Could this time change make train delays history?

Thanks Lauren. This seems like a good way of keeping passengers happy and cutting down on compensation payments, which just push up prices for everyone. Perhaps it could be in place for the start of next April.

“Once the new railway time is rolled out, trains will officially depart right on time, with the odd one or two running ahead of schedule.” I’m not sure about trains running ahead of schedule. Is this some sort of joke?

This would certainly be welcomed by Southern Train passengers. I hope we see it implemented as part of the wider initiative to convert East Croydon station into an amusement park, without the rides.

All aboard the new time change choo choo train that, love it or hate it, Mite get you to Mars by April 1st 2017. Beam me up Scotty might get you there slightly quicker though!

Wavechange introduces the tantalising prospect of teleportation, experiments about which are being done on an increasingly large scale. If the current Chinese and Viennese experiments in photonic Quantum Teleportation can be scaled up then we could be witnessing a sea change in physical applications. When researchers quantum teleport a photon, they aren’t making it disappear and reappear like on Star Trek. Instead, the information contained in the photon’s quantum state is transmitted from one photon to another through quantum entanglement – without actually travelling the intervening distance. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that information is travelling instantaneously. That’s because the transfer of information occurs when the sender measures the quantum state of their photon. But that causes the receiver’s entangled photon to instantly change.

However, in order to understand the information, the receiver has to know what the original measurement was, along with some other instructions. Those instructions are sent via normal communications, which are limited to being no faster than the speed of light.

To all of this complexity, now add weather – over a large body of water, no less. You start to see the problem, because even the most focused lasers can experience a loss of signal when it passes through water, water vapor, etc. And right now, quantum teleportation is an extremely delicate process. Which makes both the Chinese and European researchers’ work – which use different methods – all the more impressive. The European experiment took place over the ocean, and the Chinese experiment crossed a lake.

In effect, it means that whatever changes are made to one of the pair of entangled photons those changes appear to occur simultaneously in the other, no matter where that other photon is located. In effect, the changes appear to happen faster than light can travel, which is the fascination for the scientists. For now it would seem to be ushering in a era of totally secure communications, but the possibilities – if it can all be understood and controlled – would appear to be offering a way to teleport matter.

All too often our modern obsession with precise timing and punctuality leads to grumpy angry people or worse. The film “Clockwise” explores the idiocy of this in a masterful way.

In my Government service days I had a chum who paid little heed to compliance to his formal contracted hours of employment. I suspect he loved his work and put in far more hours than he was supposed to. But one of his favourite sayings was “Boss, sorry I’m late! Don’t worry – I’ll make up for it – I’ll go home early.”

The clock shown in the picture at the head of this Conversation is on a continental system, possibly Swiss railways, where timekeeping is based on 21st century precision rather than 19th century clockwork. No two digital clocks on Norwich station show exactly the same time as they are run from an office computer that appears to defy reconciliation with national standard time via the MSF signal broadcast from Anthorn.