Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Professor Ron Mallett And His Time Machine

Given what we currently know about the fabric of spacetime in the world bleeding edge theoretical physics, is Professor Mallett’s proposed time machine design the most likely to work?


By: Ringo Bones


Maybe it was on what we currently know about the latest experiments in the “bleeding edge” of theoretical physics that the fabric of spacetime could probably do what it wants with utter disregard to Einstein’s Special and General Relativity Laws, but if I were to bet a sizable amount of cash on a time machine design that works, I’d probably place all of my money on Professor Ron Mallett’s proposed time machine design that uses lasers to manipulate the fabric of spacetime. Given that it is by far the time travel device design that is most likely to work. But unfortunately, humanity has yet to meet a time traveler from the distant future.

Professor Mallett’s laser based time machine is an offshoot on his research on lasers and their noted effects on inertial reference frames (inertial reference frame manipulation technology?). Although the “time machine” prop used in Stargate: Continuum that looks uncannily like one of Professor Mallett’s table-top laser experiments scaled up might had made me partial to the idea of laser based time machines. According to Professor Mallett, a sufficiently powerful and manipulated laser assembly can be used to manipulate the inertial reference frame of the local spacetime in order to allow travel back into the past.

Anyone can easily tell that Professor Ron Mallett is a time travel “fan” because he drives a DeLorean inspired by one of the most famous time travel sci-fi movie of all time called Back to the Future. Professor Mallett’s fascination with the still unexplored science of time travel was primarily driven by his father’s untimely passing via a heart attack when professor Mallett was just aged 10.

Fans of time travel scenarios – either of science fiction literature and the latest on-going experimental research in the field of “bleeding-edge” theoretical physics -has always been eternally hopeful of the possibilities of practical time travel. It is not just because of the vast amounts of time travel related science fiction literature, it is also because science is yet to find physical laws that forbid the possibility of time travel – either into the distant future or back into our distant past.