Have The Russians Broken The Time Barrier?

By James Donahue

As a retired American journalist I sometimes make the mistake of assuming that some of the scientific reports that appear in publications from other parts of the world are based upon fact.

A recent story about time travel experimentation that appeared in Russia’s Pravda, however, is so incredible I suspect the writers are making up stories for the pure edification of the readers.

The story, penned by Olga Zharina, mentions a strange but unsubstantiated story about some American and British scientists who in 1995 send a weather balloon attached to a rope into the midst of a spinning gray fog they observed over Antarctica. The balloon disappeared for a while in the fog. When it was brought back they said a chronometer in the instruments recorded a date that was 30 years earlier. The experiment was repeated and the team got the same results. The team suggested they were looking at a “time gate,” but they could not explain it.

Zharina wrote that the late Nikolay Kozyrev, a Russian astronomer, said he believed that the ability of humans to pass information through the collective unconscious from both the future and the past, proved to him that moving objects and people through time was also possible.

The article then quotes from an article by Russian author Gennady Belimov, known for his investigations of the paranormal, that claims a working time machine was invented by Vadim Chernobrov and used successfully in 1987.

The Chernobrov device, using electromagnetic fields, was found to slightly slow time for people placed within its field. The effect, however, was very slight. After an hour of operation the report said time was slowed by just 1.5 seconds.

Another article found on the web, its author unknown, proclaims Chernobrov’s time machine to be a fairy tale and the man to be a fraud.

The Belimov article said some early experiments in parallel worlds were conducted while Stalin was in power but then halted when a scandal led to the execution of 18 researchers and the imprisonment of 59 others.

The time travel experiments were resumed for a while again under Khruschev but then suspended after eight researchers disappeared in an experiment in 1961. The story said buildings close to the facility where the experiments were done were damaged.

The Zharina story concludes with another disastrous event on Aug. 30, 1989, when an explosion destroyed a 780-ton experimental module, the three scientists working with or inside it, and a two-square kilometer island on the Anjou archipelago, where the project was reinstated.

The story quotes from an alleged message transmitted from the module before it disappeared. “We are dying but keep on conducting the experiment,” a recorder said. “It is very dark here, we see all objects become double. Our hands and legs are transparent. We can see veins and bones through the skin. The oxygen supply will be enough for 43 hours. The life support system is seriously damaged. Our best regards to the families and friends.”

A story like that rivals the American version of a time travel event, the well known Philadelphia experiment. And like the American story, there is obviously a lot of story-telling, but little that can be substantiated.

Is time travel possible? Publically, a lot of experimentation and conjecture is being published, but no American journal has produced a report from any scientist declaring any success other than proving that a light ray moved faster than the speed of light arrived across the room slightly before it was sent.

Time travel may indeed be possible, but as yet, we have to definitive proof that it has been accomplished.