Time Travel | National Geographic

ever since Ron mallet was a boy he harbored a dream of building a time machine today he is professor of physics at the University of Connecticut and is ready to share his secret with the world it's really such a powerful feeling to know that we're actually being able to manipulate space and time and it's exciting because this shows that we may be able to control time and that means that ultimately we may be able to control our destiny in a way that mankind never has been able to before mallets motivation began when his father died suddenly of a heart attack just 10 years old at the time and totally devastated mallet made a pledge if I could build a time machine then I could go back and see him again and maybe save this life for almost half a century and like many other scientists he has conducted his research in closed laboratories it's only been since my own breakthrough at the end of the 20th century that I finally allowed myself to come out of the time-travel closet so to speak if he is right the 21st century will see time travel make the leap from theory to reality mallets early work was hidden away in the Time Traveler's code he studied black holes particularly but always kept an eye on what was happening within the time travel of fraternity the early work of my colleagues that really inspired me was the work that that had been done in rotating black holes in wormholes and in cosmic strings all of these things lead to the possibility of time travel into the past what I was interested in was a mechanism something that could be used as a device that was different the common theme that unites rotating black holes wormholes in cosmic strings is gravity mallet search to find a new way to harness gravity in order to time-travel though light has no mass it does have energy mallet was convinced that he had to take an unorthodox step to build his time machine and I found that light could be used to control gravity and since gravity controls time then that meant that I could use light to control time and that's the basis of my inspiration in my theory mallet guarded his ideas before announcing his theory he had to make sure it had substance he wanted to find a way to replicate the frame dragging of a black hole in order to twist space-time around into a loof the answer was staring him in the face [Music] and I thought when if I can create the circulating beam of light then the circulating beam of light can lead to a twisting of space should lead to a twisting of space and if it does lead to a twisting of space then it should also lead to a twisting of time four months mallet worked on his equations he checked and double-checked the figures until he was ready to unveil his ideas to the world while cosmic strings and wormholes would require an advanced super civilization with the power of the galaxies at their fingertips mallet claims his time machine could be built not in the future but today what you're seeing are four intersecting laser beams that are forming a square in which the light is circulating around when the space is being dragged around by that in in addition to the twisting of space eventually in a real model you'll have a twisting of time as well this is a model of mallets time machine according to his theory the laser beams will create enough gravity to replicate the frame dragging of a rotating black hole some claim this theory is off-the-wall but Mallett insists his machine could create a tiny time loop the real size of the real device however is going to be only about the width of a human hair and rather than just having seven lasers like this model they'll be ten thousand mallet is now ready to step from model to Time Machine the time traveller in his miniature machine will be a subatomic particle think if we could warn ourselves of future catastrophes we don't need to send someone back if we could just send information back or if we could send back scientific information medical information let me think about that think about if we could send back a cure for AIDS a cure for cancer that's more significant than sending people back the boy who dreamed of travelling back in time to save his father's life might be on the verge of building a time machine but Mallett the physicist now accepts he'll never be reunited with his father time travel to the past would only begin the moment his time machine is switched on only time will tell if Mallett's machine is successful

Channel: National Geographic

Views: 520,301

Rating: 4.7518611 out of 5

Keywords: Science, Technology, Space, Phenomena, time, travel, machine, engineering, stephen, hawking, richard, gott, string, th, national geographicnational geographic, nat geo, natgeo, animals, wildlife, science, explore, discover, survival, nature, documentary

Id: DnLIxEso4rg

Length: 5min 46sec (346 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 09 2008