Science & Technology

Physicist pursues life-long dream of time travel

By T.K. Randall
January 3, 2020 ·  7 comments

Is it really possible to travel backwards through time ? Image Credit: CC BY 2.0 Paul Hudson During a recent interview with CNN, Mallett, who is a respected physics professor, claimed that he had written a scientific equation that could serve as the basis for time travel - a concept that he became obsessed with as a young boy after reading The Time Machine by author H.G. Wells.

It's a goal that he has been pursuing for most of his life and although the 74-year-old admits that he is unlikely to see time travel became a reality during his lifetime, there's a chance that his efforts will have contributed in no small part to the creation of a working time machine in the future.

Back in 2018 we reported that Mallett had put together a prototype device designed to demonstrate some of the principles involved in his time travel concept.

The device features a ring of lasers and the idea is to 'twist' the space inside the ring. According to Mallett, because time and space are intricately linked, warping one should also warp the other.

"If space is being twisted strongly enough, this linear timeline is going to be twisted into a loop. If time all of a sudden is twisted into a loop that allows us the possibility of travelling into the past," he said.Creating a fully functional version of the device however would require extremely large amounts of power and a way to miniaturize all the components - two hurdles that he has yet to overcome.

There is also another problem - one that severely hampers his dream of traveling back in time to see his father who tragically died of a heart attack when he was just 10 years old.

"You can send information back," he said. "But you can only send it back to the point at which you turn the machine on."

In other words, according to his understanding of time travel physics, time travel can only ever be achieved between the present and the time at which the time machine itself was first activated.

For Mallett therefore, traveling back in time to see his father would seem to be impossible.

Source: Futurism | Comments (7)

Tags: Time Travel