Stargate SG-1: True Science Page #6

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machine which is like a sort of doughnut that traps...

the black hole end to and fro very very fast...

a very large cylinder of matter which is spinning...

spinning black hole...

quantum mechanical time machine...

so there's an enormous number of

potential designs for a time machine.

Going back in time sounds great,

but it's actually fraught with problems,

many of which we've explored during "Stargate".

What if I went back in time and

accidentally shot myself with a zat gun?

If I'm dead,

who went back in time to shoot me?

A bewildering time paradox.

Contradictions like this were the backbone of

the stories at the end of Series 8.

We saw the tablet.

What tablet?

Oh, the one you haven't written yet,

and put where the Stargate

was supposed to be buried.

Supposed to be?

Confused? So were we,

and these kind of weird paradoxes have turned most

scientists against the idea of backward time travel.

But a solution to these contradictions may lie

in science's most bizarre discipline.

Welcome to quantum mechanics,

the weird science of atomic particles,

and a very very strange answer

to the time paradox.

Quantum mechanics is more exotic and

strange than any other area of physics,

and, for example, at

the atomic level, things like electrons

are actually doing many things at the same time.

When an electron goes from A to B - unlike a baseball

when it travels from one place to another,

it takes a clear trajectory -

when an electron goes from one place to another,

it actually takes many paths at the same time.

That sounds insane but it's actually

true and we can test that.

And one way of understanding it is called

the Many Worlds Interpretation

which suggests that there are many different realities

going on at the same time

and each time you observe something,

you fix it to be in one version of reality,

one branch of the quantum mechanical wave function.

And the suggestion is that when you go back in time,

you jump to another branch

and it's OK if there's a different future because

it was gonna have a different future anyway.

Basically, scientists have theorised that

there are an infinite number of dimensions, each

containing a different possible version of reality.

Well, it sounds like I theoretically,

possibly, actually found one.

We explored this idea in several episodes of "Stargate"

with alternative Samantha Carters and SG-1

members being central characters in the plot,

which certainly has made the series unusual to act in.

And it seems to offer a solution

to the paradoxes of time travel.

So if I went back and shot myself,

all that would have happened is that

the me that existed in one universe

is bounced into a universe where I was shot.

No paradox.

Once again, it seems that modern science is at least as

strange and unusual as the wildest science fiction.

Science and science fiction

are both about possibilities,

and it's not surprising

when you sometimes find out that

science fiction writers

and scientists come up with the same

answers to those problems.

They're just creative people working.

The only difference is that the science fiction

writer can imagine it,

but the scientist actually has to build it.

If it isn't happening now,

maybe ten years from now

the possibility is that we will see

the wormhole to travel to another planet,

or creatures like the Replicators,

you know, coming out of labs, you know,

somewhere in Silicon Valley.

While it is still escapism and using science

to have fun,

it appeals to a segment of

the audience that would like to think that

we're sort of on the cutting

edge of what is possible.

When it comes to science fiction, we love to be led

into a world of imagination and fantasy.

With "Stargate", we travel to

other worlds and pass through time.

We meet creatures from other galaxies and

find out about gods and mortals.

We cover huge distances in time and

space, and find technologies

that seem beyond our wildest dreams.

But maybe the biggest surprise of all, though,

is that everything we've seen is actually possible.

Modern science may actually be the most wild,

fantastic voyage of imagination that we're capable of.

And of course, in "Stargate",

nothing is ever as it seems.

In the actual Cheyenne Mountain Complex,

there is a door that has multiple locks on either side

and a blacked-out glass window and above it, it says,

"Stargate Command".

It's a broom closet.

It really is a broom closet!

But... or maybe it isn't.

Maybe that is how you get there.

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