerry or I find interesting. We do try to post the best images we can find within astronomy, and we have been very fortunate that there are so many spectacular space images recently. We also try to cover major astronomy news items, when possible, and try to vary the sub-topics to create diversity.
pc.sk: Which picture attracts the bigest interest and which one initiate the most surprising reactions?
Robert Nemiroff: Spiral galaxy images are usually popular. I am not sure why. Also we are sent and post some amazing landscape scenes with colorful aurora overhead. Those typically do well too.
pc.sk: We are tech magazine. Our readers will be interested which hardware is needed to run web as APOD? What OS, db and webserver is used?
Robert Nemiroff: Linux. No database. Apache. The good people at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center do most of the server upkeep and for that we are grateful. We used to know which specific computers served APOD but now NASA has "clouds" of computers with many former computer names now being "virtual" and not even describing a physical device!
Robert J. Nemiroff Dr. Robert J. Nemiroff is a Professor of Physics at Michigan Technological University. His active research interests include gamma-ray bursts, gravitational lensing, and cosmology, and is the cofounder and coeditor of Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD), the home page of which receives over a million hits a day, approximately 20% of nasa.gov traffic. He is married and has one daughter. |
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