Machine 'could create time tunnel'
Updated on 07 February 2008
Switching on a giant atom-smashing machine might open the door to unexpected visitors - from the future, it has been claimed.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), due to come on stream this year, could turn out to be the world's first time machine, according to two Russian scientists.
Their calculations show it is possible the machine will tear a hole in the fabric of space and time, creating a gateway to tomorrow. And, with sufficiently advanced technology, people from the future might even be able to walk through it.
The vast LHC has been constructed at CERN, the European particle physics centre near Geneva.
Designed to investigate the origins of the universe, it will generate particles with so much energy that scientists are not entirely sure what will happen when they switch the machine on.
One possibility is that microscopic black holes will be created within the LHC.
But Russian mathematicians Irina Aref'eva and Igor Volovich point to another scenario. They believe a "wormhole" could open up, linking our time with another in the future.
Such a time tunnel would need to be propped open for anyone to step through it. But this could happen if "dark energy" - the mysterious anti-gravity force that causes galaxies to accelerate away from each other - possesses a special "phantom" property.
The year 2008 might then become "Year Zero" for future time travellers, since it would only be possible to travel back as far as the first doorway in time.
Manipulating such a wormhole to create a viable time machine would take incredibly advanced technology, New Scientist magazine reported - yet this could not be ruled out in the distant future.
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