Time is such a simple and, at the same time, such a little-studied concept that philosophers and physicists of all times and peoples tried to comprehend. The famous physicist Stephen Hawking believed that there are at least three directions of time that are able to distinguish the past from the future. So, according to the scientist, there are thermodynamic, cosmological and psychological arrows of time, describing the uniqueness of the past and the impossibility of changing it. However, even the arrows of Stephen Hawking's time are unable to describe the processes found in gamma-ray bursts that turn back time.
Gamma Burst - a colossal burst of gamma radiation, whose power can be a hundred times greater than the radiation power of our galaxy.
What is a GRB?
A large-scale and at the same time narrowly directed emission of energy, comparable to the radiation of an entire galaxy and lasting only from a few milliseconds to an hour, was first observed back in 1967 using American military satellites. It is believed that a gamma-ray burst that occurred in our galaxy once provoked the mass extinction of living organisms on Earth about 500 million years ago. At present, to the great happiness for humanity, the nearest such "death ray" is located at a distance of several billion light years from the Earth and does not pose any threat to our planet. At the same time, gamma-ray bursts can be interesting for another reason: they are able to turn back time in their zone of action.
Gamma-ray bursts can reverse time
According to a study by John Hikkil and Robert Nemirov, published in the Astrophysical Journal, gamma-ray bursts typically last from a few milliseconds to an hour. Short bursts with lifespan of one second, as a rule, are formed as a result of collisions of neutron stars, which results in the release of huge amounts of energy. Long gamma-ray bursts are associated with supernova explosions.
Promotional video:
The theory of Khakkil and Nemirov shows that a gamma-ray burst of any duration is an explosion of enormous power, which generates a kind of shock wave in a cloud of matter. Due to the fact that such a wave moves faster than electromagnetic radiation, inside its area there is not only the effect of slowing down time, but also literally turning it back.
Sometimes the movement into the past may not contradict the standard physical laws.
In any case, such a phenomenon does not at all contradict the basic postulates of modern physics and the theory of relativity. Despite the fact that the theory developed by Albert Einstein asserts that the speed of movement of matter cannot exceed the speed of movement of light in a vacuum, it does not at all exclude the possibility of its propagation faster than light in a dense cloud of matter.
The effect of time travel, in this case, arises because the shock wave is somewhat ahead of the generated gamma radiation in speed, which leads to the fact that for an outside observer such a wave looks like a message from the distant past.
Daria Eletskaya