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.