Humna Sharif
Staff Writer
Parkland College has always provided a supportive environment to its faculty and students when it comes to research. The Natural Science and Engineering Departments take full advantage of the numerous resources available at Parkland to make headway in their respective fields.
Recently, the Physics Department has made an astounding breakthrough regarding everything we thought we knew about physics. Dr. David Albert, professor of Astrophysics has been working with Stephen Hawking for quite a few years, and helping Dr. Hawking with his research on finding a theory of everything. Parkland College provided the funding for a state of the art research lab in the basement of the campus. Ten other Parkland science and math faculty were also a part of this research team.
This partnership was largely kept a secret due to the sensitive nature of their work, but recent developments have rendered it necessary for this research to be brought to the general public. The breakthrough started when, Einstein’s mass-energy equation (E=mc2) was proven to be not true for particles being accelerated under some special conditions.
“Basically what the mass energy equation says is that mass being accelerated at the speed of light changes into pure energy,” Research analyst Asterisk Spock provided. “I’ve been working with Dr. Hawking and Dr. Albert on finding another expression that combines Einstein’s mass energy equation and his theory of space time curvature.”
Physics major Aran Piyapaka poses with a sample of Parkland College Physics Department’s latest breakthrough, a discovery that will lead to the ability to traverse time and space in a time machine.
The purpose of this was to find an expression that also included the time factor in it, and allowed for the equation to apply to bigger masses without potentially disintegrating the body. The team of scientists working at Parkland recently accomplished this remarkable feat, which has opened for the world an endless galore of possibilities.
“I’ve been working on a unifying theory of everything for the universe almost my entire life and now I feel closer than ever,” Dr. Hawking said.
The research is mostly theoretical as of now and experiments have only been performed on a small scale. With time now linked to mass, energy and the ability to manipulate gravity, mankind has all the tools at its disposal to build a time machine that can travel both backwards and forwards in time.
According to some members of the research team, this could possibly be the biggest scientific discovery in the history of time itself. Never before has man been able to take so many widely accepted equations and turn them around completely to form a truly exceptional theory.
“I cannot express in words what the impact of this research will be, I believe that the human race has entered a new era of technological advancement,” Dr. Albert said. “With a working time machine at our disposal we can fully explore the past, present and future.”
The applications of this new research are indeed ground breaking in the truest sense of the word.
The next step for the research team is to secure funding, so that they can finally use their theoretical results towards building a working time machine.
Every facet of human civilization will be impacted by this. Ambiguous historical facts could be authenticated. The evolution vs creationism debate can be finally resolved. We can find out if there really was a big bang, see the extinction of dinosaurs, how the pyramids were built, where the Stonehenge came from.
A time machine would allow us to see people like Hammurabi and Aristotle in person, maybe keep Julius Caesar from being murdered. There is also an ethical dilemma associated with such a discovery. Mankind will have to be careful not to alter the course of history in a negative way.
“Our team is very excited to have this work published in major scientific journals all over the world, there will also be a press conference here at Parkland to break this news to everyone,” Spock said.
The date for the press conference has yet to be announced but Parkland students will be provided every opportunity to be present there. For more information about the potential time machine, keep checking the local and national news channels, as once word gets out about what has been accomplished at Parkland, the world won’t be able to stop talking about it.
