(my postdoc dream project, still shaping - started January 14th, 2025; latest substantial update: Oct. 10th, 2026)
I know that these are,
So far,
Futile attempts,
But I feel closer
To a "machine of time"
Than anyone else
*Got its name from the animal that performs the fastest movements in nature (faster than the hummingbird). The mantis shrimp also has remarkable vision, and peculiarly survives its own shockwaves.
An exploration of how to make use of these, all (or most) at once, primarily RELATIVISTICALLY:
the Earth's shape and movement
gravity
magnetism; electromagnetism; flux
thermodynamics
the speed of light; interferometry; the Sagnac effect; the Doppler effect
quantum entanglement; the Casimir effect
(So far, thought) experiment: A series (~ sequence) of entangled photon bundles (evenly distributed along the path) could be sent towards/to the nearest black hole, Gaia BH1, from where they would act as a bridge of information extracted from the photon sphere of the black hole, and thus, potentially, from the black hole's past. (Specific inspiration: the Hawking Information Paradox; The 3 Body Problem, Season 1 (the space engineering aspects).)
Books:
George Gamow: One, Two, Three... Infinity (1947)
Stephen Hawking: A Brief History of Time (1998)
Audio:
the accelerating elevator thought experiment(s) by Albert Einstein (heard about it on The Math and Physics Podcast by Parker and Ray)
General film inspo:
The Imitation Game (2014)
The Theory of Everything (2014)
The Hummingbird Project (2018)
Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know (2020, documentary)
Sci Fi film inspo:
Minority Report (2002)
Paycheck (2003)
Interstellar (2014)
Tenet (2020)
(a revised Claude convo output, from October 10th, 2026)
This idea starts with physicist Carlo Rovelli’s view of quantum mechanics: facts about a particle (say, the outcome of a measurement) don’t exist in an absolute sense. They only exist relative to whoever or whatever interacted with it.
This is quantum foundations, the part of physics that asks what quantum mechanics actually means. Rovelli’s view makes the same predictions as standard quantum mechanics, so it’s hard to test, and some physicists argue it’s internally inconsistent. Experiments have already tested related questions using entangled light in a ring-shaped interferometer (a Sagnac interferometer, which is sensitive to rotation).
I wonder:
1. Is there a way to design a test that could tell “facts are relative” apart from “there’s one absolute reality underneath”?
2. Does the debate change when the experiment rotates, since rotation changes the timing and causal relationship between events?
As far as I can tell, nobody has combined those two things yet. That still needs a proper literature check.
Take an existing experiment where one observer measures a photon early and another compares results later. Run it at different rotation speeds, which subtly changes the timing relationship between the two. Check whether the statistics of the results change with rotation in a way ordinary quantum mechanics wouldn’t predict. Honest caveat: the likely outcome is “nothing changes,” since the two views are generally seen as equivalent. Working out whether any real prediction exists is itself the research question.