Hobbies
computer overclocking, reading (philosophy), video games, piano

Clubs
Debate (Lincoln-Douglas), Editor on school newspaper, Academic Challenge, Rocketry, TEAMS, Medieval Battle club (not kidding)

Experience
2006 US Physics Team, Physics Bowl winner, school winner in AMC 11th-12th, AIME 10th-12th, TEAMS (#1 in Ohio, 10th, 11th grade, #1 nationally in our entire division 12th grade), OHSSL District Champion in Lincoln-Douglas Debate (11th grade), NFL District Champion in Lincoln-Douglas Debate (12th grade), NFL Nationals qualifier, Ohio Mathematics League school winner, Ohio High-School Mathematics Invitational Olympiad (5th place, 11th grade), National Merit Finalist, Cum Laude scholar, CWRU Michelson-Morley Award, etc.

Biography
I sat in on a lecture Alan Guth was giving at MIT (which is, incidentally, the college I will be attending next year) for an undergraduate string theory class during MIT's prefrosh weekend. He was discussing whether or not time travel is possible under current theories of physics. Old models of possible time machines (wormhole time machines, for example), have been demonstrated to be inconsistent with general relativity because they violate certain energy conditions. The so-called “ weak energy condition ” states that any such machine cannot require the existence of negative energy densities, while the “ strong energy condition ” more strictly requires energy densities to be high enough to be consistent with theories of universe expansion. Guth's description of a string theoretic model of time travel, commonly known as the Gott time machine, however, violates neither condition.

Under this promising model, we suppose that we have two parallel, infinitely long cosmic strings where space is folded into a conical singularity at each point. While the details of the construction are too involved to give here, it turns out that the two-string system easily generates closed timelike loops. There are, however, several difficulties in constructing the Gott time machine. Research conducted by Guth himself and others have demonstrated that a Gott time machine has either always existed or is impossible to construct. The time machine requires a 2+1 dimensional general relativity, which complicates conservation laws considerably; in fact, a recent paper by Deser, Jackiw, and 't Hooft have shown that momentum and energy become spacelike quantities exactly at the point when the Gott machine begins to exist. Moreover, the Gott time machine limits the total energy of the universe because of constraints on the deficit angle of the conical singularities it presupposes – under certain conditions, the universe will collapse if a Gott time machine exists.

But even if we were to ignore these technical difficulties, the philosophical interpretation of the existence of a time machine is still problematic. Theories about how to resolve apparent paradoxes that arise from time travel remain controversial and contradictory. Some physicists believe in a “ consistent history ” worldview, which flatly asserts that influencing past events cannot create paradoxes because somehow, history will manage to work itself out in a non - contradictory way. Others believe in a “ multiple universe ” hypothesis, where the universe bifurcates into several separate realities at the point when a time traveler meddles with past events. As of yet, no such theory has been mathematically fleshed out, much less actually tested, and all theories seem profoundly uncompelling.

It seems, then, that time travel, for now, is not only impossible, but also poorly understood.Thus, you, the reader, can rest assured that I haven't interfered with my own past. You are almost guaranteed that everything in the following link is still true : http://www.aapt.org/olympiad2006/bio.cfm?StudentID=539