Ronald Mallett beloved father died of cancer which sparked his obsession with time-travel. Mallett read HG Wells’ The Time Machine and although entirely fictional, a German-Jewish physicist called Albert Einstein showed that by twisting space time around, it is possible in theory to make a connection from future to past. Step into this time loop, and you could emerge years later or earlier. Mallett became obsessed with the German scientist - who had died in 1955, the same year as his father. Mallett realized that the new way of thinking about gravity, space and time contained in the physicist's Special and General theories of relativity meant that a time machine was at least possible in theory. Mallett joined the U.S. Air Force, in the hope of being granted a military scholarship so that he could later study physics. His test grades were so good that he was fast-tracked into the USAF's electronics school. There, for the first time in his life, he encountered the soul-destroying racism that had driven his grandparents north 40 years before."The first thing I noticed," he writes, "were the signs, the likes of which I had never seen before.--'Whites only'/'No Colored'."There was talk of beatings and worse for black servicemen who strayed off base. Mallett made a vow to remain on base for the entire duration of his training, which included courses in electronics and computing. He also spent hours in the well-equipped library, devouring everything he could both by and about Einstein. After he was discharged, he won a place at Pennsylvania State University, and began a degree in physics. Eventually, in 1973, he won his doctorate, only the 79th black American ever to do so in this subject. Part of his thesis was an investigation into the theoretical possibility of using gravity to reverse the passage of time. In 1975, he was awarded a job as a professor of physics at Connecticut University - where he has worked ever since. He remains the only black physics professor in America. Despite the respectability of his CV, he still felt he couldn't discuss his ideas openly.
"I feared professional suicide," he says now.
But, as his work continued, the story got out. Mallett's time machine went public in 2001, when New Scientist magazine ran an article about his design, and TV appearances followed.
"Mallett isn't mad," the New Scientist article said. "None of the known laws of physics forbids time-travel. "In theory, shunting matter back and forth through time shouldn't be that difficult."Mallett thinks he can reverse time by using just a circulating beam of light. Light is energy, and energy can cause space time to warp and bend, just like gigantic spinning cylinders, he explains. In 2000, he published a paper showing how a circulating beam of laser light could create a vortex in space-time. It was, he says, his eureka moment. The details are complex, to say the least. But, in essence, Mallett believes it is possible to use a series of four circulating laser light beams swirling space-time around like "a spoon stirring milk into coffee". If you were to walk into this 'time tunnel' - which would resemble a large vortex of light a few feet across - you could emerge at some point in the past. He thinks he can build a prototype machine in the lab, using today's technology, with funds of just $250,000 (£120,000).
However, Prof Mallett is fussy about who gives him the money.
"We want non-military sources. I don't want to get to a certain point and get 'top secret' slapped over the project and have it taken away from us."There are several important things to realize about Mallett's time machine. For a start, it would only be possible to travel back in time to a point after the machine was first switched on. If you turned on the machine, on January 1 say, and left it running for three months, you could enter the machine in March and only travel back as far as January 1. So no trips back to the Middle Ages or to Ancient Rome. This would be staggering enough. Just think: a time-traveler could go back and meet himself. Or he could send back information into the past - including the results of horse races, stock market movements.
But consider, too, all the weird paradoxes that the time machine would create. You could come face-to-face with your past self, causing untold confusion. What, for example, would happen if you killed your past self? Would both versions of 'you' die at the same time? Mallet believes these paradoxes would not in themselves prevent the construction of such a machine. But there are plenty of skeptics. Some physicists think that the laser upon which his machine depends would need to be impossibly large or powerful. Others point to Stephen Hawking's 'chronology protection conjecture', which says that quantum effects may conspire to prevent the possibility of a time machine. But, while some physicists have questioned Mallett's approach, no one has yet proved with absolute certainty that the machine would not work. Mallett is now 62 years old. He still believes he will live to see the creation of the first time machine.
