Imagine going to the past and meeting Einstein, Shakespeare or da Vinci. Imagine going to the future and meeting your great grandchildren. Time traveling opens possibilities to such seemingly impossible tasks. But time traveling itself seems possible. Time traveling means to travel through time and go to different times anytime you want. Time traveling has till now only been a good topic for science fiction writers. It has only existed in imagination. But is there enough intelligence in human beings to turn imagination into reality? Will man make the time machine, a device which can travel through time?
Ronald Mallett is one such man who is determined to build a time machine. He is a physics professor at the University of Connecticut. With a brilliant idea and Einstein's equations Mallett has designed a time machine which uses circulating laser beams. Black holes, wormholes and cosmic strings- all three phenomena are proposed for time traveling, although all of them are possible, none seem feasible due to the gigantic mass they require. So, instead using any of the above three Mallett's time machine uses light in the form of circulating laser light to warp or loop time. While, his team is still looking for funding, Mallett hopes that the time machine will be built within 10 years. Mallett believes that depending on the technology and funding time travel may be possible this century.
When people show concerns over time traveling Mallett assures them that time traveling is not dangerous. “The Grandfather paradox [ in which you go to the past and kill your grandfather before you were born] is not an issue” says Mallett “when
you travel in time means you are both traveling in time and into other universes.”
“When you go back into the past,” Mallett says,” you'll go into another universe and the things you do in your visit to the past does not affect our universe.”
Mallett has also written a book about this grand project with New York Times best-selling author Bruce Henderson. The book is named Time traveler: A scientist's personal Mission to make Time Travel a Reality.
Mallett's father gad died at the age of 33 of a heart attack when Mallett was 10 years old. After reading The Time Machine by H.G.Wells, he was determined to build a time machine so that he could go back to the past and warn his father about the dangers of smoking so that his father's heart attack and death could be prevented.
Mallett now is 62and he believes that he will live to see the first time machine. Sadly, the way it works means that he will never be able to fulfill his original wish- to warn his father about his deteriorating health. ”My solace is that if this works, future generations will be able to prevent the type of tragedy that I went through ”says Mallett.
