Tipler cylinder

A Tipler cylinder is a cylinder of dense matter of infinite length, rotating about its longitudinal axis. This hypothetical object is theorized to allow time travel and is also called a Tipler time machine.

While references to infinite length cylinders can be found in literature back to 1936[1][2], it was Frank Tipler in 1974 who recognized it would allow closed timelike curves[3] and thus allow time travel.

Tipler's solution was for a cylinder of infinite length. He suggested that a finite cylinder might produce closed timelike curves if the rotation rate were fast enough[3] but he did not prove this.

Stephen Hawking in his 1992 paper on the chronology protection conjecture posited that closed timelike curves cannot be created, and thus cannot be used for time travel.[4]

Tipler cylinders in fiction

References

  1. ^ van Stockum, Willem Jacob (1936). "The Gravitational Field of a Distribution of Particles Rotating about an Axis of Symmetry". Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. http://www-lorentz.leidenuniv.nl/history/stockum/Proc_R_Soc_Edinb_57_135_1937.jpg. 
  2. ^ Lanczos, Kornel (1924, republished in 1997). "On a Stationary Cosmology in the Sense of Einsteins Theory of Gravitation". General Relativity and Gravitation (Springland Netherlands) 29 (3): 363–399. doi:10.1023/A:1010277120072. 
  3. ^ a b Tipler, Frank (1974). "Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violation". Physical Review D 9 (8): 2203–2206. Bibcode 1974PhRvD...9.2203T. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.9.2203. Archived from the original on 2009-10-26. http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/theophysics/tipler-rotating-cylinders.pdf&date=2009-10-25+23:01:39.  Available in GIF format here: pages 1, 2, 3 and 4. See also here.
  4. ^ Hawking, Stephen (1992). "Chronology protection conjecture". Physical Review D 46 (2): 603–611. Bibcode 1992PhRvD..46..603H. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.46.603. http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v46/p603. 
  5. ^ http://news.larryniven.org/biblio/display.asp?key=124
  6. ^ Time Machines By Paul J. Nahin, page 95 [1]
  • Frank Jennings Tipler, Causality Violation in General Relativity, Ph.D. thesis at the University of Maryland, College Park (1976). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Vol. 37-06, Section B, pg. 2923. Also available as Dissertation 76-29,018 from Xerox University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, MI.
  • Penrose, Roger. "The Question of Cosmic Censorship." Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy Vol. 20 (September, 1999): 233.
  • Wald, Robert (ed). Black Holes and Relativistic Stars. University of Chicago Press, 1998. ISBN 0-226-87034-0