Time telephone

If you had a time telephone who would you call?

Physicist Ronald Mallett recently wrote a book TIME TRAVELLER wherein
he describes his desire to build a time machine. He has written some
papers recently that details how this might be done, with a stream of
circulating photons it might be possible to send a message to the
past, creating a time telephone service.

http://www.physics.uconn.edu/~mallett/Mallett2003.pdf

If you had a time telephone service, where you could dial a 900 number
and telephone anyone in the past, who would you call, and what would
you say?

I have a service idea that might be worth while. Give waiters and
waitresses a time telephone to call your order into the kitchen 15
minutes before you make it. That way you get your dinner served
immediately as you order it.

This could be used in any retail situation. Your measurements for a
suit could be sent back in time and your tailored suit would be ready
instantly. The car you ordered, or the couch for that matter - all
would be on the showroom floor or waiting for you when you got home -
even though there was a 10 week delivery.

Surprise attacks would be impossible. Details would be phoned back
before the attack and actions would be taken to avoid it. In this
case there's the 'grandfather paradox' to contend with. If American
time forces receive a call to intercept the hijackers the day of the
bombing and isend special forces into Afghanistan to wipe out all the
leaders before they have a chance to escape. In this case, unlike in
the case where something that's wanted is created, here something
unwanted is taken away. So, where did the message come from?

Some mathematicians have differing opinions about that one. One is
that despite appearances in talking about it, no contradiction arises
for those receiving the message. Especially if the folks being
arrested are clearly intent on hijacking an airliner.

A telephone call to the White House in November 1963 might change
history, but what would a caller risk losing if such a call were made.
The further from the present such paradoxes occur, the greater adrift
in time we might find ourselves. For example, if by moving the
Pacific Fleet out of Pearl Harbor in confronting the Japanese fleet
and sinking it on Thanksgiving in 1942, we might avoid US entry into
World War 2 - and today's world might be quite different as a
result.

But that's unlikely because present designs for these machines are
such that the machines cannot send signals to points in time before
they are switched on. So, the machine has to run continuously over
the time interval it signals. Also, bandwidth is limited, so messages
over time are limited in size, and range. So, during a rush at a
restaurant, you might have to wait for your order. And messages that
cause paradoxical results might have so much traffic at a certain
point in time - that messages interfere with one another and cause a
breakdown in the system. No clear or consistent message is received.
So, access to certain points in time and space might be limited to
authorized parties to limit such effects.

Its interesting that signalling a negative introduces paradoxes, while
signalling desired results does not. Ordering a turkey sandwich and
having it handed to me as I order it does not produce a fundamental
paradox. Getting a call from my wife telling me not to order the
turkey sandwich as I enter the restaurant because I died of food
poisoning the next day does intoduce a paradox..

Which suggests something about positive thining versus negative
thinking - but I'm not sure what
.... .

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