Timestream Post: Moment of Self-Doubt from 06.14.2012

Well, all of my posts can’t necessarily be rosy, can they? 

Today, I’m grappling with the ramifications of my decision to engage in a popular television project investigating alleged Unidentified Flying Object sightings and crashes.  The results of the project, now titled, “Chasing UFOs,” bears little resemblance to the hard science project I was led to believe I was helping to create. 

The end result is adventurous and entertaining enough, but today all I can see is what was left out… which was essentially all of the scientific and educational moments I strove to include from the very beginning.  Many of these informative moments I was counting on being included to help preserve my scientific integrity.

Further, considering the time commitment involved and the credibility hit to my scientific reputation I can already see occurring – (especially after some sly political maneuvering performed by other project members during the shooting of the show changed its fundamental structure) – I’m not inclined t0 participate again should the option arise… which it looks like it will.

Will my declining to participate in further episodes entrench me in a legal battle?  (I signed no explicit term of commitment… but then again, when potential money is involved…)  

How does the future see it?  Was the decision to engage in the project ultimately a good one?  Or do I regret the decision in retrospect?

A little advice from the future would be nice.

Cheers,

Ben

From 04:41p.m., June 14, 2012

Timestream Post: A note from 01.07.2011

Bulls-eye! 1989 movie "Back to the Future Part II" depicts (invents?) a 60" widescreen, flat-screen TV and correctly hangs it above the mantle nearly 20 years before they were actually invented...

In the spirit of this experiment, I send this message half-a-decade into the future.  (Truthfully, I hope to positively litter the digital timestream with notes, showing that cyberspace may not only connect us through space, but also through time.)

First, my greeting:  Hello, 2016!  This is a year made nearly famous by films such as Back to the Future, Part II – where in 1989 the distant future year 2015 was depicted as a fantastic realm of flying cars, keyless entry, ubiquitous cybernetic implants, widescreen-flatscreen TVs, governmental weather control, 3D movies (without glasses), hoverboards, video calls (Skype?), video eyeglasses, and electronic roofies.

Reading the list five years out, 50% isn’t bad.  Do the remaining few years close the gap?  If not flying cars, do electric cars break the entry barrier at least?  I wonder…

So, what preoccupies me today?  Unsurprisingly, it’s space travel.  The future of space travel, to be precise.  In a move that some may consider pure insanity in the midst of an economic Great Depression, I decided last summer to start a spaceflight consulting firm, which I hope to incorporate and launch in the next few weeks.  To that end, I’ve been building a coalition of industry professionals during the last six months who I hope to become private space pioneers with me, and I entered an abstract for one of the company’s services – spacecraft ergonomics – into the Next Generation Suborbital Researcher’s Conference next month.  The meeting is only the second meeting of its kind, and one I hope will lead to frenetic networking, and ultimately, clients!

I’ve been working with a design studio, Studio Rayolux under brilliant designer Thad Boss, to develop a brand for the company, which I believe I’m calling “Astrowright Spaceflight Consulting.”  We’ll see if it sticks.

So, my question to the future is simply this:  Did it work?  Did the company get off the ground?  Did I get off the ground?  Can industries be forged during a time of economic strife and emerge triumphant?  Inquiring minds want to know!

Until then, take care, faithful readers.  Go for your dreams and never look back!

Cheers,

Ben

January 7, 2011.

January 7, 2011. 5:01pm.

Timestream Post: A note from 07.19.2011

Greetings from the past!

In this case, the date is July 19, 2011, and I’ve just returned from the first of a two-day assessment of a radiological laboratory outside of Charleston, South Carolina.  While I’m supposed to be knee-deep in schoolwork, I’ve found a little extra time to continue this a-chronistic endeavor.

When shall I send this?  When, oh when indeed?  I’ve written enough of these trans-temporal notes that picking an appropriate delivery time is starting to seem a little… difficult.  (-Is is chronistically gouche to deliver messages from two separate points in time to the same or similar destination dates?  Is that the time-equivalent of double-booking an evening date?  Hmm…)

I think I’ll send this a cool two years forward.  There are a number of things in play that I believe should be resolved – or at the very least resolved – by that point.  With a limping truck, a start-up company in play and my (somewhat obscured) face in Newsweek, a kid in the works, a potential brewing TV show, and a looming foreclosure of my ill-timed and financially ruinous townhouse…  I truly have no idea what the future holds.

So, future, how about it?

On this business trip, I'm cheating on my truck with this dashing machine...

Let’s go down the list.

Do I have a new vehicle in the future, or have I continued to resurrect my trusty 2000 Ford Ranger, “Wolfsburg?”  I must admit that I am quite taken with my rental car this trip, a fortuitously neglected Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Sport, which I received instead of a compact car from the rental agency.  It handles as well as a sturdy truck, has decent visibility, and one can even remove the top!

I’m smitten.  Does the burgeoning romance lead anywhere?

(After all, there’s not much room for a car seat in the truck…)

Spaceflight Fitness!

Second, what’s happening or has happened with Astrowright?  (Will that link even still work?)

Right now, I’m desperately trying to find time to iron out remaining services and organizational literature, promotional material, and I’m working to scrape up initial clients.  Truthfully, I’m having a hard time before having a child in my midst…

Is it folly to think I can do it all – work, school, side business, be a father – and be successful while maintaining my sanity?

What does 2013 have to say?

Though, I should also admit that the current spaceflight developments aren’t all stressful.  I was pleasantly surprised on my way out to South Carolina a couple of days ago to find myself in Newsweek Magazine article entitled “The Next Space Race!”

Yep. That's me on the left! (Credit: Newsweek)

As it would turn out, the Newsweek writer embedded with us while in scientist-astronaut training at the NASTAR Center had his story picked up to coincide with the final Space Shuttle launch – and so there it was, on page 59 of the July 18th issue, staring at me as I wandered through the airport!

So, yes, my face is covered by a respirator mask, but there I am, flightsuit sleeves rolled up and ready to go.

Also, by this time in the year 2013, we should be approaching the second birthday of my first kid!  I’m banking on it being Grayson James McGee that we’ll be meeting here in a bit, and he’ll likely be clipping through the milestones on his way to the “terrible twos.” =)

Will he want to be an astronaut like his dad?  (If so, will that freak his dad out?)

Also, while not spaceflight per se, I’ve got a meeting tomorrow afternoon with representatives from Ping Pong Productions – a television production house that filmed a demo for a UFO-crash-site archaeology TV show they’re interested in doing with me, if a network picks it up.  Apparently, they have news.

Honestly, I’m a little terrified.  I’m not a TV personality, and getting involved with a popular “UFO-hunter”-styled show will likely stretch my scientific credibility.  -But, it will likely be an adventure, to be sure.  It borders on too bizarre to feel real, but in just a day I’m going to be on the phone to find out…

What they heck are they going to tell me?  TV show?  If so, do I take the gig?  If so, was it a good idea?

8408 Majestic View Ave. Still in my tenuous possession in 2013?

Rounding out the things on my mind is, unsurprisingly, my townhouse.  As it stands, my cousin and her boyfriend are renting it from me, though prices have dropped so dramatically that I’m taking an incredible loss every month.

What am I doing?  It’s sufficiently destroyed my savings, and I feel like the last one to not ditch the now incomprehensibly underwater investment.

I ask again – what am I doing?  I’m not sure I’ll be able to afford it at all after having another mouth to feed in a few months.

Does 2013 show that I’ve hit the lottery and was able to hang onto the thing?

Like the Man says – there are no problems, only solution.  All times are good ones if we but know what to do with them, right?

Here’s to pretending I know what to do with this one.  =)

Cheers,

Ben

July 19, 2011.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011. 2:30pm.

Time travel physics in flux

Something is rotten with the state of time travel/lightspeed physics.

To “c” (the symbolic designation for the speed of light), or not to “c”? 

-That is the question plaguing physicists in a number of recent studies with apparently conflicting results.

The "Flux Capacitor," a fictional device enabling instantaneous, bi-directional time travel. (Credit: Universal)

Traditionally, the speed of light is viewed as a barrier to physical movement.  According to conventional interpretations of Special Relativity, due to the time-slowing effect physical matter experiences as the speed of light is approached, movement through time is believed to stop at the very moment something hits “c.” 

As a result, lightspeed appears to be a barrier to movement, (see: lightspeed barrier,) and many have come to speculate based on certain geometric and philosophical arguments that moving faster than light might equate to backwards travel through time.

So, here’s where things get interesting. 

This summer, scientists at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology announced that in a meticulous data transfer experiment, they verified that photons don’t break the lightspeed barrier, and their effects don’t appear to even slightly precede their cause.  Hence, lightspeed is a barrier and causality is confirmed, thus ruling out backwards time travel.  (On a side note, Stephen Hawking has also endorsed this view.)

However, research published just last month by researchers from the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy appears to demonstrate that neutrinos do travel faster than light, throwing everything else into question.  In the study, scientists analyzed the speed of neutrinos being emitted from the particle accelerators at CERN and discovered them arriving faster than “c” by 60 nonoseconds(!) 

While fractionally small, this is a definitely measurable quantity of time with today’s instruments.

The Time Machine, from the movie of the same name. (Credit: Warner Bros/Dreamworks)

So, it appears that lightspeed might be traversable after all.  What is currently most unclear is whether or not these findings mean that backwards time travel is possible or simply that objects may continue to move faster through space than speed c.

(Note: I fall on the latter side of the fence, predicting allowable faster-than-light movement in my 2006 Kronoscope article.  This is due to what I believe is a Newtonian conceptual parasite infecting modern Relativity interpretations.)

In any case, it’s a very exciting time for time physics – the discovery of conflicting results at the margins often heralds the imminence of a new discovery!

Digital Time Capsule note from 2010

With the ubiquity of our digital infrastructure, it occurs to me that one possible means of transmitting information across vast stretches of time may, in fact, be to simply schedule it for much-delayed delivery.

How far will this work in principle?  I feel confident I can trust WordPress’s existence for six months.  One year?  Still feels reasonable.  Ten years?  Fifty years?

So, with that in mind, I am writing this note on Sunday morning, July 18th, 2010 and sending it exactly one year into the future.  As for events occurring in my time, BP (formerly British Petroleum) has just put a new, advanced cap on the now-infamous leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.  The polarizing topic of the day seems to be how to deal with illegal immigration on our country’s southern border.  Temperatures are high here in the Las Vegas desert, pushing into the “eleventy-hot” zone during the late afternoon.  Yesterday, I planted a new flowering fruitless plum tree in the front yard, which I hope will survive the heat.

Now, I have a few questions for you.  Does 2011 appear, like years before, not much different than 2010?  I suspect as much.  Does this message find me, my readers, and those I care about in good spirits and health?  I sincerely hope so.  Did the tree I just planted survive its first summer and winter?

Even if I can’t bodily travel through time, at least right now my information can.  Let’s see how many of these time capsules make it to the future.  =)

Remember, when in doubt, make the choice you’ll least regret.

This is Ben McGee, from July 18, 2010, signing off.

July 18, 2010; 09:32am local time.

Timestream Post: A Note from 10.21.2010

Almost time...

-Just a short-range temporal pot-shot this evening, and one I imagine (won’t know for certain until we get there) will be the first of these digital time travel experiment messages to actually land in the future.

The date is October 21st, 2010.  Honestly, I’m really hoping to be where you are, intrepid reader: The future.

I’m just about to proctor a geology 101 practical midterm on mineral and rock identification at the community college, and this is only the beginning of what I expect will be one of the longest, most sleep-deprived weeks of my life so far.  Due to an unfortunate coincidence of schedule shifts, I now have three midterms of my own to take within the next week-and-a-half, in addition to two rather hefty papers to write, and a radiation physics problem set sprinkled on top to complete within the next week.  (This is in addition to finding time to grade and submit the midterms I’m going to be giving here in a few minutes.)  All after work, of course.

That, and I’m staring the final hours of my 20s in the face.  Daunting is the word of the hour.

So, I’m very curious and a bit apprehensive:  Will my 30s begin with a bang or a whimper?  Can I still pull college-style, all-nighter-cram-sessions?  Do these next weeks all pan out with positive results?  Let me know!

Hopeful about the future on 10/21/2010, 5:35pm