Ronald Mallett
Ronald Mallett (born 1945) is an American theoretical physicist and professor at the University of Connecticut who claims to have designed a viable alleged time travel machine based on circulating laser light and the general relativistic effects of rotating energy fields. His work is motivated in part by a lifelong wish to return to the past following the death of his father when Mallett was ten years old.
Time Machine Design
Mallett's proposed device uses a ring laser — circulating beams of light — to warp spacetime and create closed timelike curves, the theoretical prerequisite for travel into the past. The design is grounded in Einstein's general theory of relativity, which establishes that sufficiently intense gravitational fields can curve spacetime, and in principle bend it back upon itself. Mallett argues that because light carries energy and energy curves spacetime, a sufficiently powerful ring laser would generate a detectable gravitomagnetic effect on the flow of time.
Black Holes and Spacetime
Mallett's broader research interests include black holes and their relationship to the structure of spacetime, as well as the theoretical limits imposed by general relativity on what kinds of alleged time travel devices are physically achievable.
Personal Motivation
Mallett has described his lifelong scientific pursuit as inseparable from his personal grief: inspired at age ten by reading H.G. Wells' The Time Machine after his father's death, he resolved to become a physicist and build a real one. His memoir Time Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality (2006) chronicles this journey.