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Dec. 23, 2015 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:09:31
Edition 234 - Time Travel Special

To end the year we talk time travel - with groundbreaking physicist Dr Ronald Mallett...

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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast.
My name is Howard Hughes and this is the last edition of 2015 of The Unexplained.
Really nice to know that you're there.
Thank you for the torrent of emails that I've had in recently.
I'm going to do a mega amount of shout-outs on this last edition of the year.
Sorry if I can't get round to your email.
If I read everybody's email out, it would probably take about an hour.
But I've cherry-picked some and I hope to do those.
And all the rest, please believe that I have read your email and that is the difference between me and mainstream media.
One of my emailers recently, a guy in the US, asked me, bearing in mind that I work for some of my time in mainstream media, how I get away with criticizing it.
Well, that's a very good point.
I am critical of some parts of it, but we mustn't let that take away from the work of the good people in this industry, many of whom I've been lucky enough to work with.
So I hope that kind of answers your question.
I think some of these things have to be said, and maybe one day I will say a little more on these subjects, but not right now.
If you want to get in touch with me or make a donation, and by the way, if you have made a donation recently, thank you very much indeed for your generosity.
Please keep the donations coming so that we can get into 2016 and develop this show.
You can go to the website theunexplained.tv.
That's the website for this show, www.theunexplained.tv, which was designed, created, maintained and honed by Adam Cornwell from Creative Hotspot in Liverpool.
And thank you, Adam, for another year's hard work on the show.
That's the place to go to make a donation, or if you'd like to send me a comment or a guest suggestion about the show, go to the website, theunexplained.tv, and you can follow the link and send me an email from there.
Please, when you do email me, tell me where you are, who you are, and how you use this show.
And any thoughts about it, suggestions about it, gratefully received.
It is a team effort, I like to think.
Let's do those shout-outs now.
Ahead of a very special guest and a very special subject.
The man we're going to talk with is Dr. Ron Mallet, whose name you may have heard people like Art Bell mentioned in the past.
His specialist subject, and he is a real scientist, is time travel.
You've been asking me for this particular subject for quite a few years, and I was determined to get a good guest on it, and I think we have now, for the final show of 2015, as we ourselves time travel into 2016.
So Ron Mallet, Dr. Ron Mallet, coming soon.
Let's do those shout-outs now.
Richard says, I hope you feel better after that terrible bout of flu.
He says that the flu is going around Trenton, New Jersey right now.
I think it's going around the entire northern hemisphere.
He took amoxicillin.
What am I on?
I'm on another one of the antibiotics.
I've got one more pill to take.
Alex in Albuquerque, good thoughts about seeing off the flu.
Thank you for those, Alex.
Andy Kalamalakis in Denmark, nice comments.
Thank you, Andy.
Jeff C. in New York, not happy with Marcus Allen from Nexus Magazine.
His comments on the U.S. space program.
C. Bradfield suggesting David Beadney as a guest.
That's going on the list.
Thank you.
Ben in Portland, Oregon, thank you for your guest suggestion.
Jay in New York says, I found your show only about a month or two ago and have listened to more than 30 shows already because my commute to work is around about an hour each way.
So that's just about long enough to hear a show.
Fantastic is all I can say.
Please keep doing what you're doing.
Jay, thank you very much.
From one of my favorite cities on the planet, New York.
Thank you.
Seth Breedlove in the U.S. Please, Seth, tell me more about your film work, will you?
I'd like to know.
Carmen, in the Lake District, thank you for your kind thoughts, Carmen.
Ian, in a place called Teddington, that I know pretty well, loves the show.
Thank you, Ian.
Carol Fox White in Kansas City, a new listener who also likes the show.
Good to hear from you, Carol.
Will, near Flandilo in Wales, is interested in something from Liverpool, the time slips, that allegedly happened in a place called Bold Street.
Now, look, this time of year, you know that I've lost my mum and dad, but many, many, many times when I was a small child, we did our Christmas shopping in and around Bold Street in Liverpool, a cobbled street that has a very special atmosphere.
And there are stories about there having been time slips there.
One very famous one, about a man who I think was a policeman or a retired policeman, who suddenly turned round in Bold Street and saw himself looking at a scene from the 1950s, complete with the cobbled street, the gas lighting, vans from that time painted with businesses that didn't exist anymore.
And then he turned round again and he was back to the present day.
Now I've heard about that, but I can't really get any further with it than the status of urban myth, because I can't find anybody who will talk about that.
So if you know anybody in Liverpool or whatever who will talk about the time slip, I would love to do that subject.
For many reasons, as you can imagine.
John Prindle in Portland, Oregon, your suggestion is in the works, John.
Thank you.
Thorne in Salt Lake City, Utah says, how about seeing if Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden will come on the show?
Bruce Dickinson interested in UFOs and extraterrestrials, so maybe he would be a good guy if I could get him.
Michael in Newbury, Berkshire says, thank you so much for the unexplained.
I began listening to you years ago when you were on Saturday evening with the show on a national radio station.
I'm an avid listener to your podcast.
One of my favourite unexpected guests has been Dave Paulidis, the man who talks about missing people.
One of my best guests is Dave.
I did have one question which I wondered if you might be able to address on the podcast.
Why are the books by Dave Paulidis so expensive?
Eye-wateringly expensive in the UK.
I will ask Dave about that, but I think part of that is to do with a transatlantic price penalty for these things.
If you try and get hold of a copy of Dr. Judy Wood's book about 9-11, I think I've seen them for as much as $400 US dollars.
And the cover price on the book, as she rightly told me, is $40 US dollars.
And that just about covers her costs.
So I do understand, Michael, about all of that.
And if you remind me, the next time I get Dave Paulitis on here, I will ask him about that.
Amanda McKee, interesting email.
Thank you, Amanda.
Matt Meller, thank you for your good suggestion.
Eric Arkendahl in Stockholm, Sweden says, keep up the talk about the Weather.
We Swedes talk about the weather as much as the Brits.
We're having a love affair with the Swedes in this country because we love their crime dramas.
There's one on the television now that's getting massive ratings called The Bridge.
It's so well put together, beautifully filmed, beautifully acted, and you forget as you're watching it that you're watching something that is subtitled.
The Bridge, if you're in the US, I don't know whether you get that, but it's well worth seeing.
Brenda wants to know more about a tinnitus medication recommended by another listener.
It was called Pelagonium, and Brenda, I haven't had a chance to check it out yet.
What with getting the flu and everything else?
There just hasn't been time.
Rakesh in Perth, Western Australia.
Do you remember there was a show I do remember in the Mighties called Strange but True, presented by a British TV presenter called Michael Aspel?
Apparently, Rakesh has just been watching the first few episodes.
I think we should be bringing back something like that in the UK.
And I would like to do it.
But I don't think there's much of a chance.
Matt Brandt in Manchester.
Matt Brandt, thank you very much.
Indeed, kind email.
Thank you for your comments.
Sue Bourne in Traverse City, USA.
Sue, nice to hear from you.
Paul Palmer in Qatar, thank you for your email.
Favian in Toronto, Canada says, I really hope you consider doing a live show with an audience.
Call-in participation one day.
I believe you could be the next art bell.
Happy holidays, says Fabian.
Fabian, happy holidays to you too.
Thank you.
Andy in your UK, thank you for your email.
Carol Fagui, also in Canada.
Good thoughts and thank you very much indeed.
Holly, who even at this moment may well be packing parachutes in Florida, which is what she does for a living.
Holly, my thoughts are very much with you and what you've been through.
Thank you for your email.
She would like a show about time travel.
Holly, we'll dedicate this show to you because it is about time travel.
Vincent Carnini says now that Art Bell is gone, you ought to see if you can replace him.
Okay, Vincent.
Daniel in Tampa, Florida says after hearing about Art Bell, I felt compelled to tell you, Howard, that if anybody could pick up where Art Bell left off, it is you, sir.
Thank you for all of the hours of listening enjoyment.
Daniel, thank you very much indeed.
Art Bell is the master, is he not?
Scott in Washington State, thank you for your email.
And finally, this time, many thanks for all of these fascinating interviews.
Says Robert Reichainius, I think is how you pronounce your name, because I think it's the Walloon side of Belgium, isn't it, that you're from?
Not the French side.
So that would be Rechainius, I think.
Tell me if I've got that wrong, Robert.
Robert says the unexplained is my absolute favourite podcast.
Isn't it amazing?
The number of people in the number of different places that we're reaching with this show.
It's very, very humbling when you consider how small it is.
It is just a great reflection on the modern media and the fact that if you want to do a thing these days, if you have a certain amount of ability and you learn the technology, you can do it.
You don't need any mainstream media, any big corporations, you can just get on.
And if you're good, you can be good.
Thank you very much for your support for me and my show during this year.
Let's get to the guest in the U.S. now.
Ronald Lawrence Ron Mallet is the man's name.
Born in March 1945, an American theoretical physicist, an academic, and an author, he's been teaching physics at the University of Connecticut since 1975, 40 years now.
And he is best known, which is what we're going to talk with him about today, for his scientific position on the possibility of time travel.
This man believes it's not science fiction.
This is real science.
So let's get to him now.
Dr. Ronald Mannet, Professor of Physics at the University of Connecticut.
Thank you very much for coming on The Unexplained.
Well, thank you very much for having me on your program.
I know you'd like to be known as Ron, so please call me Howard, Howie, anything you want to call me.
People call me all kinds of things, Ron.
I think Howard is fine.
Goes with the territory, I think.
I'm so pleased, especially as we are now so close to the end of the year that you've been able to make time for me.
I read about you with enormous fascination.
I actually read a posting online about you and then started getting up to speed about you and your work.
I have never, in all of the years of doing this show, which is now pretty much a decade, I have never come across anybody other than people who theorize about the idea of time travel.
I never have encountered anybody yet who actually claims to be working on something that will be able to affect it.
So you're pretty unique, I think.
Well, thank you.
It was a long journey.
I mean, it started with the death of my father, and his name was Boyd Mallett.
And he was the center of my life.
I was the oldest of four children.
And we grew up in the Bronx.
And my father was a television repairman.
And for me, the sun rose and set on him.
I'd idolized him.
And he, even though he worked very, very hard, we had time for the family.
He spent a lot of time with me.
He would give me scientific toys like crystal radio sets and the gyroscope.
And he was clearly intellectually oriented and culturally oriented too, I should say.
The thing is, is that he looked like he was a robust man.
He looked healthy.
And as I said, we enjoyed going to parks and movies.
The thing is, is that we didn't know he had a weak heart.
And he died unexpectedly of a massive heart attack when he was only 33 years old.
And I was 10.
Gee, Ron, that's no age at all, isn't it?
How on earth did a kid in the Bronx did a kid in the Bronx cope with a kick like that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it was.
It was too much for me.
I was 10.
And the thing is, is that he seemed impossible to me.
I was devastated.
And I went from being a really happy kid to being a rather depressed kid after that.
And I went on like that for about a year.
I think people were concerned about me.
And I really didn't care anymore about school or anything.
But the thing that changed everything for me was actually one of the great writers from the UK, H.G. Wells.
His famous book, The Time Machine, I came across a classics illustrated edition of that, and it changed everything for me because at the beginning of it, it said, this was the classics illustrated version of it.
It said, scientific people know very well that time is just a kind of space and we can move forward and backward in time just as we can in space.
And that changed everything for me because when I saw that it said we could move forward and backward in time, I thought, that's it.
If I could go back in time and see him again, then I could tell him what was happening and maybe change everything.
And that became my mission for me.
Now, the thing is, is that even though I was only 11 at this point, this was a year after he died, I was astute enough to know that people were already concerned about me.
And so I probably wouldn't be a good idea to tell them I wanted to build a time machine to see him.
So I kept it as a secret.
And I have to say that I did that through most of my life.
But I knew that there was something missing.
And I tried as a kid to put something together that I thought looked like the time machine on the Classics Illustrated.
And of course, it didn't work.
But I remember it said in the magazine that scientific people know very well.
So I knew there had to be science behind it.
And fortunately for me, about a year after that, when I was about 12, I came across the second book that changed my life.
I should mention that after my father died, the family plunged into poverty.
It was devastating.
I don't know how my mother did it.
As I said, I was the oldest of four children.
And I was, you know, at the time of my father's death, 10, and the youngest was four.
And my mother was only 30.
I mean, you know, now these are kids, you know.
I mean, these are circumstances, aren't they, Ron, that either make or break a person.
And in your case, it made you, but it sounds like it was touch and go.
Oh, it was touch and go.
It really was touch and go.
The thing is, is that it was very difficult.
And I'm not going to go into all that detail because, I mean, as a matter of fact, people might be interested to know that I have written a book that's both an autobiography as well as a science, popular science book.
It's called Time Traveler, a Scientist's Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality.
And the book is in paperback from Amazon.com.
And incidentally, there's a U.S. and a British edition of the book.
And that will go tell people much more detail.
But the essence is that I had a very serious book habit.
I needed to read.
That's how I kept my sanity, too, was just by reading.
And the thing is, is that I used to go to the Salvation Army where I could get paperback books for five cents.
And I saw the second book that changed my life.
It had a picture of Einstein on it.
And I knew that Einstein was this great genius.
And right next to Einstein was an hourglass.
So I knew from the cover of the book that it must say that Einstein had something to do with time.
So I got it.
And of course, I didn't understand most of it.
I didn't have the background.
It was a popular book.
But the thing is, I did pick up the essence that Einstein said, that the river of time, the flow can be altered.
Time is not fixed.
And that changed everything for me because now I knew that science was behind it, that if I could understand what Einstein meant by being able to change time, then that might lead to the real possibility of time travel.
So Einstein became my second obsession, I'd say.
I wanted to learn everything about that.
It must have been difficult for you, Ron, because especially in that era.
I mean, listen, in any era beyond about 10 years ago, when people started becoming a little more open-minded, I think, you know, when we were kids, people were very straight in their thinking.
They tended to regard science fiction as science fiction, and that's where it stayed in its box.
Anybody who thought beyond and outside that box was just, well, plain crazy in some people's estimation or simply wrong.
Yeah?
That's exactly it.
I mean, it was.
I mean, that's precisely it.
I mean, and I knew that.
The thing is, is that, and I wanted to be taken seriously.
I mean, college was not something that was, I knew I was going to have to go to college if I was going to understand Einstein.
But for me, that was not in the picture because we were poor.
So I actually, after high school, I joined the military, U.S. Air Force, and I used the GI Bill after I got out.
That's where I went to Penn State, and I got my bachelor's, master's, and PhD in physics.
Right.
That was a scheme, wasn't it?
I mean, people in this country, the UK, are not familiar with that, but I think I know what that was.
That was a scheme where if you did your military service and you wanted to study beyond it, they made that possible for you.
That's exactly right, Howard.
That was it.
In fact, it changed the life of many, many people.
In fact, my father, after the Second World War, he actually used the GI Bill.
He was a battlefield technician, a medical technician in the Second World War.
And he used the GI Bill to go to a two-year technical school.
That's how he became an electronic technician.
The thing is, is that, and as you said, it's what they did in the U.S. in order to encourage young people to go in the service and then encourage them to further their education afterwards.
And I did that.
I used that.
And it was a godsend, I have to say.
And the thing is, is that I used it, I specialized in Einstein's theories, Einstein's theory about gravity and about the black hole.
But I didn't tell anyone even along at that time, you know, all of my colleagues.
The problem was, is that I had two different problems going on.
One, I knew that people were highly skeptical of the notion of time travel.
The second was, is that I was African American, and there are very few African-Americans in the U.S. And the thing is, I wanted to be taken seriously.
So I knew that if I specialized in things like black holes, which were considered to be a crazy idea, but considered to be sort of legitimate crazy rather than time travel, that I could learn more about time travel because black holes affect time.
But at the same time, the work would be taken.
I could have a serious body of work built up.
And I was right.
I mean, that's exactly the way in which things went.
You played this very astutely, didn't you?
Because you couldn't have gone to university and said, I want to study time travel.
And you had to find a specific way of doing that.
And you did exactly that.
Yeah, no, that's it.
I played the game.
I mean, I knew how the game needed to be played, and that's how I played it.
And the thing is, is that, and as I said, black holes, I should remind people that a black hole is nothing but a star that has collapsed because it's used to its internal fuel.
And as it collapses, the gravitational field around the star becomes greater and greater and greater.
It becomes so great that at a certain point, the light that tries to escape from the star gets pulled back to the star.
And so since all the light that tries to get out gets pulled back, if you're standing outside the star, you see nothing.
That's a black hole.
Black hole is just simply a star that's collapsed to a point where gravity pulls all the light in, and all you see is just sort of a black hole.
And it wouldn't look, if you could see it, it would look like a black sphere, actually, in space.
But it turns out that it also affects time.
It turns out that if you get close enough to a black hole, time begins to slow down.
So if you think about it, when I talk about time slowing down, I'm not talking about just time for a mechanical clock.
I'm talking about time for any process.
For example, your heart is a clock, so your heart would slow down.
You wouldn't notice this, by the way.
People outside, however, would see as you got closer to the black hole, they would see your heart rate metabolism slow down, which means that you would age less.
So if you go close enough to a black hole, for you, maybe it would appear as though only a few hours are passing.
Whereas for everyone else outside of the region of the black hole, centuries could be passing.
So in a way, a black hole acts as a natural time machine.
So in one respect, that's a fascinating thing to observe.
But the difficulty is, how do you replicate that effect here on Earth?
Ah, exactly.
That's exactly it.
And that was the thing.
That was it.
So I was learning more and more about Einstein's theory about this.
But the question that came up was, how can I replicate this?
How can I do something like this?
And it turns out that if you're dealing with a rotating black hole, not only can you slow time down, but you can actually make, you can actually twist time into a loop.
And so it was known by physicists that if you went into the region of the black hole, rotating black hole, you could actually potentially go back in time.
So once again, there was a big hint that this was the right direction.
Now, it's funny how these things play out, because when I got out of, when I got my PhD, I wasn't able to go directly into a university.
It was during a recession period.
This was in the 70s here in the U.S. And it was hard to get a job, a university job.
And my first job was in industry.
I actually did not work on black holes in industry, of course.
I was a research scientist working on lasers.
I was working for a company called United Technologies and a group within that called Pratt & Whitney.
And they were interested in having me use lasers or they wanted me to theoretically model the effectiveness of using lasers to drill holes in turbine blades.
And did you know, Ron, at that stage that lasers would hold the key to your time travel research?
Absolutely.
I had no clue at all.
And at the time, I thought, oh, this is taking me off from my goal.
You know, I'm really, you know, wandering around here in the wilderness.
I mean, even though I was doing physics, I wasn't doing the physics that was going to get me in the right direction.
And you're right.
That's interesting in the way in which life happens that way.
It turned out that that was actually going to be a key because later, when I was doing my research towards the end of the last century, I actually had some problems with my heart.
And it was interesting.
It's almost like the sort of situation with my father.
And I had to take a leave of absence from the university.
That turned out to be more beneficial in a way than I could ever have imagined, because for the first time in my career, I was now totally isolated.
I had six months in which I had no external responsibilities at all.
And I could concentrate wholeheartedly on this problem.
And I took it apart and I started looking at it again.
And I remembered that there was a device that, and I came across this paper that said that in Einstein's theory, it turns out that not only matter can create gravity, can affect gravity, but light can too.
In Newton's theory, only matter can create gravity.
And that sounds strange that light could create gravity because light doesn't have mass.
But you could actually kind of get an idea of how it might because even though it has only energy, remember the famous equation equals mc square?
Well, that means that light could have almost an equivalent type of mass.
It's more complicated than that, but something like that.
And that means that it could have a gravitational field.
Now, when I was at United Technologies, I remembered there was a device that was called a ring laser.
This was a device, a real device that creates a circulating beam of laser light.
And the thing is, is that you can actually create this by bouncing light off of mirrors.
You can actually get laser light to go around in sort of a circulating pattern.
And this is what this device did.
Then I connected it all.
I said, wait a minute.
Gravity can affect time and light can create gravity.
Then light can affect time.
That was my breakthrough.
And I realized that here was a device that could create circulating beam of laser light.
And if you create a circulating beam of laser light, isn't that something like the rotation of an object, like a massive black hole, so that maybe a circulating beam of laser light could actually twist space and then twist time into a loop.
And that could allow you to go back into the past.
And what I did was I actually worked out, I solved Einstein's equations for that.
I actually had to work that out mathematically.
And to my surprise, that's exactly what happened.
I published a paper, has a technical title of the weak gravitational field of the electromagnetic radiation in a ring laser.
And I published it in a well-known physics journal called Physics Letters.
And it was my breakthrough.
I was able to actually show that circulating beam of laser light could twist empty space.
And this twisting of empty space could lead to twisting time into a loop.
If you can imagine a cup of coffee, okay, and imagine that, think of the coffee in the cup as being like empty space.
And think of your spoon as being like a circulating light beam.
What happens when you use the spoon and stir the coffee?
The coffee starts swirling around.
That's what happens when you use the circulating light beam.
In other words, the circulating light beam will actually cause empty space to swirl around.
You can create a sort of a vortex in the empty space, just the way you could create a vortex in your coffee by stirring it.
Now, you might say, how do you see that?
Because if it's empty space, how do you see that?
Well, come back to the coffee.
Suppose you drop, let's say, a coffee bean into the cup.
Then as you stir the coffee around, the coffee is going to drag the coffee bean around.
So you could actually see the effect of stirring the coffee by just looking at how the coffee drags the coffee bean around.
The thing that plays the role of the coffee bean in this setup would be a subatomic particle called a neutron, which, as you know, is a part of every atom.
If you drop the neutron into the empty space and you turn on the circulating light beam, then as the circulating light beam is dragging the space around, the space will actually start dragging the neutron around.
So even though you can't see directly the empty space being swirled around, you can see that.
You can see the effect.
You can see the effect.
I can see the effect.
Exactly.
But this is groundbreaking stuff.
What was the reaction to your paper?
Oh, it was, people thought it was very, you know, in fact, that was actually the beginning of my being major attention because what happened is that a colleague of mine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor was really impressed by the paper, and he invited me to give a major talk there.
And it turns out the University of Michigan has quite a reputation, and it's monitored by a lot of the news wires.
And in particular, it was monitored by a news wire from England, a magazine, a major international science, popular science magazine called New Scientist, picked up about my lecture and about the paper.
And Michael Brooks was the science editor at that time.
And he contacted me.
And we actually, he decided to do a cover article about me on new scientist.
And I still remember that was May of 2000.
That was May of 2001.
And that's when things really broke because one of my colleagues here at the University of Connecticut said, well, now you're going to be famous.
And what happened the next, the day before, I only had a couple emails.
The next day, when I turned on my computer, I had page after page after page of emails, literally from all over the world.
And that really was the beginning.
And as I said, it actually came out of England initially.
This is good news.
I read somewhere, though, Ron, that you also said that until 2001 or before 2001, you were very cherry, very wary about coming out about all of this.
That's right.
In fact, the way I refer to people is that when that happened, you know, I finally had to come out of the time travel closet because it was, you know, but at that point, I felt safe enough to, because at that point, I was a full, tenured, full professor.
And you're kind of almost bulletproof at that particular point.
So I decided that it was now safe.
And the thing is, is that it turned out that the science behind my work was taken seriously because it was anchored in Einstein's work.
And that's key.
It's important to understand that my work is anchored in Einstein's general theory of relativity.
That's why I take it seriously, as well as my colleagues.
Was anybody else working on this, Ron, at this time?
No, no.
Well, I have to say now, when it comes to time travel in general, yes, there were other physicists who were looking at the possibility of time travel based on Einstein's theories.
And I tell people when I'm giving lectures that any work that is based on Einstein's general theory of relativity, or his theories of relativity, period, especially, or general theory, those can be taken seriously.
If it's not, then one should be highly, highly skeptical because Einstein's theory is grounded.
In fact, we know the predictions of Einstein's theory have been proven again and again and again.
And that's a solid ground.
But to give you an example of other people who are working on the problem of time travel based on Einstein's theories, this Kip Thorne at Caltech in the U.S. looks at the problem of using wormholes.
And in fact, part of that was in this recent movie, Interstellar.
In fact, Kip Thorne was the technical advisor for that.
Another person is Richard Gott at Princeton.
He's looking at cosmic strings.
Now, but notice what I said about these.
These are all things that are out there.
It's almost like the rotating black holes.
They are things that, you know, are cosmic.
In other words, we're not sure how one could produce a wormhole.
And cosmic strings were created at the beginning of the universe.
But all of these things are what I was interested in was something that could be done in a laboratory scale, that you could actually manipulate time in a precise way.
Well, that was 2001.
What did you do about it next?
Because you must have been absolutely itching to take it to the next level and next stage.
What did you do then?
Well, the thing is, is that that first paper showed that you could twist empty space.
The second paper I published showed that this twisting of empty space would twist time into a loop, and that would allow time travel back into the past.
Now, you have to remember that I'm a theoretical physicist.
My work, Einstein was a theoretical physicist, and other people like Heisenberg and Planck and other physicists.
But in physics, there's a very precise division of labor between experimental physics and theoretical physics.
Rutherford, who was the one who discovered the planetary model of the atom, for example, he was an experimentalist.
And so the two work together, but they are separate divisions.
You have to have the equipment to prove that.
And the thing is, is that's where experimental physics comes in.
It turns out that I was fortunate enough to have a colleague whose name is Chandra Roy Chowdhury, who he's not a laser, he's not a specialist in relativity.
He's a laser specialist.
And he became very interested in experimentally demonstrating my prediction that circulating beam of light could twist empty space.
And so he decided to join me in this particular quest.
But now the next thing that comes after that is buying the equipment.
And that is where one of the most fortunate things that's happened to me has been very recently, just since November, and this is a major breakthrough.
I was asked to join the advisory board of a company called World Patent Marketing.
And this was extremely fortunate for me.
This company, they are bold visionaries and risk takers and who go where science and technology and the big rewards are.
And at this stage in my career, I needed to have a company that was interested in giving us the funding that we needed to do this.
And this was great because I was very happy to partner with a serious company whose goals and visions were like mine.
Did they ever tell you, have they told you, why they would want to do this, why they'd be interested in time shifting?
As a matter of fact, that's exactly.
The thing is, is that it turns out that there are, it's more than just simply manipulating time.
Remember, I said that what I did initially was to show that you could actually use circulating light to manipulate space, to twist space.
And then you could also use it to twist time.
Now, it turns out that manipulating space has extremely important consequences.
You know, right now, communications, what we do is we move information through space.
And this goes back to you might say all the way back to the Pony Express.
Every means of communication that we've had up to the present time has depended on moving information through space.
What my work does is takes things to a whole new level because now not only would you be moving information through space, but you would be moving information with space.
In a way, you might think it's almost like putting communications on warped drive.
Because using another analogy, imagine that you're sitting in a tub of water and you throw the bar of soap through the water from one side of the tub to the other.
But now imagine that, in addition to that, you push the water itself.
You can see what's going to happen.
The soap is going to have a boost.
Not only is it going to be moving through the water, but since the water itself is moving it, that's going to be extra.
And so this is the same thing that's happening here.
So it's almost like closing up an envelope, is it?
If you've got like a gap between here and Mars, and you're sending a communication from Mars, if you can find a way of closing the envelope, bringing those two disparate poles together somehow, using some technique to do that, then communication happens quicker.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And the thing is, is that this whole idea of being able to have a whole new level of communication would take things, our technology, to a whole new level.
And this is one of the things that they're interested in is the, this could revolutionize things.
I mean, I don't want to overstate it, but, you know, we consider ourselves as a society that lives by information, you know, transfer.
And if we're able to transfer information this way, and not only that, but the very processors within computers themselves move data from one place to another.
If you were able to find a way of actually moving the space in which the data is being transferred, then you would have processors that would far exceed anything that we have today.
So that's one of the aspects they're interested in on one side, but they're also interested in the time travel possibility.
And so both of these things have potential applications.
I mean, I don't, I don't, I mean, it's hard to overstate that it would affect worldwide communication.
And one of the things is, is that, you know, in my country right now, in fact, not just my country, but in the world, we're worried about defense.
And the thing is, is that, and I should mention, I was, you know, an ex-military person, and I think that this would have, would affect military applications as well.
So it would make things more secure in very many ways.
So this is the reason why they're interested.
And you can imagine with time technology, if we could warn ourselves of future tragedies like tsunamis and terrorist attacks, things like that, it would be a game changer.
And what do you say on the philosophical question, away from the scientific question just for a second, Ron?
You know, those people who will say that the natural order of things is the natural order of things and you cannot mess with it.
In fact, you mess with it at your peril.
If you went back, and I'm sure all of us would want to go back to just before 9-11 and stop those awful people who did that vile thing, but you would be interfering with the course of history, wouldn't you?
And that could have all kinds of consequences down the track.
Oh, and you have hit something that's very, very important from an ethical standpoint.
And that is going to be something that is...
It would have to be something, the technology itself eventually would require worldwide cooperation.
And because this is something that is not, and one would not have, you know, it's important to realize that this type of thing would have to be monitored.
Any type of new technology has to be monitored.
And the consequences of it would have to be monitored.
It would set up a whole new industry, a whole new way of doing things that would have to be controlled.
It would have to have worldwide cooperation.
But it's also important to realize that with any new technology, if it can be done, it will be done.
The question is, is that how do we deal with it once it is done?
And that's why it's important to even start thinking about this problem now.
Yeah, because once you have the technology, the genie is out of the bottle.
Exactly.
And Einstein's theories lead to the real possibility.
This is not science fiction anymore.
We're talking about the real possibility.
Although it is going to be expensive.
I mean, that's why World Patent Marketing and I are working towards, and this is going to sound like a lot of money, $500 million to fund the research and technology needed to make all of this happen.
And that may sound like a lot, okay?
It does.
Right.
But the thing is, is that the sheer idea of moving information with space and being able to manipulate time, these are major things.
And that's actually on a technological level.
That's actually not 500 million, isn't that plotted?
Now, of course, we're talking about different stages that need to be developed along the way.
And so those stages would be developed as we're working towards.
Sure.
Well, if I Had deep pockets and a great big bank account, which many times of the day I wish I did have.
And I wrote you out a check right now for $500 million.
What could you deliver to me, and in what time scale would you deliver that?
Okay, that's another good question.
The thing is, is that the timeline would depend on the progress of the science.
What we have to demonstrate first is that we can actually manipulate space.
And just the outlay for that is going to probably be, you know, just a few million, probably, but that's just to set up the company that would be needed to do that.
And we're thinking of space-time technologies.
The thing is, is that that, the time, probably, we're talking maybe 10 to 20 years.
10 years for the space twisting, 20 years to twist time.
But that's not long for science.
Let me give you an analogy here.
In fact, it's more than an analogy.
It's real.
You heard of the Large Hadron Collider.
Yes.
That's in, okay, CERN.
Now, the prediction of this particle called the Higgs particle, sometimes called the God particle, that prediction was made back in the 60s, mind you, okay, by theoretical physicists.
The thing is, is that it took 10 years, and I'm not talking, this didn't happen immediately, this was happening towards the end of the last century.
It took 10 years at a cost of $10 billion to create a device whose only purpose is to smash subatomic particles together with enough energy to create a Hicks particle.
Now, think about that.
$10 billion to smash subatomic particles together to detect a new particle.
And so when you put it in that perspective, $500 million to change our entire type of communication and to manipulate time, I think, is a bargain.
It's a drop in the bucket.
Why, you must have wondered this yourself many, many times, I'm sure, Ron.
Why is it that governments like my own government here in the UK, your government there, have been willing to get behind the Large Hadron Collider and pour that huge, ridiculously vast sum of money into it?
But they are a little more reluctant and leaving it to the private sector to fund your work?
Well, two things.
One, the United States, in fact, did decide that they couldn't do it alone.
They, in fact, there was something to call the superconducting supercollider.
People may have forgotten that, but that was actually the United States' original version of the Large Hadron Collider.
The superconducting supercollider would have been our Large Hadron Collider.
But it turned out that the U.S. government decided that it was just much too expensive for them to do it.
So that's why, in a sense, they partnered with other countries to eventually do it that way.
And that was the practical reason that they had for doing it.
Would you like to be able to do your research in the same way?
Well, the thing is, is that for me, I like this is the reason why World Patent Marketing is so important to me.
Number one, they are a business organization.
This is something that allows me to feel comfortable because one of the problems with working with the government is, and it's an important aspect of it, but it has to do with security.
And the thing is, is that I want to be able to work on this, but I want to be able to share with the public what it is that I'm working on.
I can't tell you the number of letters that I get every day.
In fact, today I got several in which people were asking, you know, what's going on at these, they think that there's something going on at these secret government projects.
Some of them have exotic names like the Montauk Project and so on.
I don't know if you ever met him or spoke to him, but talked very credibly about all of this.
What similarities are there between the work that you've been doing and that work, which appeared to be electromagnetic?
Yeah.
Well, number one, even though it was electromagnetic, their work had to do with degaussing.
I don't know if you remember the real background to the thing, but...
Yeah, that what make it actually, you might say, its magnetic signature disappear.
That was the notion, okay?
Because by degaussing, what you do is you actually create a magnetic field that won't, so that the ship won't attract magnetic minds.
So effectively, you make the ship invisible to actually magnetic minds.
That was the idea, not to make it actually, you know, really physically.
And the degaussing process was something that was going on.
Now, here's the difference between science and supposition.
The thing is, is that this Philadelphia experiment was supposed to have been something that had happened one time as a fluke associated with this process, this magnetic degaussing thing, in which the ship disappeared and appeared at different times and everything like that.
The hallmark of real science is two things, verifiability and reproducibility.
That's extremely important.
We have no idea if that really happened or what happened because, number one, it's never been verified.
And number two, it's never been reproduced.
The work that I'm talking about, for example, was published in a standard referee journal.
The equation that I have that talks about how time is twisted, okay, and how space is twisted.
There's a basic equation that's in very simple equation for the twisting of space by a circulating beam of light that I predicted by solving Einstein's equations.
What's interesting is that my book has been translated into Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese.
The thing is, is that I can't read any of those languages.
However, if you go to the relevant pages in any of those books, the equation with the twisting of space by a circulating beam of light looks identical in every single language.
What does that tell you?
What I'm talking about is work that is based on solid science, solution of Einstein's equations, and that it's universal.
In other words, any scientist anywhere could try to reproduce my results, and they would come up with the same equation.
And if they wanted to do the experiment, they actually have the blueprint for how to do it.
In other words, the work that I'm doing is both verifiable and reproducible.
That's real science, number one.
The other thing is that what I'm talking about is the flow of electromagnetic radiation.
That's not the same thing.
Light is made up of oscillating electric and magnetic fields, and that's what's creating gravity.
This Philadelphia experiment, they didn't even know what it was that was happening or why it was happening.
And as I said, to this day, it's never been able to be reproduced or verified.
Okay, are you comfortable, Ron, that maybe because your work has been made public in this way and translated so widely, are you comfortable with the thought that some guy maybe in Moscow or Shanghai is working on this now and might actually beat you to it?
Not really, because the fact is, is that, as I said, it requires that you have a company or you have the wherewithal, a visionary group that's willing to fund it.
Remember what I said, the costs we're talking about here.
We're not talking about something that someone's going to be able to go into their garage and do.
You know, I have to mention that Back to the Future is really one of my favorite science fiction movies.
And I have to say, science fiction is important because it stimulates the imagination.
But in no way are you going to be able to do this on the cheap?
But of course, if the Chinese government, and let's not single out the Chinese government, but say the Russian government, the Chinese government, the Koreans, if they decided to get $500 million together, that's not difficult for a government to do.
They could do this.
If that's right.
You're quite right.
If they decided to do this, then what we're talking about is open science.
And there's absolutely nothing that I could do about it except to hope that we get there first.
So you're in a bit of a race, aren't you?
Well, that's it.
And World Patent Marketing is willing to be in the race with me.
And that, as I said, is really extremely important.
I'm not sure if you, you know, it's easy for people to go online to find out more about the company, but it's a major, highly respected organization that has worldwide connections.
And the fact that they're willing to invest in this means that they're taking it seriously.
So we are in a bit of a race, but I feel that because of the fact that I have a lot of other aspects of this that I've been working on, that we will get there.
Let's make this very clear, Juan, if I may.
And I should have asked you this before.
The work that you're doing is only about going back in time.
Is that right?
Oh, no.
It can go.
No.
It goes in both directions.
Right.
And it's actually easy.
In fact, we'll be able to go forward sooner.
When we began to show that the twisting of space can occur, we'll be able to use that right away for sending things into the future.
So, no, that's going to be actually something that's going to be happening much sooner, as a matter of fact.
So, no, this work is time travel both to the future as well as the past.
And as I said, sending the information to the future would be actually simpler once we can demonstrate that we can twist empty space with circulating beam of light.
You yourself said that there are...
So you would need some international authority to deal with this.
Has anybody been in touch with you at this stage because you're getting closer and closer to this to say, you know, we need to be kind of putting in a measure of control here?
Has anybody phoned up from one of the alphabet agencies to say very interested in your work, Ron?
No, not really.
I mean, people from the Security Exchange Commission, I think, might have been interested.
I think we might have gotten communications from them.
I never even thought of that.
The ability to manipulate or change financial markets, that in itself is a whole subsection of the things that you could achieve, both good and bad.
Well, not only that, but just with twisting space, the fact that you could get communication faster.
I mean, that is huge.
Imagine if you can just get information just a few, you know, milliseconds sooner than anyone else.
That's extremely important.
I mean, and as I said, that would be important on financial markets.
That would be important in military applications.
So just twisting space in itself is going to be important.
Fortunately for me, as I said.
No, no, I was going to say, fortunately for me, I'm not going this alone.
That's why, as I said, I'm very happy that World Patent Marketing is in this with me because of the fact they have the business acumen And they also would be the ones who would be able to deal with all of these other issues.
I could concentrate on the science.
They could concentrate on the marketing and having to deal with these other aspects.
But you're going to need their money, yeah?
Oh, absolutely.
And how much, Sheila, how deep are their pockets, Ron?
This is a big project.
How deep are their pockets?
Well, they're very deep.
And as I said, they're not going to be, you know, they're raising.
There's going to be a certain investment they're going to make.
And I can't disclose that.
But the thing is, is that in addition to the investment that they're going to make, the initial outlay that get things going, this is going to be actively raising money.
And that's why, as I said, this is going to be unique because we're going to be trying to raise money on two levels, both from the financial community, but from the general public.
Remember, I said that there's these other so-called top secret projects that people have been intrigued about and have said, how come the government isn't telling us about the Phoenix project and all of these other?
The thing is, is that they don't even know what's going on.
Here, in a sense, people will now be able to participate in the process.
They will know what's happening as we are developing it.
So for the first time, they will no longer feel like they're on the outside looking in.
They're going to be able to be part of this.
And that part of this that they're going to be able to do is going to no longer, they're going to have to feel like we're being kept out of this by the government.
So World Patent Marketing feels that they'll be able to, in addition to their own contribution, financial continual community and the general public to make this project go forward.
I can feel, it's palpable from just the tone of your voice, that you're massively enthusiastic and very excited about this.
And it's communicated itself to me because I feel that way too, having talked to you.
In 2016, as we stare down the barrel of this new year, what steps will you be making to get this work off the paper and into the lab?
Well, the thing is, is that right now, I'm working with Scott Cooper, who's actually the CEO of the company, and he's also the head of what's known as the Cooper Foundation.
And we're hoping that at the beginning of the new year, we will be able to have a major newsbreak bulletin that we will have established this new company and that the work will have begun.
As I said, we don't have to wait until we get the whole 500 million.
We'll be able to do this in the in-between.
So it's, I'm sorry.
It turns out that there.
Communication got in the way, but I've dealt with it.
But so that's what we're looking at.
We're looking at beginning things at the beginning of the new year to actually start doing the work.
And this, I can't tell you how exciting this is to me and also to my colleague to finally begin.
And you will, I mean, it's going to be a big press release that will be out.
So you'll know about it.
But that's when it's going to begin.
We're going to begin at the beginning of the new year.
I'm going to ask you a horrible journalist question now.
And I hate asking these questions because they're so difficult to ask and answer.
But here it goes.
How long do you think it will take?
You've been asked this before, I know, Ron, so I'm not going to be too embarrassed about asking it.
How long will it take from that first step in 2016 to building a time machine that works?
I hope that it will take no longer than 20 years altogether.
And now when I said that, remember, there's a timeline here.
I think that within 10 years, we'll be able to twist space and send things into the future.
Within 10 years, I really believe that.
Sending things to the past is going to be a little more difficult.
But what we learn from twisting space and being able to send things into the future, we will learn what we need to do.
And if things progress in the way that we hope, then we'll be able to have the complete thing of going back into the past in 20 years.
I wonder if you could accelerate this process.
You know, by if you go forward in time, then presumably you in the future have already achieved a great deal with this.
And if you can get what you've learned in the future back to the past, then you can accelerate the whole project.
Or have I got that completely wrong?
Oh, yeah, but no, no, no, Howard, you would.
But the problem is, is that that's where the problem is.
The thing is, is that you're saying that you're sending it to the future.
You're assuming that in the future, we have already decided how we're going to do this so that we can send the information back.
Number one, sending things to the future is one thing.
Sending things back to the past have to go to the point at which you actually start sending.
In other words, suppose I turn on a device that can allow me to go back into the past.
Things, the process starts the moment I turn the machine on.
So even if, let's suppose that in 10 years, I have successfully been able to twist space and I can send things into the future.
So at that point, I send things into the future.
But let's suppose that it wasn't until another 10 years that I figured out how to send things back into the past.
That's still 20 years later from the initial problem, and I can't send anything back earlier than when I first turned the device on 20 years from now.
God says, this time travel stuff is tricky, isn't it?
Wow.
It's very tricky.
And the thing is, is that I've had to think about this a lot.
And so I realized that you can't, you know, there's no perpetual motion about this.
You know, there's limitations and these are limitations of physics.
And the thing is, is that so eventually you will be able to send information back, but that's after you've already decided how to send the information back.
Yeah, I know, I completely understand.
That's the science.
But once again, we come down to the ethics and practicalities of this thing.
You must already be doing work and putting out feelers and making contacts for setting up ethical protocols for this.
Well, that's happening for us independently of us.
In other words, as I said, I think that there's already been interest out there by groups like the Security and Exchange Commission, things like that.
But the thing is, is that these things aren't going to be really coming into play.
And that's important to be thinking about them, but they're not really going to be coming into play until we have actually been able to start making headway.
I mean, it would be like the, you know, we have regulations for air travel, but that would be like going back to the Wright brothers when the Wright brothers were still trying to figure out just how they were going to get this thing going and then telling them, now, these are all the regulations that we're going to have to have.
Right.
So it's almost like laying out the rules for baseball before you've designed the ball.
That's a great analogy.
That's exactly it.
I got it.
This is fascinating stuff.
We have to talk again.
What a fascinating conversation this is.
Look, you and I share one thing.
Fortunately for me, I had my father until he was quite old, but I loved him dearly, and he loved me enormously.
He loved me when I was four and loved me the same way when I was 40.
He was my hero completely behind me, and I would love to go back and see him again.
I'd like to be able to do that if I possibly could.
It's my dream, and I know it's your dream too, because you said that at the top of this.
If you're ever able to do this, Ron, what is it that you would like to do when you see your dad?
And it's quite an emotional thing to even think about.
What would you like to be able to do or say?
Well, there's two things.
You know, one, I would just like to tell him that I loved him.
The other thing that I would like to tell him is that stop smoking.
Yeah.
It was a two-pack a day, and that, I think, was a huge contributing factor to his death.
And we understand now what that means, but we didn't back then.
Exactly.
Well, I hope you're able to do it, Ron.
And maybe I can join you on that first mission that I can go back to.
I think anybody who tells you they don't want to do this is not really telling the truth.
Anybody who loves and is fascinated by that movie, Back to the Future, and that's a lot of people, the amount of interest that that generated shows you the amount of interest there is among ordinary people to get on and do this.
So 2016 is going to be a big one for you by the sounds of it.
It is.
And it's interesting you mentioned Back to the Future, the very first Back to the Future, the year that they go back to, had a very personal meaning for me.
Marty McFly and Doc Brown went back to the, or Marty McFly went back to the year 1955, which was the year my father died.
And it was also the year that Einstein died.
So is that your target year?
That would be my target year if I could go back, would be 1955, or actually earlier than that, if I could.
And as you said, I think that this notion of time travel, both to the future and past, is something that we almost instinctively have within us.
In other words, I don't think any of us, there's none of us who haven't wondered what's going to happen next, what is the future going to be like, and haven't at times pondered, what if I could change this in my life in the past?
What if I could do this?
What if I could see that?
I think that these questions are something that have been universal and throughout time by everyone at some point in their life.
So I think that's the reason for it.
And now I think we're going to be on the verge of getting there.
What amazing human questions and what amazing scientific questions hand in hand.
It's not often that those two things go hand in hand, but with your work it does.
We have to speak again.
And I'm an arts guy.
I'm not a science guy.
I was terrible at science.
But the artistic implications of this, the human implications of this, speak to me very much, Ron.
So thank you very much for taking an hour of your time to explain this to me.
Thank you, Howard.
And I'd like to ask, will you be posting a link that I would be able to share with people?
Yeah, no, absolutely.
I'll send you that.
I'll send that through your people.
And if anybody wants to know about your work, is there one easy place to go online to actually see it?
Right.
They could actually contact World Patent Marketing, by the way.
They have a website, and I'm on that, and that will give them information that they can link to.
And if they wish, they can also go to the University of Connecticut website, and that's www.physics.ukon.
And that's u-c-o-n-n.edu.
Well, the University of Connecticut, I know nothing about, but I do know that it must be a great place to be able to have the vision to understand what you're doing and where you're going, Ron.
And I wish you well in 2016 and beyond with your work.
Please keep me posted.
I will, Howard, and thank you very much.
Well, fascinating stuff.
I'm glad we waited to do a show about time travel until we got a guest of the caliber of Dr. Ron Mallet.
If you want to know more about him and his work, I'll put a link to it on my website, theunexplained.tv.
So that's it.
The final show of 2015 as we end this year with very strange and spring-like weather here in Britain.
And we look ahead to 2016 and what that will bring.
Look, many years ago, I went on the radio and made a prediction that the following year was going to be a great year for myself and for everybody.
Boy, was I wrong.
So these days, I make no predictions, but all I will say to you, you have supported me through all of these years of the unexplained is: I wish for you in 2016 every single thing that you would wish for yourself.
Thank you for being so kind to me.
Please keep your comments coming.
Please keep your donations coming, and please keep your support coming.
Until next we meet in 2016 on The Unexplained, please stay safe, please stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
My name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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