<em>Today, man is successfully probing deep into the mysteries of the universe. Can he penetrate the greatest mystery of all - time itself?</em>

One young boy, growing up in the 1950s in the Bronx in New York, was especially interested in these tales. Ronald Mallett was just 10 when his father died of a sudden heart attack. And it was in science fiction that he found solace.

"Just about a year after he died, I came across HG Wells' book The Time Machine. And that is what saved me from going into a total depression - because I had this inspiration," says Mr Mallett.

"I thought: if I could build a time machine, the way HG Wells had suggested, then I should be able to go back into the past; and if I could go back into the past, I could see my father again and warn him about what was going to happen to him, and maybe save his life. So that became an obsession for me."

More than 50 years later Ronald Mallett has learned a lot more about science. He's now a professor of physics at the University of Connecticut. But time hasn't changed him. He still wants to build a time machine, and is seeking funding for his so-called Space-Time Twisting by Light project.

Of course, building such a machine was never going to be simple.  And it isn't.

Build yourself an extremely powerful ring laser, and pop some material - maybe even one day a human - in the centre of this vortex of light, and you might just be able to drag what's inside the machine back or forward through time...

Build yourself an extremely powerful ring laser, and pop some material - maybe even one day a human - in the centre of this vortex of light, and you might just be able to drag what's inside the machine back or forward through time.

"What you would see would be a cylinder in which you would have laser beams that would be intersecting in such a way that they would create this huge light tunnel. So if you imagine a tunnel, with this vortex of light circulating around in it."

Full story at <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6933059.stm" target="_blank">BBC</a>.