(과학기술) 연구자들이 만들어 낸 환상 속 '시간여행'

출처: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28852538

22 August 2014 Last updated at 10:28

Study creates 'time travel' illusion 연구자들이 만들어 낸  환상 속 '시간여행'

By Melissa HogenboomScience reporter, BBC Radio Science

Participants see and hear their previous virtual selves when they go back in time 참가자들은 과거로 돌아가서 가상의 자신을 보고 들을 수 있다

Virtual reality can be used to give the illusion of going "back in time", according to an exploratory study. 실험적 연구에 따르면,가상현실은 "과거로 돌아가는" 환상을 체험하기 위해 사용될 수 있다

In this virtual world, subjects were able to reduce how many people a gunman killed, an event they had unknowingly been part of. 이러한 가상세계에서, 참가자들은 과거로 돌아가 무장강도가 사살한 사람의 수를 줄일 수 있었다. 이 사건에 참가자들은 의도하지 않았지만 일부였다.

Going into "the past" increased the level of guilt the participants felt. 참가자들의 죄의식을 증가시켰던 "과거"로 돌아가 보기

Writing in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, the team says that virtual time travel could help people overcome traumatic experiences. 심리학저널 <프론티어인사이코롤지>에서, 연구팀은 가상시간여행은 과거에 겪었던 상처를 극복하는데 도움을 준다고 말한다.

Most interesting, the researchers add, was the emotional impact virtual time travel had on the participants. 연구자들이 덧붙이길, 진짜 흥미로운 건 가상세계를 통한 과거로의 여행은 참가자들에게 정서적 효과를 주었다고 한다.

"The more the participants felt the illusion, the greater the sense of their own morality," explained co-author Mel Slater of the ICREA (Catalan Research Institute) and University College London.

Mutable past 바꿀 수 있는 과거

In the virtual world, participants could walk, talk and move similar to how they would in real life, and previous studies have shown that people strongly associate with their virtual selves.

"In virtual reality, the brain's low level perceptual system does not distinguish between the virtual and the real world; the brain takes what it sees and hears in a surrounding environment as given," added Prof Slater.

"Therefore, if they had an experience with the illusion of time travel, there is implicit learning that the past is mutable, that is: 'my own past decisions don't matter because they're changeable'."

People were able to go back in time to save five lives at the expense of one 참가자들은 한 사람을 희생하여 다섯 명의 목숨을 구하기 위해 과거로 돌아갈 수 있었다

In the study, 32 participants witnessed a man open fire and kill five people in an art gallery. They had learnt to control a lift and had allowed the killer to go to the upper-level.

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“Start Quote

It's the best thing we can do for time travel until the physicists do their job and come up with a time machine”

Dr Friedman Doron,Sammy Ofer School of Communication, Israel

Half of these went back in time to experience this event once more, but this time were faced with a classic moral dilemma: do nothing and five people will die, or intervene and five lives can be saved at the expense of one.

The other half simply experienced the same event but were not able to change their earlier actions.

This dilemma is commonly used in philosophical studies looking at morality. As expected, most participants chose to intervene.

This team says that virtual time travel could help people overcome post traumatic stress disorders or to revaluate previous bad decisions.

Time machine 시간 기계

The laws of physics, of course, currently dictate that time travel is not possible. But lead author of the work, Friedman Doron, from the Sammy Ofer School of Communications in Israel, said his team had now come closest to it.

"Highly immersive virtual reality is very visceral. People hide behind the desk when they get shot. Some of the subjects duck down. It's the best thing we can do for time travel until the physicists do their job and come up with a time machine. For now this is the closest thing."

Physicist Robert Nemiroff of Michigan Technology University, US, commented that the work was interesting, though strange as "the ability to change the past is not a reasonably likely occurrence".

"If some version of illusory 'time travel therapy' can help people make better decisions in the future, and come to a better understanding of bad decisions, they have made in the past - then I am all for it."

But he added that having patients going around really believing that that they could change the past "might have negative repercussions that have not been explored".

Studies have shown that people experience a strong sense of body ownership in virtual worlds 참가자들은 가상세계에서 자신의 몸이 자기의 것임을 강하게 느꼈다고, 연구는 보여준다

People have long entertained the fantasy of going backwards in time, commented James Broadway from the University of California Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the research but edited the journal collection in which it appeared.

"'If I knew then what I know now...' is a common lament indeed.

"While it remains impossible to un-do something that has already occurred, results of this study suggest that... virtual reality techniques can be usefully harnessed to promote greater acceptance of one's own mistakes in the past, as well as better decision-making in the future."