Time travellers did not come to Stephen Hawking’s Party: Is the evidence the world ends?

Back in 2009, Professor Stephen Hawking, the renowned Cambridge physicist, held a party for time travellers. However, no one came. This has been taken as evidence that time travel is not possible. 

Hawking has said that; “I have experimental evidence that time travel is not possible”.

The party was held on 28^th June 2009 and nobody has retrospectively turned up. However Einstein’s theories do offer the possibility of travelling backwards in time, according to Stephen Hawking.

An Alternate Thesis: The end of the world as we know it

The party invitation circulated by Stephen Hawking is based on the theory that it would be read about in the future.  However, there is a flaw in this plan. It assumes that the world as we know it will survive climate change.  

Scientists have been telling us for years that the world is under threat from catastrophic climate change.

According to Dr James Hansen of NASA, the world could be heading towards irreversible tipping points in the climate system, beyond which non-linear impacts are triggered off such as the die-back of the Amazon rainforest (the lungs of the planet).  Other catastrophic impacts include the irreversible decline of Arctic sea ice. This could make much of the planet uninhabitable.

We must also remember that increase CO2 levels also have an impact on mental capacity, reducing cognitive function, which could perhaps make it near impossible for future scientists to have the intellect to invent time travel. 

Sending a message: Try a letter to warn us?

According to Stephen Hawking, it might be difficult for a time traveller to travel back in time because the radiation would be likely to destroy the vehicle.  Hawking said; “"it is likely that warping would trigger a bolt of radiation that would destroy the spaceship and maybe the space-time itself"”

However, according to this hypothesis it would be much easier for something like a message or letter to travel back in time.

Hence, I would suggest that physicists open up new avenues of communication.  Perhaps they should have a room open, sealed and with cameras, so that future time travellers could potentially send back a short message into the room whenever they can.

If there is a danger of the world being destroyed, perhaps future scientists could send back a message that warns us of the coming danger?

This message from the future might have the potential to put us onto a different track so that countries come together to prevent climate change and stop the path to destruction.

Did You Know: 4 children die every minute from under-nutrition

In September 2012, the UNICEF and WHO published their joint reporting on child malnutrition.

The results are really quite shocking.

In 2011, globally an estimated 101 million children were underweight, or 16% of the global total, according to the World Health Organisation.

Despite the progress made in recent decades, still around 19,000 children die every day, largely from diseases that are preventable.

This means that:-

• 6.9 million children under-5 die every year.
• More than 570,000 children under-5 die every month.
• 19,000 children die every day.
• About 800 children die every hour.
• About 13 children die every minute.

We know that undernutrition contributes to one-third of all under-5 child deaths. This means that under-nutrition contributes to the deaths of about 2.3 million children per year.

• 2.3 million children die each year from hunger.
• About 190,000 children die each year from hunger.
• More than 6000 children die each month from hunger.
• About 200 children die each hour from hunger.
• About 4 children die every minute from hunger.

There is some positive news in the report, as child mortality rates are falling. However, the Global Health Observatory reports that the progress is insufficient to meet the target of halving levels of undernutrition by 2015. Rising food prices may have contributes to the trends.

At the same time, it is clear that an increasing number of children in high-income countries are overweight, driven by bad diets. This rise in obesity is largely driven by promotion of unhealthy fatty foods to children, including fast foods, and lack of education about this. Unfortunately many of these fatty, unhealthy foods are subsidised by taxpayers in the form of agricultural subsidies.

So there is clearly not a problem of production, but a problem of distribution.