Physicists at the University of Maryland, College Park have shown that it is possible to recreate both the Big Bang and the arrow of time inside a metamaterial.

They used metamaterials study the long-standing problem of why cosmological and thermodynamic arrows of time point in the same direction. They manipulated the metamaterials so that space-like dimensions became time-like, creating a material in which the the x and y directions were space-like, while the z-direction was time-like. The physicists built a time simulator using specially shaped plastic strips placed on a gold substrate. The light rays were actually  plasmons that propagated across the surface of the metal while being distorted by the plastic strips.

This system was used to emulate the Big Bang under laboratory conditions.  The research showed that any ray that does perceive the angular dimension as time-like cannot actually return to the same point in space-time, suggesting that time machines are impossible.