Can you imagine going back in time to visit a lost loved one? This heart wrenching desire is what propelled astrophysicist Professor Ron Mallett on a lifelong quest to build a time machine. After years of research, Professor Mallett claims to have finally developed the revolutionary equation for time travel.
The idea of bending time to our will – revisiting the past, altering history, or glimpsing into the future – has been a staple of science fiction for over a century. But could it move from fantasy to reality?
The inspiration: A father’s love and a classic novel
Professor Mallett’s obsession with time travel and its equation has its roots in a shattering childhood experience. When he was just ten years old, his father, a television repairman who fostered his son’s love of science, tragically passed away from a heart attack.
Devastated, the young Mallett sought solace in books. It was H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine that sparked a lifelong fascination.
Wells’ opening lines became his mantra: “Scientific people know very well that Time is only a kind of Space. And why cannot we move in Time as we move about in the other dimensions of Space?” READ MORE...
In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton published his magnum opus, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which effectively synthesized his theories on motion, velocity, and universal gravitation.
In terms of the latter, Newton offered a means for calculating the force of gravity and predicting the orbits of the planets. Since then, astronomers have discovered that the Solar System is merely one small point of light that orbits the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. On occasion, other stars will pass close to the Solar System, which can cause a dramatic shakeup that can kick objects out of their orbits
These “stellar flybys” are common and play an important role in the long-term evolution of planetary systems. As a result, the long-term stability of the Solar System has been the subject of scientific investigation for centuries.
According to a new study by a team of Canadian astrophysicists, residents of the Solar System may rest easy. After conducting a series of simulations, they determined that a star will not pass by and perturb our Solar System for another 100 billion years. Beyond that, the possibilities are somewhat frightening!
The research was led by Garett Brown, a graduate student of computational physics from the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences (PES) at the University of Toronto at Scarborough. He was joined by Hanno Rein, an associate professor of astrophysics (and Brown’s mentor) also from the PES at UT Scarborough.
