Professor of Theoretical Physics Ronald Mallett thinks he knows the key to making a time travel machine. And as ridiculous as that may seem, Mallett’s efforts are not going unnoticed. The visionary University of Connecticut professor, who has been approached by the Defense Department and is currently funded by venture capitalist David Zinn, has been featured in a Learning Channel documentary, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, NPR’s “This American Life,” and the BBC, among other media outlets.

Mallett believes that an extremely powerful grid of lasers can warp space and time and that, if he is adequately funded, he will only need 15 years to create the first time machine.

On a cold Wednesday night in the basement of Broad Street Books, Mallett signed copies of his new book “Time Traveler,” which he co-wrote with New York Times best-selling author Bruce Henderson, and optimistically propounded his controversial theory.

The basis of his idea is that a system of lasers can harness enough energy to bend space, and thus, as Einstein says, time.

“When the stirring of space becomes strong enough,” Mallet said, “you will twist time into a loop.”

This loop is essentially a blinding white hole in space and time, and theoretically, one could enter the hole and come out in the past. Mallett’s first goal would be to send tiny particles into the past and then, at some point, bits of information that would warn humans of impending disasters. The final step would be the time transportation of human beings.

But assuming that the time machine will be invented in some year to come, why are we not receiving visitors from the future?

The catch lies within that question. According to Mallett’s theory, you can only travel between the present time and the time when the machine is invented. This means, unfortunately, that no one will ever see cavemen, the Big Bang, or the future—at least when they use Mallett’s machine.

“This is a real time machine,” Mallett said. “You can only go back to the point when the machine goes on. You can’t see the dinosaurs like you can in the movies.”

Al Fertig ’10 saw this is a realistic approach—or at least as realistic an approach as you can take in inventing a time machine.

“The idea that you can only go back to the point where you first turned on the machine answers the problem of why we aren’t being invaded by time travelers,” he said. “That has always been one of my biggest unanswered questions with time travel.”

It’s not as though Mallett has not suffered criticism. Ken Olum, professor of Cosmology at Tufts University, wrote a paper stating that the lasers would have to be as wide as the universe for the machine to work. In response, Mallett acknowledged the criticism and stated his plans to pass the lasers through a super-fluid medium that would significantly slow the speed of light and provide the needed energy.

Danny Koblenz ’10 is skeptical that the theory can be put in to practice.

“The project is feasible in that we have the primitive technology to do this,” he said. “But it’s also not feasible because the technology is not there yet. The technology is eventually possible, but not for hundreds or thousands of years.”

Despite the criticism, Mallett says he has received overwhelming interest and support.

“At UConn, our biggest lecture hall was filled beyond capacity when I spoke,” he said. “My book has gone into second printing.”

But when the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a branch of the United States Defense Department, offered much needed funding, Mallett turned them down.

“I’m trying to avoid military funding,” he said. “They could, at some point, slap top-secret on me and take the project away.”

That is not to say that Mallett is at all set for funding. He is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from non-military government agencies and private industries. If he receives the adequate funding, he says, the project could be complete in around 15 years.

But what would happen if Mallett’s idea did work? What would happen if we could send information to the past? Would that change the present?

Mallett did not discuss this essential question due to time constraints, but Koblenz thinks he understands what the professor is getting at.

“This gets it into parallel universes,” Koblenz said. “If it affected the future you wouldn’t realize it because you can only go down one universe. It was kind of implied by what he said about his early-warning device that he believes in parallel universes.”