The scientific community frowned a lot when hearing the news: on the other hand, the topic is not exactly easy to accept. Gentlemen, the time machine exists. At least in the mind of a scientist.
Astrophysicist Ron Mallett, full professor of physics at the University of Connecticut he recently told CNN that he has written a scientific equation that could serve as the basis for the future construction of a real time machine.
The academic has even built a prototype device to illustrate a key component of his theory, but Mallett's astrophysicist colleagues are not convinced his time machine will ever come to fruition. On the other hand, it is also true that building time machines is not yet a consolidated habit in the scientific community.
Time machines have always populated the imagination of scientists, writers and enthusiasts. For centuries we have been wondering how to build a prototype, and from HGWells to John Titor's modern suggestions, the suggestion of having someone who knows how to create a time machine is always damned intriguing.
How does the time machine theorized by Ron Mallett work?
To understand Ronald Mallett's car, you need to know the basics of special relativity theory by Albert Einstein, according to which time accelerates or decelerates according to the speed with which an object moves.
Based on that theory, if a person were in a spaceship traveling at close to the speed of light, time would pass more slowly than it would for someone left on Earth.
Essentially, the astronaut could zip around space for less than a week and upon his return it would be 10 years for the people left on earth. A real one journey into the future.
But while most physicists accept that jumping through time like that is theoretically possible, traveling to the past is another problem entirely, and therein lies the crux of Ron Mallett's work. The astrophysicist has in mind a solution based on lasers.
As the astrophysicist told CNN, his idea for building the time machine depends on another of Einstein's theories, the general theory of relativity.
According to this theory, massive objects bend space-time (an effect that we perceive as gravity). The stronger the gravity, the slower the time passes.
The astrophysicist has built a prototype that shows how lasers could help achieve this goal.
“Studying the type of gravitational field produced by a ring laser,” Mallett told CNN, “I intend to show how such a model can lead to a time machine based on this principle on a larger scale.” A model that could be a paradigm of how a time machine is built.
As optimistic as Mallet may be about his work, however, his colleagues are skeptical that he is on the way to a functioning time machine with which to travel through historical epochs. It's not like building a wooden car with a counter, getting on it and ending up with dinosaurs.
“I don't think his work will be fruitful,” says the astrophysicist Paul Sutter. “I think there are deep flaws in his mathematics and theory, and that's why a practical device seems unattainable.”
Is there a time machine?
Mallet also admits that his idea is entirely theoretical at this stage. And even if his time machine worked, he says, it would have a serious limitation. A feature that would prevent anyone from going back in time for (I say any) foil 11/XNUMX or change the course of past events.
“With this system it is possible to send information back into the past,” he told CNN, “but only at the point where you turn on the car.”
