Ira Pastor, ideaXme exponential health ambassador and founder of Bioquark, interviews Dr. Ronald Mallett, Professor Emeritus, Theoretical Physics, Department of Physics at the University of Connecticut.
Ira Pastor comments:
Time travel is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space, by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine.
Time travel is a widely recognized concept in philosophy and fiction and the idea of a time machine was originally popularized by H. G. Wells’ 1895 novel The Time Machine.
Is Time Travel Possible?
Forward time travel, outside the usual sense of the perception of time, is an extensively observed phenomenon and well-understood within the framework of special relativity and general relativity. Making one’s body advance a few milliseconds compared to another body has been demonstrated in experiments comparing atomic clocks on jets and satellites versus the earth.
As for backward time travel, it is possible to find solutions in general relativity that allow for it, in a theoretical system known as a “closed timelike curve” (sometimes abbreviated CTC). This is where the world line of an object (the path that an object traces in 4-dimensional space-time) follows a curious path where it eventually returns to the exact same coordinates in space and time that it was at previously. In other words, a closed timelike curve is the mathematical result of physics equations that allow to travel back to the past.
Dr. Ronald Mallett Researches Theoretical Time Travel
Our guest today who has been at the forefront of theoretical research in this area, and who has been developing some rather novel theories on the ways that light, specifically laser light, may be able to create CTCs, is Dr. Ronald Mallett, Professor Emeritus, Theoretical Physics, Department of Physics at the University of Connecticut.
With a BS, MS, and PhD in Physics from Pennsylvania State University, Dr. Mallett has lectured over the past few decades in such diverse areas as general relativity and gravitation, black holes, relativistic astrophysics, quantum cosmology, gauge theories, and time travel. He has published numerous papers on black holes and cosmology in professional journals.
Dr. Mallett’s papers related to his time travel interests (also known as the “Space-time Twisting by Light (STL)” project), include “Weak Gravitational Field of the Electromagnetic Radiation in a Ring Laser”, “Gravitational Faraday Effect Produced by a Ring Laser“, and “The Gravitational Field of a Circulating Light Beam.”
His breakthrough research on theoretical time travel has been featured extensively in the media around the world, including NPR’s This American Life, the History Channel, Science Channel, and Learning Channel.
He is author of Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality.
On this episode of ideaXme we will hear from Dr. Mallett:
About his background, how he developed an interest in physics, Albert Einstein, time travel theory. We’ll learn about CTCs, gravity, and light frame-dragging of time theories. What it is like in the area of physics to investigate such “science fiction” topics. His thoughts on various time travel paradoxes and retro-causality.
Credits: Ira Pastor interview video, text, and audio.
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If you liked this interview, be sure to check out our interview on Building a Synthetic Brain with Dr. Alice C. Parker!
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