November 13, 2004: Time Travel - Dr. Fred Alan Wolf

Art Bell opens with a disturbing report from the former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, who reveals that Osama bin Laden has obtained religious authorization to use a nuclear weapon against Americans. Callers weigh in on the threat and what a nuclear attack on a U.S. city would mean. The conversation shifts dramatically when theoretical physicist Dr. Fred Alan Wolf joins to discuss time travel.

Dr. Wolf argues that time is an artifact of consciousness, inseparable from mind itself. He describes real devices currently on drawing boards, including work by physicist Yakir Aharonov involving accumulated micro-shifts in time, and explains how a dense hollow sphere could create gravitational conditions allowing a person inside to age backward or forward while the outside world continues normally. He confidently predicts working time travel devices will emerge within the 21st century.

The discussion tackles the classic grandfather paradox through David Deutsch's parallel universes interpretation of quantum physics. Dr. Wolf explains that traveling back and altering events would simply place the traveler in an alternate universe, eliminating contradictions entirely. He points to the double-slit experiment as direct evidence that parallel universes exist and interact with our own.