watching too much steins;gate, hear me out
peak show , you must watch fr. getting to the point now , astronauts who spend too much time in space move forward in time , even if by a little amount of time , or that is what is claimed here. also this whole idea just came to me in a random spur of moment so if it sounds wrong it probably is. i will try to fact check most of the things but i intend for a good enough content to be raw
also this thing will only go in the future
midway writing this i have realized that that this is entirely useless , there is no use for sending a message into the future because we won't know of its occurence till we reach that future too , and that beats the entire pupose of what i am aboiut to write; but i still will write because i can and i wish to.
if you are still with me till here then i thank you, please do read ahead
the donut idea
so the core thought was this - what if i make a donut shaped tube, like a torus, and trap light inside it. we shoot a lifi signal (aka high-speed blinking light carrying data) into this loop and just keep it spinning. why? because light's fast af and if we keep it moving in this closed path, maybe we can mess with time, or at least *pretend* we can.
obviously, light's already traveling at max speed (c, the cosmic speed limit), but maybe there's a way to delay when it exits. imagine you're trying to tell future-you something, and instead of sending the message now, you *load* it into this loop and let it chill there until some condition is met, like time passing, or a trigger switch activating a mirror to reflect it out. kind of like sending yourself a delayed text, but with physics cosplay.
is it dumb? yes. am i writing it anyway? also yes.
realistically, this falls apart under energy constraints, field stability, and literally every law of thermodynamics. but the point isn't building a time machine - it's asking: what if we could? what if this donut-loop could store a message not in space, but in time?
also i refuse to believe people built pyramids and i can't build a photon racetrack in a torus tube with makeshift capacitors and a dream.
why this is probably a busted dream
let’s get it straight — this setup smashes into some brutal walls:
- energy drain: keeping light trapped in a loop ain’t free. photons interact, scatter, get absorbed by air molecules or the tube’s walls. you’d need near-perfect vacuum and mirrors with god-tier reflectivity.
- time dilation limits: actual time travel requires speeds near light for massive objects or crazy gravity fields. looping light inside a donut doesn’t change its speed or warp spacetime.
- signal integrity: every reflection risks losing info. after a few loops, the message could become noise or just vanish.
- control tech: actuated mirrors and field controls precise enough to trap and release photons on command? nasa-tier tech, not your basement setup.
basically, the physics gods are not amused — but neither are they completely offended by the idea. this is just a wild thought experiment dancing on the edges of our tech and understanding.