Professor Says He Found Equation That Makes Time Travel Possible
In 1895, author H.G. Wells captured the imagination of his readers by having his protagonist, a Victorian English scientist, bravely climb into a time machine and set off into uncharted territory. Wells is credited with coining the phrase “time travel,” although the idea of exiting one timeframe and entering into another has intrigued humankind far into the misty past.
To this day, many still feel that it's entirely possible to traverse time if we could only discover how. But now, the time may have finally come: A prominent astrophysicist recently claimed that he now has the mathematics to make time travel a reality.
Here we are, a hundred years since the introduction of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, and science is closing in on time travel. Astrophysicist Ron Mallett, professor emeritus of physics, has been studying time travel long before embarking on his professional career.
Now in his 70s, he has at long last — at least theoretically — discovered a way to travel into the past. Putting his mathematical equation to work, he has come up with a prototype device with functionality that seems plausible, although he has yet to wow his contemporaries who are standing in the wings to see what comes next.
Ingenuity Sparked by Tragedy
Although Mallett’s work is tantalizing from a scientific perspective, his yearning to rekindle the past has been driven by a strong desire to reunite with his father who died from a heart attack when Mallett was only 10 years old. Regarding his father’s passing, Mallett said, “For me, the sun rose and set on him, he was just the center of things…Even today, after all of these years, there’s still an unreality about it for me.” This tragic event changed the course of his life, and maybe even the lives of humankind, especially if his invention bears fruit.Â
Shortly after his father’s death, the young Mallett came across a copy of H.G. Well’s novel The Time Machine, and after he read the book he was imbued with hope and a desire to conquer time through science.
Twisting Natural Forces of Light and Space
In 2015, Dr. Mallett said that “time travel could, in fact, become a reality, though perhaps on a very limited scale…My breakthrough was to realize that if gravity can alter time, and light can create gravity, then light can alter time. This leads to the possibility of a time machine based on laser light.”Â
Mallett’s prototype is based on his research of a circulating laser light device that’s capable of twisting space and time, enabling travel into the past or future. His success hinges on Einstein’s theory of relativity, as well as Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Einstein showed that time can be altered by speed. An example of this would be realized when traveling through space in a rocket that’s almost as fast as the speed of light. Time would considerably slow down in space, though while on Earth, many more years would have passed. Therefore, the faster you travel, the more time changes. This has much to do with gravity, as well, because time slows down when gravity becomes stronger.Â
The force of gravity, according to Einstein’s general theory of relativity is the bending of space by a massive object. “If you can bend space, there’s a possibility of you twisting space,” said Mallett. In the simplest terms, whatever affects space also affects time. The professor’s theory proposes that by twisting time into a loop it should be possible to travel from the future into the past, and then back to the future.Â
Mallett Sees the Light
We can add yet another factor into Mallett’s theory that time travel is possible: Light can also affect time by using a ring laser. In a CNN interview, he said that a certain type of gravitational field produced by a ring laser could possibly comprise a time machine based on a circulating beam of light. “Eventually a circulating beam of laser lights could act as a sort of a time machine and cause a twisting of time that would allow you to go back into the past,” he says.
While Ron Mallett has come up with the mathematics to back up his theory of time travel, he does admit to one huge problem. While it may be possible to send information back in time, (as of this writing) it’s only theoretically possible to send it back to the point at which the time machine is turned on.Â
Doubtlessly, a great deal of science fiction eventually manifests into reality — including travel through space, walking on the moon and landing on Mars, laser beams that cut through metal like a knife through butter, and so much more. Perhaps Ron Mallett — an astrophysicist with a lifelong dream of traveling through time — has come up with an equation that is sure to stand the test of time.
Mallett experimenting in his lab
The Chronovisor: The Vatican’s Mysterious Time Travel Device
While many regard H.G. Wells as a genius for inventing the idea of the time machine in his novel, “The Time Machine,” some believe he was revealing a top-secret capability. Since his novel was first published in 1895, thousands of books, articles, and videos have followed, documenting curious accounts of time travel and dimensions beyond the wildest of imaginations.
One of these works, Father François Brune’s 2002 book, “Le Nouveau Mystere du Vatican,” brings a forgotten time-travel device called the Chronovisor, back into the public eye — or at least into the minds of conspiracy theorists.
Brune, who learned of the device in the early 1960s, swears the Chronovisor exists. A day after he met scientist-priest Father Pellegrino Ernetti for the first time, the two were sailing along the Grand Canal of Venice discussing biblical interpretations, when Ernetti explained that theories and interpretations were unnecessary when one could see the truth for himself. He explained to Brune how the Chronovisor functioned, allowing the viewer to see and hear past and future events. The story of his full account is included in Brune’s book.
With a little digging, researchers will find the first mentions of the Chronovisor in a 1972 article published in the Italian magazine “La Domenica del Corriere,” entitled, “A machine that photographs the past has finally been invented.”
What is the Chronovisor and Who Allegedly Created It?
Belonging to the Vatican, the Chronovisor time machine is heralded as one of the papacy’s best-kept secrets. The device is said to be replete with three precious alloys, cathodes, dials, and levers, and it can display myriad historical events in biblical and Roman history. Acting as a sort of television, the Chronovisor has even supposedly verified the existence of Jesus Christ and broadcast his crucifixion.
The Chronovisor time machine is claimed to have been invented in the 1950s by a dedicated and secret team of Italian scientists, including physicists Enrico Fermi and Pellegrino Ernetti. Critics may take credibility issues with the fact that Ernetti, a Benedictine monk, eventually became a Catholic priest and a working exorcist.
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However, Enrico Fermi’s reputation is nothing to scoff at. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1938 “for his demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons.”
