Using photons, scientists have been able to create a model according to which quantum particles can move backward in time. As it turned out, this could violate the laws of standard quantum mechanics.
Physicists at the University of Queensland in Australia have set themselves the task of simulating a computer experiment that would prove the possibility of time travel at the quantum level, predicted back in 1991.
They managed to simulate the behavior of a single photon, which passes through a wormhole in space-time into the past and enters into interaction with itself.
The researchers looked at two scenarios. In the first of them, the particle passes through the mole, returning to its past, and interacts with itself. In the second scenario, the photon, forever enclosed in a closed timelike curve, interacts with another, ordinary particle.
According to scientists, their work will make an important contribution to the unification of two great physical theories, which until now had little in common: Einstein's general theory of relativity (GR) and quantum mechanics.
Einstein's general relativity admits the possibility of an object traveling backward in time, which falls into a closed timelike curve. However, such a possibility can cause a number of paradoxes: a time traveler may, for example, prevent his parents from meeting, and this will make his own birth impossible.
In 1991, it was first suggested that time travel in the quantum world could eliminate such paradoxes, since the properties of quantum particles are not precisely determined according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
In a computer experiment, Australian scientists were the first to study the behavior of quantum particles in a similar scenario. At the same time, new interesting effects were revealed, the appearance of which is impossible in standard quantum mechanics.
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For example, it turned out that it is possible to accurately distinguish the different states of a quantum system, which is completely out of the question if you stay within the framework of quantum theory.
Vahagn Maloyan