An Iranian inventor has registered a patent for a "time traveling machine" with Iran's state-run Center for Strategic Inventions, but is hesitant to mass produce it for fear the Chinese will steal his design.
The inventor claims his invention will not take people to the future, but bring the future to them. According to an Persian news article translated by The Telegraph, the device's creator Ali Razeghi, a 27-year-old serial inventor with 179 patents under his name, says the machine can predict the details of the user's life for the next five to eight years with 98 percent accuracy.
He suspects the device will be of use to the Iranian government to predict possible military confrontations and forecast the fluctuation of currencies and oil prices.
There was apparently no mention of the device's ability to predict more concrete occurrences such as earthquakes, which might have been useful earlier this week when Iran's southwest was rattled by a 6.3-magnitude quake that killed at least 40 and injured 1,000.
Razeghi reportedly said American are trying create a similar invention, but have failed to do so at production costs as low as his. However, despite the apparent affordability of the invention, there is hesitation to mass-produce the device.
"The reason that we are not launching our prototype at this stage is that the Chinese will steal the idea and produce it in millions overnight," Razeghi said.
Naturally, Razeghi's claims of inventing a time machine are being treated skeptically. Iran has a history of faking technological achievements and being secretive of its existing technology. According to Reuters, Iran's only nuclear power station does not belong to the international Convention on Nuclear Safety forum.