Renowned theoretical physicist Dr. Roy Mallett works at the University of Connecticut. But he was once a little boy who read HG Wells's Time Machine. Mallet was 10 years old when his father died. While reading this book, his imagination was captured by the idea of time travel. He dreamed of going back in time to prevent the death of his father.
It was not a passing fad. He studied physics in college and was especially interested in black holes. He believed that understanding black holes would allow him to get closer to solving time travel. At this time, black holes were considered something unimaginable, but at least science recognized them. However, the idea of time travel was perceived as "unimaginable insanity," says Mallett.
A number of coincidences helped him sort out this issue.
“Black holes were just a cover for me,” he jokes.
Albert Einstein characterized time as the fourth dimension. He said that time and space are related, so physicists talk about time-space. It is believed that the curvature of time-space occurs near black holes. Mallet wondered if these conditions could be replicated on Earth.
He graduated from college and was ready to start research right away. But it was a time of economic decline, and it was difficult to get a job in research institutes. He started working with lasers: studying their cutting characteristics for industrial use. Two years later, he finally got the job at the University of Connecticut that he wanted.
To understand the essence of his research, one should recall two of Einstein's theories:
1. According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, speed affects time. It has already been proven that under laboratory conditions, subatomic particles can be transported into the future by strong acceleration. Particles appear in the future in a new state, without disintegrating during the usual period of time. Particle aging slows down as they accelerate.
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2. According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, time is also influenced by gravity. Clocks on orbiting satellites move at a slightly different pace than clocks on Earth, unless specially adjusted.
Dr. Mallett knew that gravity can influence time, and light can create gravity. Suddenly it dawned on him: "Lasers!"
From his previous work with lasers, he remembered the ring laser, which creates circulating light. Maybe swirling light can do to gravity what a black hole can do, he thought. He was interested in the idea of whether a circular laser can create a time warp to form a loop - the present, the future, and then the past.
An illustration showing what a hypothetical time machine might look like. The laser creates a rotating motion of light, bending the time-space inside the machine.
Illustration: ProfessorChandraRoychoudhuri'slaboratory, courtesyofDr. RonMallett
If a laser could create such a loop, then the information could be sent back in binary form. It is possible to create a series of neutron spins that represent 1 and 0, and thus create a binary message, Mallett explained.
If Dr. Mallett had received the desired research job immediately after graduation, he would not have acquired the laser experience and knowledge that he needed so many years later. “I had experience that my colleagues working in this field did not have. This allowed me to make this breakthrough that would not have been possible otherwise,”says Dr. Mallet.
Now the difficult task lay ahead - to test this theory by mathematical calculations. And again, chance intervened. Following this idea, Dr. Mallett was diagnosed with heart disease. He took sick leave and had a lot of free time.
Freed from his committee duties and lecturing duties, he focused entirely on his research.
“If I didn’t have this time, I don’t know if I would have been able to make a breakthrough or even just work out this idea,” he recalls.
It took him six months to prove that light moving in a circle can bend space. Then it took several years to prove that the curvature of space can cause the curvature of time. Even though it was a long, painstaking effort, Dr. Mallett notes that it took Einstein 10 years to prove that gravity affects time.
“It was worth it… seeing the equations that prove that time travel is possible is exciting,” says Dr. Mallet. New inspiration came when a scientific journal published his article on time travel.
With great excitement, he made a presentation of his discovery to the experts on relativity at a conference hosted by the International Society of General Relativity and Gravity. He was especially afraid to talk about time travel in front of Dr. Bryce DeWitt, a renowned physicist who worked with Einstein. DeWitt gave a talk right before Dr. Mallett spoke, which made the task even more difficult.
At the end of Dr. Mallet's presentation, Dr. DeWitt came out in front of the audience and said, "I don't know if you can see your father again, but he would be proud of you."
This one proposal made him feel that the years of work were not in vain, his original goal was achieved. Although, as a child, he dreamed of preventing the death of his father, he felt that this discovery was already more than enough.
For young Mallet, his father was an ideal and an object of respect. His mother worked hard to raise Mallet and three other children in the Bronx area of New York. In the 50s in America, it was not easy for a black woman to find a good job, the family quickly fell into poverty. He realized how difficult it was for her, a 30-year-old widow whose husband died of a heart attack at a young age, to work to feed her children.
Dr. Mallett described his life and his discovery in The Time Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission to Realize a Life of Time Travel.
How long will it take to create a time machine?
Dr. Ron Mallett does not work as a soldering iron in a garage like Doc Brown from Back to the Future. He is a theoretical physicist, not an experimental physicist. This means that he is only working on mathematical proof that the time machine will be able to work in the future. But to build it is the task of experimental physicists.
The start-up costs alone could be $ 250,000. These funds will be spent on feasibility studies, which will determine the costs of the pilot phase.
Donations for this research are being made to the University of Connecticut Foundation. “We have already raised $ 11,000 from generous donors, ranging from enthusiastic schoolchildren who donated $ 15-25, to an interested young couple ($ 500) and a childless parent ($ 1,000), says Dr. Mallett.
After conducting a feasibility study, he believes that the entire further process will take five years.
Philosophical questions
If one day a time machine is built, what happens when it is turned on? A message from the future may arrive immediately.
The time machine will only be able to forward messages in time when it is turned on. If the machine is left powered on for 100 years, it will be possible to send binary messages at any time period within those 100 years. A person from the future can know on what day the car was activated and send a message at that time.
But if we could go back in time and solve all the problems in the world, if we could go back and prevent all the bad things that happened in our lives, what would we do for our personal growth? How would our society change?
Dr. Mallett says that Jean-Claude Van Damme's Time Patrol captures this idea well. The hero Van Damme controls time travel so that people cannot use it for personal purposes. His wife dies, and he is tempted to return to the past to save her.
“Why time travel is used should be decided by the community, not individuals,” says Dr. Mallet. The Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest particle accelerator, is controlled by an international consortium. From his point of view, the use of a time machine will be controlled in a similar way. He believes that time machines will be no more common than nuclear reactors. People will not have personal time machines in the yard for arbitrary use.
From Dr. Mallet's perspective, the best way to use a time machine is to alert people to natural disasters to prevent thousands of people from dying from tsunamis and hurricanes.