Recordpub.com - Scientist says time travel is possible: Shares idea for time machine at Kent State

By Colin McEwen

Record-Courier staff writer

Can people travel back in time or jump ahead into the future?

Ronald Mallett says they can.

Mallett, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Connecticut, spoke about those scientific possibilities to a group of about 150 people in the Kiva at the Kent Student Center Tuesday.

“This may sound like it’s been ripped from the pages of science fiction,” said Mallett. “Yet, I believe the 21st century will be seen as the century of time travel, just as the 20th century is seen as the century of air and space travel.”

Stemming from Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, Mallett shared basic insight about how time travel could be achieved.

First, as objects travel faster, time slows down. If someone traveled deep into space at a great speed, that person could return younger than his or her grandchildren, he said.

Mallett also shared his own theories of time travel, combining Einstein’s theory of relativity with the idea that a continuously circulating unidirectional beam of light creates a gravitational field.

Light affects gravity and gravity affects time, so Mallett realized he could use light to affect time. He believes light causes space to become “twisted.”

“What you do to space also happens to time,” he said, adding that he has begun work on a time machine consisting of a high-powered laser and mirrors.

“This has all been worked out mathematically even if it may seem pedestrian,” he said.

Going back into the past isn’t so easy. In fact, Mallett theorizes that once someone travels back in time, it creates a paradox, leaving the person stuck in that time.

Mallett is the author of “Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality.” Academy Award nominated director Spike Lee plans to make a feature film about Mallett and his life as a scientist.

13.	Posted by Rob Anderson April 8, 2009
	@ the_lil'exposeddude... yeah, right, all while George Lite couldn't alter the flow of Social Security or Federal Overtime regulations, let alone the Middle East. Um...wanna' compare li'l Georgies electoral mandate with the obamameister's??? Um...fyi, grr-ack-thpt(!)...TLE...I voted Libertarian as I couldn't stomach the big-money interests backing both the Dems or Repubs, eh? And Pat Paulson is no longer in contention. Now, on to banter with a universal entity of a more intelligent nature...w21...as an old curmudgeon-of-a-carpenter, I'm nothing but a layman, if that, in this arena. My observations are based solely on the information in the Stater article. I believe the description provided more described a possible "fountain of youth" than anything resembling "time travel"...but at what cost? Light is energy, to be sure, but it is a form of energy created only through certain circumstances and requiring certain physical conditions. Our sun may exert a gravitational influence, but it's due to it's mass of gasses(et al), not the light it emits. Just how much light do you think was created by such energy outbursts? Did any of our Nation's experiments involving atomic/hydrogen/neutron bombs alter the gravity around our planet? If they did the results are 'very top secret'. Um...as far as K.S.U.'s LCI research...I'm glad some Korean or other folk are managing to benefit from it, because the common, hard-working, tax/tuition-paying citizen of Northeast Ohio certainly hasn't realized a living from same(IMHO).