Thomas Worthington High School To Test Stephen Hawking/Discovery Channel Wormhole Theory

Feb. 23, 2012 - PRLog -- On Monday, February 27th, a physics class of Erik Thompson of Thomas Worthington High School in Worthington, Ohio, will be testing a theory of Stephen Hawking's that was featured on an episode of the Discovery Channel mini-series involving the famed physicist, last year. Stephen Hawking, the eminent physicist known around the world, has been a proponent of what he calls his "chronology protection conjecture" which would prevent the creation of time machines that would utilize what physicists call, a closed time-like curve. Time machines, and the subject of time travel, have become an ever increasingly popular subject for physicists to investigate because of the potential for causality violation, which would cause fundamental problems for understanding how cause creates effect. Since a paper by Cal Tech's Kip Thorne, on using wormholes for time travel to the past was first published in 1988, the number of physicists looking at various aspects of time travel has been on the rise around the world. Because there are no clearly defined reasons in physics to rule out time travel, Stephen Hawking postulated his chronology protection conjecture some years ago.

In the episode of the Discovery Channel mini-series, Into The Universe with Stephen Hawking, dealing with time travel, Hawking speaks through a narrator's voice and explains how he believes that a wormhole that connects to the past would allow for an energy feedback to build-up that would destroy the wormhole. To illustrate that, a rock band is shown playing until audio feedback occurs, which then destroys their equipment. In reality, feedback never reaches that threshold, but it was just used to illustrate Hawking's point. That portion of the program can be viewed, will the clip stays online, at Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUqxzH0652w&feature=fvwrel .



The students in Mr. Thompson's class, participating in the Oppenheimer Strain project  http://www.physicsintrouble.iwarp.com/oppenheimerstrain.html of SuperScience for High School Physics, which allows students to see if they can find flaws in the theories of famous physicists, will listen to a presentation by research and development engineer Marshall Barnes who will explain the physics behind wormholes and how to plot out space-time diagrams to analyze their connections through space-time. Based on that, the students will engage in a hands-on experiment with an audio set-up that several volunteers will run. Marshall will play lead guitar in the place of the rock band in the example. They will test the set-up, as Stephen Hawking describes it, as well as how they were able to see the space-time geometry, described by what such a wormhole connection would look like, through their analysis with Marshall. The full proceedings will be shot for portions to be included in a documentary as well as on Marshall's web site http://www.physicsintrouble.iwarp.com.

Marshall Barnes is becoming a star in the world of promoting advanced popular science in schools. Marshall's work, with students and advanced concepts in physics, has won accolades and praise from teachers and politicians concerned with promoting science in schools. He is followed by over 150 scientists, engineers, researchers, designers and educators from around the world on researchgate.net and he has been heavily involved with the concept of STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts Math) of which this project will be his first major effort using the concept in a hands on demonstration in the classroom. His work in informal science education has drawn enough attention at informalscience.org that he has been the only person who's name has been in the Buzz section and it has been there every day now for over a year. Children interacting with his invention, the Visual Density Reduction Window™ are currently featured in the largest photograph on the promo cards for this year's USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, DC, April 28th and 29th, where he will be appearing for the second time at the event which is the largest science festival in the U.S..

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