The Daily Campus

Issue date: 8/28/08 Section: Focus

Media Credit: Dan Gindraux Dr. Ronald Mallett, professor of theoretical physics at the university, will be the subject of a feature film by famed filmmaker Spike Lee.

Dr. Ronald Mallett is a professor of theoretical physics here at the University of Connecticut. But his remarkable story takes him much further than the lectern and laboratory. From a humble beginning in the Bronx, Mallett has become an internationally known physicist and the best-selling author of the book "Time Traveler," which is slated to be adapted into a movie by acclaimed director Spike Lee. And if his biggest discovery bears fruit, Mallett may one day be known as the man who turned science fiction into reality: the father of the time machine.
Wednesday, The Daily Campus sat down with Mallett to talk about his story, his discoveries and the upcoming movie.


DC: A lot of students know we have a "time travel guy" on campus, but that's all they know. If you wouldn't mind - a quick introduction?

RM: I'm a professor of physics here on campus; my specialty is Einstein's general theory of relativity. The way I got into this area is really not very straightforward. In fact, it started with a tragedy early in my life.
My father was the center of my life; he was a television repairman in the Bronx, in New York. I was the oldest of four children and for me the sun rose and set on my father. Even though he worked very hard - he couldn't really talk to us - the problem was that he worked very hard, and played very hard and smoked very hard, and suddenly he had a massive heart attack. He was only 33 years old, and it was a shock to everybody because, you know, he looked robust. I was 10 and it caused my world to just collapse on itself.
I was completely devastated by his death, like I'd fallen into a black hole. But one thing I loved was reading. I loved reading science fiction, and about a year after he died, when I was 11, I read H. G. Wells' "The Time Machine" and that became my guiding light. I realized that that saved me, that if I could build this time machine I could go back and see him, be with him and maybe save his life. So that became my mission, but it was a secret mission because I knew that people were already worried about me - I was already depressed - so I just kept it to myself, but that became what I wanted to do.


DC: So, time travel. If you had to give someone the five-minute, condensed version of your discovery, how would it sound?

RM: I realized eventually that time travel was possible. A lot of people don't realize it, but Einstein had two theories: one was called the special theory of relativity and that theory essentially says that the faster you move, the more time slows down. So that's time travel into the future, but what I was interested in was time travel into the past, and to do that I needed Einstein's general theory of relativity, and that theory essentially says that the stronger gravity is, the more time is slowed down.
So we do know that gravity can change time and that's the key to my work. In ordinary physics, we know that matter creates gravity, but in Einstein's theory, not only does matter produce gravity; light produces gravity, too. If light can create gravity, and gravity can affect time, then light can affect time.
So what I found was that, by using a circulating beam of light - and there is a device that can create a circulating beam of light called a ring laser - it will actually do two things: It will cause empty space to become stirred and the stirring of that empty space will cause time to become warped into a loop. The analogy I like to use to think about how that works is: imagine a cup of coffee and if you think of the coffee as being empty space and the spoon as being the circulating light beam, then as you stir the coffee with the spoon the coffee starts swirling around, that's what the light does to empty space-it swirls around.
Eventually time will be twisted into a loop. You can move from the past to the present to the future, and then the future back to the past. So by stirring space, I can twist space and eventually twist time into a loop, and along that loop in time I can travel back to the past. That was my discovery.


DC: Is this an effect you'd be able to demonstrate any time soon?

RM: I'm a theoretical physicist. Einstein was a theoretical physicist. When Einstein came up with the equation 'E equals MC squared,' he didn't build the bomb. What I've done is I've come up with the basic equations which show how a time machine would work. What i need is an experimental colleague to actually [build the time machine] and I do have that-his name is Chandra Roychoudhuri. And he's setting up the experiment to verify my theory. So what we're doing right now is seeking funding. Just the basic startup is a quarter of a million dollars. What we're hoping is to be able to attract a large philanthropic donor to be able to contribute that much.
And one of the things that's happened recently that's going to be able to help us is a very major event that's happened in my professional career, and that's Spike Lee.


DC: And how's that coming along?

RM: Spike Lee has become interested in making my book "The Time Traveler" into a feature film, and he is really involved in doing it. He's already told me parts of the script and everything and it's definitely going to be happening. I'm extremely excited about that. It's a feature film, something like 'A Beautiful Mind.' I don 't know who the lead actors will be, and now that I'm under contract, I don't speculate about that, but I do know that it will be a feature film that will appear [in theaters]. When it will come out is something that I'm not quite sure about either.
For me, this is a very major thing, and so this will now bring my work to national attention. I feel that this will definitely lead to our getting the funding that we need.


DC: Did you find that early in your career you received any professional ridicule?

RM: No, and the reason why I didn't is that I didn't tell anyone. I didn't make my breakthrough until literally the end of the last century. What my work was based on was the study of black holes, the theories of the universe-cosmology-and it turns out that Einstein's general theory of relativity is the basis for black holes. I knew that if I studied black holes, I'd study how time was being affected. So that was essentially my cover story.
As a matter of fact, I came to a technical discussion of [time travel], it was 2002 at the International Association for Relativistic Dynamics, and one of the things that was very satisfying to me was that at the end of the talk, during the question and answer period, one of the giants in physics, his name is Bryce DeWitt, said, 'I don't know if you'll see your father again but he'd be proud of you.' So yeah, it's been very satisfying.


DC: How about questions about time travel that are less strictly physics-related? Folding universes and parallel universes and things?

RM: One of the questions I do address with the public is this notion of paradox. Like, there's a very famous one, called the grandfather paradox. You know, if you go back in time and keep your grandmother from meeting your grandfather-so they don't have your parents, and they don't have you. Well, the possible resolution of that comes from physics itself and it comes from the other power of physics which is quantum theory. In quantum theory, there's the possibility of parallel universes, that is universes very much like ours but different in some small way, and what this means is that if you actually apply quantum theory to the notion of time travel, it leads to the possibility that, if you go back to the past, you arrive in the past of the parallel universe and in that universe you could do something like preventing your grandparents from meeting each other. However, the universe that you've left is unaffected, so your grandparents meet just the way they did. So what it says is that you can go back into the past and change the past, but the past you change is not the past you came from.


DC: But once you enter that parallel universe, you'd just vanish from our universe.

RM: Right, nobody would see you any more. But that doesn't result in a paradox, it means you've simply left. One day, 'hey, whatever, where'd John go?' But it'd be up to you. You'd have to make the decision.


DC: Once you've got funding, how soon do you think we might be able to see this in action?

RM: What we're doing is we're not trying to send people back in time, that's extremely important to realize. We're trying to send subatomic particles and information. We're not even considering the notion of people. Maybe one day that'll happen. But if we don't see the twisting of space, there's no point in even going to the next stage.


DC: So we're not too worried about future Dr. Mallett running into this interview and screaming, "No, don't do it!"

RM: As I said, at best, we'll send signals back. And that's one of the things I hope will eventually happen with time travel is this notion of an early warning device. If we were able to warn ourselves about future catastrophes, for example, an earthquake.


DC: Even man-made disasters?

RM: Exactly. Or natural disasters. That, in itself, is worth exploring the possibility.


DC: So do you think you ever would have pursued a career in science with the passion that you did if you hadn't experienced the loss of your father?

RM: That's a very good question and I think it was that singular devotion that I had, to want to see my father again, that drove me and kept alive that passion that made me decide to do and become what I am. In fact, it's funny, in an article that came out in the San Francisco Chronicle, the writer actually said that in a parallel universe I'd probably be working with my father in a television repair shop, Mallett and Sons. It's very possible.


DC: Do you ever find yourself being pigeonholed as not merely a professional academic, a physicist but a particularly African-American physicist?

RM: Well, I don't see it as pigeonholing. I see it as being a role model. I want to be an inspiration to the general public. I see what I do as not only being important as far as time travel but in inspiring people to follow their dreams-people in general. But I also would like African-American children to know that there are possibilities that they have, in all domains, including physics and the sciences. So I hope I'm acting as an inspiration to African-American youth as well as the general public. For me to have a talented and gifted filmmaker like Spike Lee doing this, I know it's going to be entertaining but inspirational as well. An inspiration for the general public and African-American youths. For me, that's a good thing.


DC: Do you feel like there's a paucity of strong African-American role models in fields like academics in the popular media?

RM: There is. In the popular media, there is. What happens is that there are excellent African-American role models, but they aren't in the public awareness. The public is aware by having things on the silver screen. By having me on the silver screen, I bring into the whole public awareness something that people simply aren't aware of.


DC: Do you think that as a society we're ready to think about time travel as an actual possibility?

RM: I think that we will adapt to that. It's basically like air travel. People didn't even think it was a possibility, and if it were-what would we do? The thing is that human beings are very adaptable. And the question is whether we'll be able to regulate this new technology, to get the benefits of it and minimize the risks. But yes, I think we'll grow into it. With human beings, I don't know. But the technology that we need to do it with is accelerating at an incredible pace.


At this point, Mallett had to leave to go a meeting-a meeting to decide the technological future of the children of humanity, no doubt. We're thankful he was able to lend some of his time and wisdom to us, and look out for Spike Lee's adaptation of "The Time Traveler" at theaters in times to come.


John.C.Bailey@UConn.edu

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