London, Feb.7 : Two Russian scientists have claimed that they are close t to creating a time machine.

Russian mathematicians Irina Aref'eva and Igor Volovich have said the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - a giant atom-smashing machine - could open the door to unexpected visitors from the future.

The machine, due to come on stream this year, has been constructed at CERN, the European particle physics centre near Geneva.

As per their calculations, the machine will tear a hole in the fabric of space and time, creating a gateway to tomorrow. That means, with sufficiently advanced technology, people from the future might even be able to walk through it.

Designed to investigate the origins of the universe, the machine will generate particles with so much energy that scientists are not entirely sure what will happen when they switch the machine on.

According to The Times, Aref'eva and Volovich believe a "wormhole" could open up, linking our time with another in the future.

This could happen if "dark energy" - the mysterious anti-gravity force that causes galaxies to accelerate away from each other - possesses a special "phantom" property.

Manipulating such a wormhole to create a viable time machine would take incredibly advanced technology, they said.

ANI