Live captioning recorded from the 13th Annual Meeting for the American Society of Physicists.
Host: Please welcome to the stage, Lucy Maxwell!
(Audience Applause)
Lucy: Thank you, thank you. I’d just – I’d like to thank the foundation first and foremost for sponsoring this symposium. One of the best parts of my year is always coming here to see what we’re all doing to further science in the name of science.
(Lucy steps forward to the center of the stage)
What is time? As my metaphorical father once said “Time is nothing but a stubbornly persistent illusion.” That always stuck with me…, and for some reason never quite sait right. What might Gauss have said with that sort of thinking? “Geometry is nothing but a stubbornly persistent illusion.” What he meant is that time is not as rigid as we once thought, but that doesn’t make it an illusion any more than pure mathematics or biology. Gauss went on to redefine geometry, leading to a myriad of mathematical discoveries, so why can’t we do the same with time? Time may be stubborn and persistent, but it is no illusion. It is real, and as scientists we can be more stubborn and persistent.
(Lucy walks back towards the podium)
When I first presented this idea, I was laughed out of Oxford. My colleagues said that the idea was ridiculous, and that it would never amount to anything. Only a few of my closest friends and I continued with our research, convinced that we would find something of import hidden in the fabric of spacetime. And after years of work, we did.
(Lucy pulls out a small device)
This remote, that fits in the palm of my hand, is able to manipulate time, if only for a few minutes. A larger machine utilizing the same –
(Another Lucy appears in the center of the stage)
Lucy 2: WILL! There you go!
(The audience sits in stunned silence)
Oh I suppose you haven’t –
Lucy: No not yet.
Lucy 2: Right, go on, they’ll get it in a second.
Lucy: Alright. As I was saying, a larger machine utilizing the same technology could hypothetically manipulate time at any scale. Not just through a single person, but a city, country, planet even.
(Two audience members start to clap confusedly. They soon stop.)
Anyhow, I suppose I should show you what I mean. Ladies and gentlemen, time no longer is a persistent illusion. We have pulled back the curtain and bent the laws of physics to our –
(Lucy disappears)
Lucy 2: Ta da!
(Applause begins slowly at first but ends in a standing ovation)
Host: Lucy Maxwell Everyone!
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