This physicist says ‘paradox-free’ time travel is plausible
Tovar, a physics student at the University of Queensland, Australia, worked on and sought to solve the problem known as the ‘grandfather’s paradox’. What Tobar found was that he could actually “square numbers he squared”, making his travel in time not only viable, but in doing so, creating his travel in time without paradoxes. It was possible.
The “grandfather’s paradox” is basically that a cause is resolved by its own effect, which prevents the cause, essentially resulting in reverse causation. To put it more directly, imagine going back in time and having your grandfather stop having children. The result is a paradox that you never existed and is insurmountable.
However, calculations made by Tobar show that paradox-free time travel may be possible, as space-time may adapt to avoid potential paradoxes.A good example of this is outlined in science alertis a report on the topic of
Imagine a time traveler going back in time and stopping the spread of disease. However, with the disease stopped, the time traveler has no reason to go back in time and defeat the disease, creating a paradox. So the time traveler couldn’t really stop its existence.
The story of our world is somehow already written and it sounds like something called destiny that can’t be changed. Think of it like You can go back in time, but you can’t do anything meaningful or impactful to change the future.
Another possibility some have offered is that this creates an additional timeline. This is something that is heavily used in science fiction. But of course, before we worry about paradox-free time travel, we need to understand the heart of time travel. Scientists at MIT may be doing something in their search for dark matter.
Still, it’s unlikely to create something along the lines of what we’re seeing back to the future and other movies. But at least it’s interesting to think about.