Interviewing Dr. Ronald Mallett

Hello fellow time travel fans! I’m so sorry that I haven’t been updating lately, but I plan to remedy that. Right now we’re still plugging along with the editing, but I thought I would share with you some awesome news; earlier this month we had the chance to interview Professor Ronald Mallett, and it was so much fun!

Interviewing Dr. Ronald Mallett! 

For those of you who don’t know, Dr. Ronald Mallett is a theoretical physicist at the University of Connecticut. He’s most renowned for his paper that he wrote back in the early 2000’s that proves that theoretically, time travel to the past can be possible. Now he’s raising the funds to apply this theory in an experiment and potentially build a time machine. 

Dr. Mallett explains his theory that circulating light beams could create a space-time loop. 

How might that work? In a nutshell, it has to do with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, which says that matter and energy can affect gravity. And in turn, gravity affects space+time. Because light is a form of energy, you could use a ring of light using lasers to send neutrons back in time. And to go even a step further, you could spin the neutrons clockwise or counterclockwise, and that could be used as a binary code to send messages to the past.

Gravity affects space+time, just like in Interstellar. 

The day we got to the University of Connecticut, I was so worried that everything would fall through because there was a weather alert that a massive snowstorm was brewing. They were canceling flights, shutting down roads, and there was even a curfew installed for the night! But we got to spend a few hours talking with Dr. Mallett just before the blizzard hit. 

Getting some exterior shots... so much snow! 

We got to chat about the importance of science fiction, video games, coming out of the “time travel” closet, about the importance of having inspirational teachers, and most importantly, what inspired Dr. Mallett's to study time travel: his father. 

If you’re interested learning more about Dr. Mallett’s work and life, you can visit his personal website, or check out his memoir here. 

Stay tuned!

Gisella

P.S. Members of the Time Travel Society, we have an exclusive clip from the interview just for you! Check out our Kickstarter update. 

Carl Sagan, Interstellar, and Stigmas

Happy belated birthday Carl Sagan!

I’m late posting this, but in case you didn’t know yesterday was Carl Sagan’s birthday! I just wanted to write a really quick post because I’m such a huge fan! I have the original Cosmos in mp3 audio, and I love listening to it. Carl isn’t just a scientist, he’s a poet. He has an almost magical way of putting words together about this earth that sound so beautiful and awe inspiring.

Back in 1999, Carl did an interview with NOVA where he talks about time travel:

“Time travel into the indefinite future is consistent with the laws of nature. It's only travel backwards in time that is the source of the debate and the tingling sensations that physicists and science-fiction readers delight in.”

It’s really interesting to me because I find that there has been a stigma (perhaps still is) in the scientific community when addressing the topic of time travel. Even the incredible Stephen Hawking was at some point afraid about talking about it:

"Time travel was once considered scientific heresy. I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labeled a crank. But these days I'm not so cautious. In fact, I'm more like the people who built Stonehenge. I'm obsessed by time. If I had a time machine I'd visit Marilyn Monroe in her prime or drop in on Galileo as he turned his telescope to the heavens. Perhaps I'd even travel to the end of the universe to find out how our whole cosmic story ends.” 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1270531/Stephen-Hawking-backs-possibility-time-travel-millions-years-future.html

It has only been until fairly recently that things have started to change. There are more and more physicists today, such as John Cramer and Ronald Mallet, who have come out seeking to raise funds to conduct time travel experiments. This is why I find it really impressive that over 15 years ago, Carl Sagan had the guts to talk about this idea in a very realistic, candid way- and I truly believe his work has helped change the direction of how we view time travel today.

Here are two snippets of the original interview…

Your inquiries about space travel for Contact sparked a whole new direction in research on time travel. How does that make you feel?
I find it marvelous, I mean literally marvelous, full of marvel, that this innocent inquiry in the context of writing a science-fiction novel has sparked a whole field of physics and dozens of scientific papers by some of the best physicists in the world. I'm so pleased to have played this catalytic role not just in fast spaceflight but in the idea of time travel.

How do you feel being responsible for bringing time travel perhaps a step closer?
I don't know that I've brought time travel a step closer. If anyone has it's Kip Thorne. But maybe the joint effort of all those involved in this debate has at least increased the respectability of serious consideration of the possibility of time travel. As a youngster who was fascinated by the possibility of time travel in the science-fiction novels of H.G. Wells, Robert Heinlein, and others, to be in any way involved in the possible actualization of time travel—well, it just brings goose bumps. Of course we're not really at that stage; we don't know that time travel is even possible, and if it is, we certainly haven't developed the time machine. But it's a stunning fact that we have now reached a stage in our understanding of nature where this is even a bare possibility.

You can read the whole interview Carl Sagan did with NOVA here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/Sagan-Time-Travel.html 

Carl Sagan mentions Kip Thorne, who was one of the very first people to come up with the idea of using wormholes as a method of time travel. He’s also helped developed to concept for Interstellar, which, I’m hoping to see later this weekend! Here's a really cool interview with Kip Thorne and the science behind Interstellar. It's totally worth taking a look at!




I hope to be updating this blog more consistently from now on! The past couple of weeks after the Kickstarter campaign have been very busy as we organize footage, figure out logistics and get ready for the next phase of the documentary.

Thanks again, and as always, I would love to hear your thoughts!