[AntonioLao]

The mannequin (womannequin?) in the original movie ‘Time Machine’ circa 1960 stays motionless while the world of ladies’ fashion flashes by before the time traveler’s eyesight. Likewise, the time machine itself never changes its spatial coordinates while it travels through time. The temporal sequence of these two objects appears as two vertical parallel lines in a spacetime coordinate system where the vertical axis represents time and the horizontal axis represents space. Both mannequin and time traveler are said to be marching thru time separated by an invariant distance. This scenario conceptually agrees with special relativity and Newton’s 1st law of motion. However, within the framework of general relativity, the parallel lines exist if and only if the mass of both vanishes. Now, according to the standard model of particle physics only 3 candidates are able to satisfy this condition: photon, gluon, and graviton. If the photon is the messenger going back and forth between mannequin and time traveler and if the time traveler is made entirely of gluon then the march of graviton is equivalent to the march of the mannequin. By symmetry, if gluon and graviton switch role and position then the march of gluon is equivalent to the march of the mannequin. Again by symmetry, if the photon switches role and position with the others then the march of photon is equivalent to the march of the penguin, oops, sorry, slip of the pen, I meant mannequin.

Keep in mind that if the weak bosons (W+, W-, Z0) replace them then the mannequin marches nowhere, neither in time nor in space.

Hey! What about the neutrinos? Say, hmm, let me think? They should be able to keep the mannequin or even penguin marching forever or maybe not? What do you think?

[dleviwing]

Antonio;
If the time machine maintained spatial consistence I think the dynamics of physical reality would cause the Earth, the solar system, the galaxy, and maybe even the universe to leave him behind such that when he stopped his time travel, he would find himself in the empty space or in the void of the cosmos.

I am somewhat confused as to your use of the term "symmetry". What symmetry are you referring to for these particles exchanging roles?

[AntonioLao]

Dave,

What you said is exactly what was described by H. G. Wells in his book. I'm now locating this book within the library under the children section. Be back shortly. About the symmetry, it is spatial symmetry or switching of space coordinates, you are there, I'm here, now we switched, I'm there, you are here.

[dleviwing]

Originally Posted by AntonioLao Dave, About the symmetry, it is spatial symmetry or switching of space coordinates, you are there, I'm here, now we switched, I'm there, you are here.

Antonio;
Your comment of switching roles is what threw me. Switching positions, we can do, but I don't think you would care to be me nor I you in such a switch. There is much more to the symmetry but I get what you mean.
Thanks;

[AntonioLao]

Dave,

It is about the hidden symmetry inside the nucleus which started the search for undetectable role changing between proton and neutron. This led to parity (P) nonconservation and also CP nonconservation (C for charge conjugation - switching of positive with negative vice versa). These indicate that even subatomic particles don't want to change role with each other.

[baudrunner]

Not change role perhaps, because they have caught themselves in a quantum niche, like a deep crevasse from which they cannot escape. But change place, now that's interesting. Juxtapositioning of spatial co-ordinates within the fixed framework of time and space. Somewhere in the not so distant recesses of my mind I've thought before that it was possible. Beam me up, Tony!

But how...

[dleviwing]

Antonio;
I believe the symmetry you are referring to is related to "Quantum mire symmetry". Though on the surface it appears to hold true in nature, Richard Feynman showed that it fails. This was the main topic of his lecture in New Zealand in 1979.

I attempted to discuss symmetry as a thread, but members seemed to be more interested in the traits of left and right handed people rather than the symmetry of polarization.

I concluded that it was not a topic of interest and its value was not understood. I have noticed you have started threads with the same results.

[AntonioLao]

Originally Posted by dleviwing I concluded that it was not a topic of interest and its value was not understood.

Unless someone is doing detailed analysis of certain physical phenomenon such as light, local symmetry principle is not a topic of interest but global symmetry has also been taken for granted by less technically oriented people. A featureless ball has perfect symmetry but once a line is drawn on its surface, then its symmetry is said to be broken. And for a cube it is always possible to label one side as the front the opposite the back, one side as the right and its opposite as the left then the top and the bottom. The 2nd choice and the 3rd is constraint by the 1st choice, while the 3rd choice is also constraint by the 2nd choice.

[AntonioLao]

Originally Posted by baudrunner But how...

In order to change places it is also necessary to change time coordinates. I think, this was already done inside the nucleus of an atom between a proton and neutron. The internal symmetry is called isospin or isotopic spin symmetry. But it was demonstrated to be a broken symmetry. That means exchanging places and time coordinates give different interactions.

[baudrunner]

It may be that we might not need to go so deep to effect the coincidental juxtapositioning of spatial co-ordinates within the framework of time and space. Notice I left out the fixed framework, because you're right of course.

When ALexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, when Marconi effected the first controlled transmission of electromagnetic waves across space, when electronic engineers design frequency modulation transmitters or even design simple amplitude modulation circuits for transistor radios they are none of them concerned with the physics of it at the quantum level. What happens at that level is the consequence of the practical application of theory, and reality cooperates.

Engineers in the physics community have apparently given up on the concept of electron sheets, intended to act as force fields, because they are inherently unstable and require unmanageable amounts of energy to make them stable. Photon entanglement presents its own problems, it's tough enough to manipulate a single tiny particle that exists only for the briefest of instants let alone an entire object at the macro scale using entanglement principles.

What is left is to define a plane two dimensional area of space, and modulate that specific area with the characteristics of a similar two-dimensional plane that exists in another place. Simply walking through it would theoretically put you in that other place. The theory behind the concept is sound. Research has determined that every particle in the universe has unique properties of spin, orientation, direction, position, etc. with respect to every other particle. These include the time relationship that they have with their environment. If we could detect and transmit this information we could modulate all those characteristics into the defined areas and effectively trade places with points in space.

Start small, but think big.