Physics Professor Confident His Time Machine Will Work

Ananova ^ | 4-5-2002

[blam]

Physics professor confident his time machine will work

A physics professor says he is building a time machine that will transport things to the future or the past.

Ronald Mallett says his machine could transport anything from an atom to a person.

The University of Connecticut professor hopes to have a working model and start experiments this autumn.

He told the Boston Globe he's basing his work on Einstein's theory of relativity.

He says the project is serious and added: "I'm not a nut."

He told the paper: "I would think I was a crackpot, too, if there weren't other colleagues I knew who were working on it. This isn't Ron Mallett's theory of matter - it's Einstein's theory of relativity. I'm not pulling things out of the known laws of physics."

The professor and his colleagues plan to build a machine to test whether it's possible to transport a subatomic particle through time using a ring of light.

He hopes the energy from a rotating laser beam may warp the space inside the ring of the light so gravity forces the neutron to rotate sideways. With more energy, he thinks it's possible a second neutron would appear. This second particle would be the first one visiting itself from the future.

He admits sending a human through time may need more energy than scientists know how to harness currently, but he sees it as just ''an engineering problem.''

Prof Mallett's boss, William Stwalley, chairman of the university's physics department, said: "His ideas certainly have merit. I think some of his ideas are very interesting and they would make nice tests of general relativity."

Story filed: 16:02 Friday 5th April 2002

[TrappedInLiberalHell]

I'd go back in time one hour, just to be contrary. Everyone wants to go back years, but I'd like to see what happens if I meet my past self, and then the PAST self goes into the future. That would be a temporal identity inversion, where the past me knows more than the future me. I'd be beside myself...literally!

[avg_freeper]

Forget time travel!

I would create a numerical code that could be sent by multiple particles over time. Maybe some kind of Morse Code like signal. Wait for the next lottery and then send my self the winning numbers.

[Commander8]

Time travel will never be. IF it does happen, I would be encountering future versions of myself warning me about this choice or that. Since the future is not definately written in stone I would be approached by infinite versions of myself from infinite alternate timelines.

[Commander8]

If you travel back in time and change history, you won't change your present. The river of time would split and an alternate timeline would begin.

[Savage Beast]

I think I'll take a photocopy machine and lots of paper and go back the the Library at Alexandria. I might stop on the way back an pick up some of that paper they were wrapping Felix Mendelssohn's fish in.

[Michael Barnes]

I'd go back 65 mil years with a BFG and do some real big game hunting...

[Savage Beast]

Oh I know what I'm gonna do! I'm going back to 1890 or whenever it was that Van Gogh sold a room full of his paintings for 25 bucks. I'll give him 30.

[blam]

"I think I'll take a photocopy machine and lots of paper and go back the the Library at Alexandria. "

Great idea. I expect you would also learn the exact location of Atlantis from your library readings.

[chaosagent]

He says the project is serious and added: "I'm not a nut."

It's been my experience that when someone says they're not a nut, they usually are.

[Savage Beast]

I know it, Blam. And I might even find out if Zecharia Sitchen is right. You'd better come with me. I'm about as good at the copying machine as Jane Fonda is.

[blam]

"I'm about as good at the copying machine as Jane Fonda is."

I don't 'get' the Jane Fonda part. (I'd be delighted to go with you. Boy, would I!)

[Savage Beast]

Did you see the movie Nine to Five? Jane had a hard time with the copying machine. While we're there, could we check out Cleopatra? I'm a little curious. (Or am I in the wrong century?)

[blam]

"Cleopatra? I'm a little curious. (Or am I in the wrong century?)"

I think you're in the wrong century. Did you know that we are closer to tha age of Cleopatra than she was to the builders of the pyramids?

[Savage Beast]

I hadn't thought of that.

Say did you see that thing about how the Sphinx dates to about 10,000 B.C. because it was weathered by water and not wind? That blew my mind. I started wondering if originally there was such a monument to each of the signs of the zodiak scattered over the earth and that that was the only one whose remains are still recognizable.

What were people doing for 100,000 to 200,000 years from the emergence of homo sapiens until the rise of Egypt (in full cultural flower) in 3,000 B.C.? Bumping around in the jungle? Scratching out a survival? Living in cities and civilizations? I don't think it took them that long to decide that one color's going to be red and another blue or that 2+2=4. If they were like we are today, their minds were working. But if they had advanced civilizations, where are the records and the remains? Can geological forces erase them that thoroughly? What do you think?

[blam]

I did see the 'thing' about the Spinhx being 10k years old.

"But if they had advanced civilizations, where are the records and the remains? Can geological forces erase them that thoroughly? What do you think?

I think they are all underwater from the ice melt from the last Ice Age. Hopefully the 9,500 year old underwater city off India and the one (hopefully) off the coast of Cuba will change history as we know it. There are undoubtdly underwater cities all over the world. The legend of Atlantis is just 'the tip of the iceberg', so to speak.

[blam]

....in fact, the Black Sea will prove to be an underwater 'city graveyard.'

[VRWC_minion]

Imagine the Florida recounts ? They would never end.

[Savage Beast]

Maybe some are under the Antarctic ice. The earth is pockmarked with impact craters; this was not known until recent satellite photos. Dinosaurs were unknown until the 19th century. Schliemann was right about Troy and Mycenae. I never bought that bit about Santorini's being Atlantis. Plato said it was in the Atlantic.

[Fintan]

I'd like to travel back to Sept. 3, 1967, approximately 3:30 PM.

I was 17. You figure out the rest.

[blam]

The first and only time that I had ever seen the name 'Fintan' was when I came on FR, that was until last night and I think I found the origin of your screen name.