Time Machines
Worm Holes | Cosmic Strings | Tipler Cylinders | Warp Drive | Paradoxes | Time Machines

Civilizations with the technology to harness black holes might be better advised to leave wormholes alone and try the time-warp method suggested by U.S. astronomer Frank Tipler. He has a simple recipe for a time machine:  First take a piece of material 10 time the mass of the Sun, squeeze it together and roll it into a long, thin, super-dense cylinder – a bit like a black hole that has passed through a spaghetti factory. Then spin the cylinder up to a few billion revolutions per minute and see what happens.

Tipler predicts that a ship following a carefully plotted spiral course around the cylinder would immediately find itself on a "closed, timelike curve." It would emerge thousands, even billions, of years from its starting point and possibly several galaxies away. There are problems, though. For the mathematics to work properly, Tipler's cylinder has to be infinitely long. Also, odd things happen near the ends and you need to steer well clear of them in your timeship. However, if you make the device as long as you can, and stick to paths close to the middle of the cylinder, you should survive the trip!

Time Machines
Worm Holes | Cosmic Strings | Tipler Cylinders | Warp Drive | Paradoxes | Time Machines