It might have just been science fiction, but there has been a lot of speculation that time travel is possible if you can manipulate matter and energy to the point where you could create and manipulate worm-holes and things like that. So perhaps the disks you refer to could lead to time travel if they were, say, the density of neutron stars and rotating at relativistic speeds. Such things are so far beyond our capabiltity to test that it's easy for theorists to come up with crazy ideas that are mathematically possible but completely impractical.
The short answer is, don't hold your breath for real time travel, but it's cool to think about anyway!