http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,60629,00.html Clark Campaigns at Light Speed By Brian McWilliams 02:00 AM Sep. 30, 2003 PT Wesley Clark: Rhodes scholar, four-star general, NATO commander, time-travel fanatic? During a whirlwind campaign swing Saturday through New Hampshire, Clark, the newest Democratic presidential candidate, gave supporters one of the first glimpses into his views on technology. "We need a vision of how we're going to move humanity ahead, and then we need to harness science to do it," Clark told a group of about 50 people in Newcastle attending a house party -- a tradition in New Hampshire presidential politics that enables well-connected voters to get an up-close look at candidates. Then, the 58-year-old Arkansas native, who retired from the military three years ago, dropped something of a bombshell on the gathering. "I still believe in e=mc², but I can't believe that in all of human history, we'll never ever be able to go beyond the speed of light to reach where we want to go," said Clark. "I happen to believe that mankind can do it." "I've argued with physicists about it, I've argued with best friends about it. I just have to believe it. It's my only faith-based initiative." Clark's comment prompted laughter and applause from the gathering. Gary Melnick, a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said Clark's faith in the possibility of time travel was "probably based more on his imagination than on physics." While Clark's belief may stem from his knowledge of sophisticated military projects, there's no evidence to suggest that humans can exceed the speed of light, said Melnick. In fact, considerable evidence posits that time travel is impossible, he said. "Even if Clark becomes president, I doubt it would be within his powers to repeal the powers of physics," said Melnick, whose research has focused on interstellar clouds and the formation of stars and planets. Clark's comment about time travel came at the end of a long answer to a question about his views of NASA and the U.S. space program. Clark said he supports the agency and believes "America needs a dream and a space program." But Clark said the nation must prioritize its technological goals and take a pragmatic approach to focusing its scientific resources and talent. "Some goals may take a lifetime to reach," he said. "We need to set those goals now. We need to re-dedicate ourselves to science, engineering and technology in this country." Clark used his visit to New Hampshire -- which will hold the nation's first primary election in January -- to demonstrate that he hasn't forgotten the cyberspace activists who cajoled him into running in the first place, as well as to introduce voters to his views on a range of subjects. "You have changed American politics, with the power of the Internet, modern communications and committed people who care," Clark told a handful of supporters Saturday at the Draft Clark movement's New Hampshire headquarters in Dover. At the brief meeting prior to a noisy noontime rally on the steps of Dover's City Hall, Clark met some of the New England organizers of the Internet-based movement for the first time. Those are the supporters who had worked for the past six months to convince the former general to seek the Democratic nomination. Clark's visit to the humble office -- the first opened by the nationwide draft movement-- came just 10 days after his decision to enter the race, and amid reports that some members of the draft have felt cast aside as Clark's official campaign swings into full gear under the control of seasoned political organizers, many with connections to former President Clinton. But Dover resident Susan Putney, one of the four founders of the Draft Clark movement, said she had no hurt feelings. According to Putney, organizers of the draft have offered to stay on, or to turn over their infrastructure to Clark's official Little Rock, Arkansas-based campaign, whichever the campaign chooses. "They're the professionals," Putney said. "I'm just a business person, I'm not a politico. We got him to this point, and we'll let the best team possible field it to carry him through." At this early stage of his campaign, it was obvious that Clark sometimes still leans heavily on the Internet-savvy volunteers who convinced him to run. The rally in Dover, which was attended by around 300 people, was first publicized on the New Hampshire Draft Clark (now re-named New Hampshire for Clark/04) website and drew supporters from all over New England. The audio engineer who donated his services for the rally's public-address system said he heard about Clark's visit from the site. Even the placards waved by supporters were printed up by the movement and bore the words "Draft Clark 2004." During Clark's last visit to New Hampshire on May 12, Putney presented him with a stack of 1,000 letters collected through the Internet and urging him to run. But did the Internet draft really make Clark run, or would the ambitious former NATO commander have thrown his hat into the ring anyway? "No question this draft movement was what convinced him to get into the race," said George Bruno, a former Democratic National Committee member and personal friend of Clark's. "They persuaded him. We've never seen anything like this in politics before." Maybe, maybe, just a tad bit scary?
Where does Clark talk about time travel? He does talk about moving faster than the speed of light. Of course, physicists in the last year or so have made light both slow down and speed up, so apparently the "speed of light" isn't the definite endpoint as had been thought in the past. It is kind of a bizarre topic for a Presidential candidate to be getting involved in. Only bad things can come out of political candidates talking physics.
Laughing my ass off, this is the worst attempt to discredit him yet. We have an intellectually uncurious president who likes nothing better than to walk around waco in a 110 degree heat and almost choked on a pretzel and a candidate who likes to talk about astrophysics and time travel (which is theoretically possible, btw, in any number of ways; do some reading) and we're laughing at him? Lame.
I don't see this as an attempt to discredit him. He's going to do that on his own. Talking about physics to the great unwashed out there would do it. Ratchet down your sensitivity meter, Sam.
Really Sam? My concern is with the focus on technology, welcome to the Brave New World Aspect that I get from reading this. President Bush might not be the most gifted intellectual, but last time I checked the Constitution didn't have any intelligence requirements for president, or to be a citizen. I am reminded of the Crazy General from Dr. Strangelove....
Blah blah blah, yeah, anybody who's interested in astrophysics is obviously crazy. Do yourself a favor and buy this book, it's all about time travel and very good. I have it and found it quite digestible for a non-scientist : http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0395955637/002-1674843-1024040?v=glance
Mankind will never develop time travel (at least to go backwards through time), otherwise, why have we never seen a time traveller?
IIRC, you can go backwards, but not to anything that happened before the present, or something bizarre like that that was discussd in that book. In any event, I stand corrected as I just got a look at Wesley Clark's official campaign vehicle
It's not that he's crazy, its more that his main initiatives seem technology driven, which is a little freaky Brave New World-esque... I'd like to hear a little bit more about morality... I know time travel is being explored, I've read Hawking, its just that we aren't going to have something that dense and fast in our life time, although I hear they are trying to make mini-black holes in Sweden somewhere...but thats not the issue at hand...I mean when he is saying things like, its his only faith based initiative?
What an outlandish statement by Clark Clark has a total lack of credibility and integrity on almost every issue on which he opines. The Clark campaign is on life support right now. It's time to pull the plug.
Really? So your criticism isn't the time travel part, it's that he wasn't delivering a lecture on morality? Ouch. The faith based initiative thing was a play on words regarding the President's faith based initiatives. That was pretty obvious I thought.
First, I would remind you that Clark was talking about faster than light travel which, some theorize, would result in time travel. Clark never said anything about time travel, nor did he say anything that would impugne his integrity. He is not the most credible person to talk about physics, to be sure, but you are really reaching to try to use this as a significant slam against him. Yet more proof that you don't think about politics, you just follow the leader blindly, you Bush bobble-head.
Regardless, time travel, why, I see the reasoning in going to the moon, but to go into the future? No reason. Time travel seems as if it would only be good in exploration, which I'm not seeing the need for at this point, what with domestic and foregin problems looming....maybe he thinks it will boost the economy but I doubt that we should put a highly controversial process as our main goal in our nations space program.
Let me ask this again... Where did Clark (himself, not an analyst) talk about time travel? He was talking about faster than light travel, which may very well be a possibility.
Time is not necessarily linear. It's a dimension, like one of the 3 spatial dimensions (that humans can sense). All 4 dimensions can be warped significantly...e.g. by the gravity of a black hole. There may be other examples. We don't really understand the implications of such. We also are unsure of how many dimensions there are or if infinite parallel universes exist. Now he mentioned the speed of light, and I imagine he meant it in a way that he thinks that humans would not be constrained by the speed of light when it's time to travel to other stars. Quantum physics shows how subatomic particles can communicate 'instantaneously' across any distance. Who knows what we will be able to do in the future? I believe Clark will be proven right some day, but visionary comments will be ridiculed by flat-worlders. If you can only believe what you can 'see and touch', shut off the electron current to your PC right away... after all, it doesn't exist.
Going faster than the speed of light = time travel.... Nevertheless, you didn't read my whole post because I discussed long distance travel in it....
Someone is extrapolating his 'faster than light' comment, which implies time travel. It's an attempt to make his statement look foolish, yet it isn't.
http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articleID=000657D8-67D9-1C71-9EB7809EC588F2D7 What is known about tachyons, theoretical particles that travel faster than light and move backward in time? Is there scientific reason to think they really exist? John Manahan Annapolis, Maryland Raymond Y. Chiao is professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He replies: "Briefly, tachyons are theoretically postulated particles that travel faster than light and have 'imaginary' masses. Editor's note: imaginary mass is a bizarre theoretical concept that comes from taking the square root of a negative number; in this case, it roughly means that a particle's mass is only physically meaningful at speeds greater than light.] "The name 'tachyon' (from the Greek 'tachys,' meaning swift) was coined by the late Gerald Feinberg of Columbia University. Tachyons have never been found in experiments as real particles traveling through the vacuum, but we predict theoretically that tachyon-like objects exist as faster-than-light 'quasiparticles' moving through laser-like media. (That is, they exist as particle-like excitations, similar to other quasiparticles called phonons and polaritons that are found in solids. 'Laser-like media' is a technical term referring to those media that have inverted atomic populations, the conditions prevailing inside a laser.) "We are beginning an experiment at Berkeley to detect tachyon-like quasiparticles. There are strong scientific reasons to believe that such quasiparticles really exist, because Maxwell's equations, when coupled to inverted atomic media, lead inexorably to tachyon-like solutions. "Quantum optical effects can produce a different kind of 'faster than light' effect (see "Faster than light?" by R. Y. Chiao, P. G. Kwiat, and A. M. Steinberg in Scientific American, August 1993). There are actually two different kinds of 'faster-than-light' effects that we have found in quantum optics experiments. (The tachyon-like quasiparticle in inverted media described above is yet a third kind of faster-than-light effect.) "First, we have discovered that photons which tunnel through a quantum barrier can apparently travel faster than light (see "Measurement of the Single-Photon Tunneling Time" by A. M. Steinberg, P. G. Kwiat, and R. Y. Chiao, Physical Review Letters, Vol. 71, page 708; 1993). Because of the uncertainty principle, the photon has a small but very real chance of appearing suddenly on the far side of the barrier, through a quantum effect (the 'tunnel effect') which would seem impossible according to classical physics. The tunnel effect is so fast that it seems to occur faster than light. "Second, we have found an effect related to the famous Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen phenomenon, in which two distantly separated photons can apparently influence one anothers' behaviors at two distantly separated detectors (see "High-Visibility Interference in a Bell-Inequality Experiment for Energy and Time," by P. G. Kwiat, A. M. Steinberg, and R. Y. Chiao, Physical Review A, Vol. 47, page R2472; 1993). This effect was first predicted theoretically by Prof. J. D. Franson of Johns Hopkins University. We have found experimentally that twin photons emitted from a common source (a down-conversion crystal) behave in a correlated fashion when they arrive at two distant interferometers. This phenomenon can be described as a 'faster-than-light influence' of one photon upon its twin. Because of the intrinsic randomness of quantum phenomena, however, one cannot control whether a given photon tunnels or not, nor can one control whether a given photon is transmitted or not at the final beam splitter. Hence it is impossible to send true signals in faster-than-light communications. "I refer interested readers to our paper 'Tachyonlike Excitations in Inverted Two-Level Media' by R. Y. Chiao, A. E. Kozhekin, and G. Kurizki, Physical Review Letters, Vol. 77, page 1254; 1996, and references therein. Answer posted on October 21, 1999
"If you look around the world, there's a lot of work to be done," Clark said. "And I'm very glad we've got the great team in office ... Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice ... people I know very well — our President George W. Bush. We need them there because we've got some tough challenges ahead in Europe." --Wesley Clark Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's campaign argued that Clark was more specific in his praise of the Bush administration two years ago than he was in explaining why he's a newly minted Democrat. "For a lot of Democrats, these remarks will be disqualifying," spokesman Robert Gibbs said. Clark's campaign trail has so far been characterized by flip-flopping on key issues, covering the tracks of politically damaging quotes, and camouflaging embarrassing and questionable decisions in his past. His campaign is losing momentum and growing more desperate by the day.
