If you could send a video camera through time to the past would you lose the signal because the camera doesn't exist yet?

Answer 1

In theory sending physical objects through time would work in one of several ways.

1) Deconstruct object at time period B, and send via a micro wormhole to time period A, then locate it at B and retrieve pictures or send back through the same wormhole via laser beam, etc.

This works in the same way as a 3-D printer, with the exception that the object would materialise by reorganising existing atoms.

Problem here is that (a) EVERY type of atom including the rare earths needs to be present in the immediate area at the Rx site or it won't work , and (b) the energy needed would be massive, not quite as bad as E=MC2 but still in the order of tens to hundreds of gigajoules per gram of mass.

A variant of this method was used on "Timeline" by Michael Crichton.

2) Send the object whole through a wormhole.

Needless to say even if the camera was fully solid state the eddy currents induced by the enormous magnetic and gravitational fields would toast the semiconductors and probably turn the lenses into powdered glass.

(anyone ever seen a Lichtenberg figure?)

Forget about shielding, this wouldn't help unless the shield blocked electromagnetic waves entirely which is very difficult and uses a lot of energy.

See superconductor Meissner effect... Jc is low even for YBa2Cu3O6.5 at 77K.

The wormhole itself would need exotic matter to hold it open, which is theorised to exist but has never been seen (yet!) although CERN are hoping to see some very shortly.

Also this method would be subject to E=MC2 so 1 gram of mass = around 50 megatons nuclear energy equivalent.

This method was used on "Back to the Future", "Star Trek" (2009), etc.

3) Send back the information only via high frequency evanescent radio waves through a wormhole.

This would work by having someone in the past build the camera from instructions sent through time.

The method is theoretically possible in much the same way as we can now build

3-D objects from plastics, liquid polymers etc.

One way might be to exploit the (relatively simple) storage technique of excited quantum states in zinc sulphide disks which were known about in the early 1920's but at the time other methods such as Mercury delay lines became commonplace instead due to the ease of manufacture.

The information could be stored for a relatively long time if continuously rewritten, the last time I checked solid state SiC based green light emitters were made in 1922 and were noted then for their longevity.

The only equipment needed would be a robust brushless motor which could be made using bismuth filled capillary tubes as the sensors and conventional magnets and coils (albeit very inefficient!) as well as an imaging device made from a Nipkow disk and sensor.

Again, theoretically possible but would need a genius at the other end to assemble the device and make it reliable enough to survive nearly a century of buffering.

A variant of this method was seen on "Frequency".

Method 3) is more likely :-)

Now for the nasty part, generating the wormhole.

We believe that to generate one would require an energy in the collisions of between 6 and 200 TeV, but due to quantum effects it would be incredibly short lived, in the order of attoseconds.

In order to keep one stable for any length of time it would need to be decelerated to a few cm per second, while bombarding it with radiation to prevent it from closing.

Once stabilised, the signal would need to be sent through in such a way that quantum effects would not scramble the signal, so sending it multiple times would be needed.

Current theories suggest that this might be possible...

does this help?