Vagabond Tales: How Travel Can Literally Make You Younger

by Kyle Ellison on

The famous Spanish explorer Ponce de León spent parts of his travels on an unfruitful search for the fountain of youth.

Sailing from Puerto Rico to Florida in 1513 on a voyage, which would become the first documented European exploration of the American mainland, rumors of de León’s search for the mythical fountain wouldn’t arise until documents published after his death (which, as it turns out, wasn’t due to old age, but from being wounded in the thigh by a poisoned arrow during an exploration of Southwestern Florida).

Unfortunately for de León, not only was he was searching in the wrong ocean for the secret of anti-aging, he was also searching in the wrong century. Had de León been sailing around the western Pacific in, say, 1910, he would have discovered a completely arbitrary line, which has the ability to make a traveler an entire day younger.

Sure, you might only be younger on the calendar as opposed to in actuality, but thanks to the existence of the International Date Line, trans-Pacific travelers technically possess the ability to go back in time.For those who aren’t familiar (or who have never crossed over the non-existent line), the International Date Line was established as a way of making sense of the world’s time zones for explorers who were traveling across oceans.

Magellan found out on his first circumnavigation of the globe that despite the fact he had kept meticulous record of the days on his journey, he nevertheless returned to Europe and was off by an entire day. Similarly, those traveling eastbound would discover that upon returning home, days, which they had recorded as having happened, actually hadn’t happened yet.

Since no imaginary line had been crossed, which would denote you had “crossed into yesterday,” explorers would continue with their erroneous calculations until an International Meridian conference was finally held in Washington D.C. in 1884. Delegates from 25 nations decided that the “International Date Line” would be 180 degrees from the Prime Meridian in England, and conveniently, this line passed mostly through water.

Over the course of its 129-year history, however, the specific location of the “line” has been conveniently shifted on numerous occasions, most recently in 2011 when Samoa up and decided they were going to move across to the other side of the line.

The reason? The government figured that being closer in time zones to Australia and New Zealand would attract more tourists who simply couldn’t be bothered with flying all the way to a country, which is located in yesterday.

“That’s great. Enough history. Where does the time travel part come in and how can travel make you younger?“

While the establishment of the line was a mere calendar convenience during the days of oceanic travel, with the advent of the airplane and trans-oceanic flights, travelers suddenly had the ability to reach a nation on the other side of the line in less time than it takes the world to spin and catch up. Thanks to the ability to propel ourselves through the air at speeds in excess of 600 mph, it’s now possible to actually live the same day twice.

This was a trendy realization of novelty-seekers who actually celebrated the year 2000 in Sydney, Australia, and then promptly hopped on an eastbound plane to Honolulu so that they could experience the whole party for a second time.

They departed on January 1, 2000, landed on December 31, 1999, and after a quick nap on the plane were geared up and ready to party all over again.

While this isn’t exactly news for those who cross the dateline regularly, what if that day where you skipped back in time … just so happened to be your birthday? Technically, then, according to a calendar and whole numbers, would you not actually become younger?

As it just so happens, I experienced this phenomenon this very past year. My wife and I met a friend for my birthday dinner in Auckland, New Zealand. We went to an Indian restaurant. We drank wine (Gewurtztraminer goes great with curry), and the date was February 13. On the stroke of midnight we clinked glasses to the day of my birth, February 14, and I had officially turned 29.

Hopping on an eastbound flight to Honolulu the next morning at 9 a.m., I drooled on the window in a semi-hungover fog as we passed up and over the imaginary line. Landing nine hours later in Honolulu, I awoke to the reality of it once again being February 13.

I was now 28. Again.

Have you ever experienced your birthday twice in the same year? Share your tales of dateline madness in the comments section below.

Want more travel stories? Read the rest of the “Vagabond Tales” over here.

[Photo Credit: Heather Ellison]

Time Travel Idea Given New Life With Data Analysis

by Chris Owen on

Once thought a dead issue, the idea of time travel was given new life this week as scientists interpret new data.

In March of 2011, Gadling reported time travel was to be tested at Vanderbilt University. Using the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, scientists hoped to find the mysterious Higgs Boson particle, the particle that physicists invoke to explain why particles like protons, neutrons and electrons have mass.

“One of the major goals of the collider is to find the elusive Higgs boson. If the collider succeeds in producing the Higgs boson, some scientists predict that it will create a second particle, called the Higgs singlet, at the same time,” reported Vanderbilt’s research news.

Professor Tom Weiler and graduate fellow Chui Man Ho thought these singlets should have the ability to jump into an extra, fifth dimension where they can move either forward or backward in time and reappear in the future or past.

“One of the attractive things about this approach to time travel is that it avoids all the big paradoxes,” Weiler said at the time. “Because time travel is limited to these special particles, it is not possible for a man to travel back in time and murder one of his parents before he himself is born, for example.”This week, researchers from the CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, analyzed data from the Large Hadron Collider and are “almost certain that they had proven the existence of the Higgs boson, the most sought-after particle in all of physics,” says a CNN report.

The new information comes after Illinois researchers said earlier in the week that scientists had come closer to proving that the particle exists but had been unable to reach a definitive conclusion.

No information yet on the Higgs singlet. But proving the existence of the Higgs boson would most likely give new life to the idea of time travel. Not much new life, but some. Professor Weller noted, “if scientists could control the production of Higgs singlets, they might be able to send messages to the past or future.”

Baby steps.


[Flickr photo by katerha]

Sorry Trekkies: Science proves time travel and warp drive not possible

by Chris Owen on

Not long ago, Vanderbilt University physicists planned to use the world’s largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, to cause matter to travel backwards in time and things were looking up for time travel. Now, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology physicists say they have proved that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light which pretty much puts an end to the dream of time travel as well as faster-than-light warp drive.

“Einstein claimed that the speed of light was the traffic law of the universe or in simple language, nothing can travel faster than light,” the university said on its website.

The possibility of time travel was raised 10 years ago when scientists discovered superluminal – or faster-than-light – propagation of optical pulses in some specific medium reports HeraldSun.com.au. It was later found to be a visual effect, but researchers thought it might still be possible for a single photon to exceed light speed.

“The study, which showed that single photons also obey the speed limit confirms Einstein’s causality – that is, an effect cannot occur before its cause,” the university said.

The team found that, as the fastest part of a single photon, the precursor wave front always travels at the speed of light in vacuum. The main wave packet of the single photon travels no faster than the speed of light in vacuum in any dispersive medium, and can be delayed up to 500 nanoseconds in a slow light medium. Even in a superluminal medium where the group velocity (of an optical pulse peak) is faster than the speed of light in vacuum, the main part of the single photon has no possibility to travel faster than its precursor.

Warp drive, proposed a faster-than-light propulsion system where a spacecraft so-equipped might have traveled at velocities greater than that of light.

In other words, time travel and warp drive are out but Photon Torpedo’s are still possible.

Flickr photo by vladeb

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Mental Time Travel, apparently we all do it

by Chris Owen on

Almost everyone has experienced one memory triggering another, like coming across a photo from when we were in high school might bring back memories of where the school was located, activities we may have participated in and the like. But explanations for that phenomenon have been hard to prove until now. University of Pennsylvania researchers seem to have come up with the first scientific evidence that memories formed in the same context become linked, the foundation of the theory of episodic memory.

“When I remember my grandmother, for example, I pull back all sorts of associations of a different time and place in my life said professor Michael Kahana of the Department of Psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences to esciencenews. “I’m also remembering living in Detroit and her Hungarian cooking. It’s like mental time travel. I jump back in time to the past, but I’m still grounded in the present.”

The Penn team combined an old psychological research technique, having subjects memorize and recall a list of unrelated words, with precise brain activity data that can only be acquired via neurosurgery.

“We can do direct brain recordings in monkeys or rats, but with humans one can only obtain these recordings when neurosurgical patients, who require implanted electrodes for seizure mapping, volunteer to participate in memory experiments,” Kahana said. “With these recordings, we can relate what happens in the memory experiment on a millisecond-by-millisecond basis to what’s changing in the brain.”

University of Pennsylvania researchers think the findings provide a brain-based explanation of a memory phenomenon that people experience every day. In a way, they seem to have proved that time travel, at least mental time travel, is a reality we all share.

“This is why two friends you met at different points in your life can become linked in your memory,” Kahana said. “Along your autobiographical timeline, contextual associations will exist at every time scale, from experiences that take place over the course of years to experiences that take place over the course of minutes, like studying words on a list.”

Flickr photo by bark

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China bans time travel, America still working on it

by Chris Owen on

In their latest effort to uphold the country’s values and not dare promote anything that would re-write history, Chinese censors told the film and television industry no more fictional time travel in the media. They should have waited a little while. Over here in America, physicists believe they have proved time travel is not even possible.

The Chinese government imposed a ban on all films centered on time travel, expressing that such films “Casually make up myths, have monstrous and weird plots, use absurd tactics, and even promote feudalism, superstition, fatalism and reincarnation” reports the National Post.

Meanwhile, physicists from the University of Maryland have created a specialized kind of material, called a ‘metamaterial,’ that mimics the mathematics of the Big Bang (theory, not television program) when light is beamed through it, reports wired. In a simulated Big Bang experiment they found that circular orbits of light, needed for time travel as we believed it to be, were not possible. That pretty much rendered time travel impossible too.

Actually, science fiction fans who live in China will probably be OK with all this. They can’t see time travel in films or television anymore but it really never existed before anyway and now we know it. Or so we think.

Don’t tell the physicists at Vanderbilt University time travel does not exist. Last month Gadling reported that Vanderbilt physicists set to prove time travel did exist using a different approach. Using world’s largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, they plan to cause matter to travel backwards in time.

“One of the major goals of the collider is to find the elusive Higgs boson: the particle that physicists invoke to explain why particles like protons, neutrons and electrons have mass. If the collider succeeds in producing the Higgs boson, some scientists predict that it will create a second particle, called the Higgs singlet, at the same time.” reported Vanderbilt’s research news.

Professor Tom Weiler and graduate fellow Chui Man Ho think these singlets should have the ability to jump into an extra, fifth dimension where they can move either forward or backward in time and reappear in the future or past.

While they doubt a person could travel through time, they thought messages might be sent successfully.

“Because time travel is limited to these special particles, it is not possible for a man to travel back in time and murder one of his parents before he himself is born, for example. However, if scientists could control the production of Higgs singlets, they might be able to send messages to the past or future.”

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