The 1359th meeting of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences was held on Tuesday, April 12, 2005 at 4:30 p.m. at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.

The following have been voted into membership:
Lisa Nachmias Davis, attorney, Tyler, Cooper & Alcorn, Legal Counsel for Connecticut Academy of Arts & Sciences, and
Ronald L. Mallett, Professor of Physics, The University of Connecticut

About sixty people attended the lecture and some 25 members and their guests enjoyed cocktails and dinner following the presentation.

Professor Bruce Stave, the Vice President of the Academy for the University of Connecticut, also welcomed the audience and introduced the speaker for the afternoon, UConn physics professor and research physicist, Ron Mallett. The following article published in the UConn daily paper summarizes his presentation.

The Daily Campus - Focus
Issue: 4/13/05

Mallett and his time machine
By Tina Forbes

UConn physics professor and research physicist, Ron Mallett presented a lecture on the theory, details, and inspiration behind his plan for creating a time machine at the Dodd Center. Mallett has been on the cover of New Scientist magazine, on December 3, 2003 The Learning Channel aired an hour-long documentary featuring his time travel research, and he was also mentioned in Rolling Stone.

Although the concept sounds like science fiction, Mallett presented and explained his research using logic from Einstein's Theory of Relativity. On the physics department web site, Mallett summarized his current research.

"In Einstein's general theory of relativity, both matter and energy can create a gravitational field. This means that the energy of a light beam can produce a gravitational field. My current research considers both the weak and strong gravitational fields produced by a single continuously circulating unidirectional beam of light. In the weak gravitational field of a unidirectional ring laser, it is predicted that a spinning neutral particle, when placed in the ring, is dragged around by the resulting gravitational field.

"Nothing can affect space that isn't also affecting time," Mallet said at the lecture, adding that since space is being manipulated, time must be as well. "Time is being twisted into a loop," and the loop can venture into the past and future.

However, for a path to reach into the past, there needs to be some kind of receiving point.

"You can't go back in time earlier than when the first time machine is turned on," Mallett said.

Once the machine is turned on, it can theoretically receive signals from the future. Mallett said the initial signals passed between points of time would be radioactive materials, due to the exact measurable rate of its decay.

Mallett said he got the inspiration for developing his theory of time travel after his father died suddenly of a heart attack when Mallett was 10, which motivated him to find a way to warn his father and possibly prevent the attack.

Even though the theory for the laser ring has been developed, Mallet and his UConn colleague, Dr. Chandra Raychoudri, are awaiting funding for its construction. Once Mallett and Dr. Raychoudri receive funding, they will be building the laser ring in Dr. Raychoudri's lab at Depot Campus.

, "I was very interested to hear about the current work he was doing," philosophy graduate student Kevin Boyle said. "I didn't know time travel was being researched."