A scientist believes he has finally cracked the code to enable time travel after having a big 'eureka' moment as he lay in hospital.
Professor Ronald Mallett, who has been working on the secrets of time travel all of his life, thinks he now has the answer, and you won't need a time travelling DeLorean like the hit '80s movie Back to the Future.
He said he now aimed to build a time machine that can “twist the fabric of the space-time continuum” with a “ring of rotating lasers to make a loop in time”.
The professor claimed the death of his father and the comfort of HG Wells’ The Time Machine inspired a lifetime of research into the subject from the age of 10.
Prof Mallett said: “The very first paragraph [of HG Wells' book] changed my life.
"I still remember the quote 'Scientific people know very well that time is just a kind of space and we can move forward and backwards in time, just as we can in space'."
He conducted research in secret for years and, when in hospital after recovering from a heart condition, had a 'eureka' moment.
Speaking to the Guardian's G2, he said: “It turns out that rotating black holes can create a gravitational field that could lead to loops of time being created that can allow you to go to the past.
"Let's say you have a cup of coffee in front of you right now.
"Start stirring the coffee with the spoon. It started swirling around, right? That's what a rotating black hole does.
"In Einstein's theory, space and time relate to each other. That's why it's called space-time. So as the black hole is rotating, it's actually going to cause a twisting of time."
He wants to build a ring laser that can create an “intense and continuous rotating beam of light” which would be able to “create gravity”.
Sadly though, he said he’d need “galactic types of energy” and didn’t know how big the time machine would need to be.
He is unsure when or if it will be done, but added: "I have figured out how it can be done."
