Laser-based time travel: fact or fiction?

Question

I recently heard about this hypothesis by Ronald Mallet, in which lasers are used to warp the fabric of space to create a time loop. Do you think he will be successful? Why or why not?

Link for a detailed description of his experiment: http://www.physorg.com/news63371210.html

Answer 1

I am well aware of Ronald Mallet and his goals. They are far fetched and impossible.
His personal motivation is as follows:

"When he was 10 years old, his father died of a heart attack at age 33. After reading The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, Mallett was determined to find a way to go back and warn his father about the dangers of smoking. "

I have seen him on numerous documentaries on the discovery channel and this is all he talks about. I think he needs to seek some serious therapy and should rather develop funding to prevent smoking by other members of society. Something that is actually "feasible".

Answer 2

In a paper addressing Mallet's hypothesis, Ken D. Olum and Allen Everett find a number of problems with the idea of creating closed timelike curves. (http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/0410/0410078v1.pdf)

Personally, I don't understand anything in that paper, but there is a lay-man version in the wikipedia article on Ronald Mallett. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Mallett)

Essentially, Mallett's theoretical model contains a singularity, which would be impossible to build, and even if he could build it there is not enough energy to power it.

My own opinion of Mallett's hypothesis is much simpler: he is insane.

Answer 3

Well, if he is successful, he will disprove quantum mechanics and we will cease to exist. This one is pretty far fetched. If he was successful, people from the future would be visiting already.

Answer 4

Mallet is a very well known...kook, to be blunt about it.

HTH

Charles

Answer 5

Could be.