Time travel theory avoids grandfather paradox

I am in no way an expert on time travel, but I found this and thought I'd throw it out there for those of you who have a deeper understanding of all this than I do

Apparently, there is a way to go back in time and actually prevent your chances of trying to kill your family before you are born.

I have read it and do understand a few small bits, (the simplest form bits )

the scientists note that prohibiting paradoxical events would cause unlikely events to happen more often. These “strange and counterintuitive effects” arise due to the nonlinear nature of P-CTCs. Like a movie hero who always manages to escape seemingly imminent death, the grandfather would always somehow manage to survive his grandchild’s murderous plots. “Some little quantum fluctuation would whisk the bullet away at the last moment,” Lloyd explained.

In addition to prohibiting the grandfather paradox, the P-CTC theory also has the advantage that it doesn’t require the distortions of spacetime that traditional time travel theories rely on. These spacetime distortions probably only exist in extreme environments such as inside black holes, making these theories nearly impossible to realize.

www.physorg.com...

Tunneling from the future to the past is a strange concept. I can only imagine it in the same sense as a worm hole etc, but I notice they do not talk of having to obtain a particular speed in order to time travel, which is refreshing IMO.

I've never really been able to believe that speed is an important factor. It just doesn't make sense in my mind, but that's for another thread..

What does it take to become a so called scientist?Probably you just rent a copy of Back to the future,write a paper and hey presto your done .I could build a time machine ,just give me an old photo or a book and i have gone back and i am already travelling in to the future every time i take a breath.

reply to post by Extralien


Unfortunately, as much as I'd like to support this type of thing, the fact is, noone on the planet can time travel.. I had an interesting discussing on the forum about this type of thing.. If it were plausible, there are so many errors / anomalies / completely different theories about time travel that things like this just aren't relevant..

Has someone actually gone back in time, tried to shoot their Grandad, and then the bullet has been adversely affected by Quantum physics?

'fraid not.

reply to post by Robbed In Albion.


But surely this would be one of the dilemmas... nobody would ever know if 'the bullet' missed due to quantum physics.. or any other force for that matter.

Nobody would know because the grandfather was still alive at the time the bullet was fired and after the bullet had used all its forward momentum.

reply to post by Extralien


But what would it matter? If the bullet missed, it missed. The grandfather would still be alive and the time line unchanged.

I love a good paradox theory. Go back in time to kill your grandfather, means you were never born to that particular bloodline, which means you never had a desire to go back and kill that person, which means you never did and never will and never can.

Paradox theories were all the rage in the early days of time travel theory. They basically explain that you cannot go back in time to commit a specific act because the catalyst would not have come forward in your timeline, so it would not be a target, so you would never go back in the first place.

Now, as to the time wave itself keeping course and not allowing an intent to occur is interesting. Quantum science these days is just full of good unprovable theories.

From my limited understanding of the subject, I dont think that velocity has anything to do with traveling through time. The theories tend to lie completely in the warping of the space/time continuum around an object to "fold" it into another point in space/time. That also makes for a very improbably scenario of targetting a destination. Since you are slipping through both space and time, you could end up on Jupiter just minutes before an asteroid hits you in the face.
I do remember seeing once a rendition of the supposed relevance of Block Holes to time travel. It was thought that if a body was capable of surviving the trip through the singularity, it would "pop out" in another place and time in the universe.
If velocity were a contributing factor to warping the continuum, then I suppose something like orbitting a Black Hole once and slingshot out of the slipstream would likely give you more than enough. However, a human would never survive the forces, nor likely would the vessel.

Time travel is not something I see as impossible in the distant future, however I will never see it in my lifetime.

I don't buy it - there would never be a paradox because..

Time is a continuous dimension where everything is in existence at any single moment. Think of it like a continuous celluloid film strip.

You could not go back into the past further than you were born. If you were lucky enough to meet your grandfather at an age that you could shot him you wouldn't do so unless you already had shot him.

If you loved him you would simply love him again if you shot him you would shot him again but you couldn't go back before you were born and shot him because you simply did not exist, therefore no paradox.

Like wise you cannot go forward further than your death.

Just what I reckon anyhow

MJ2

I honestly see time travel and time travel paradoxes as nothing more than a cool thought experiment.

IRM

reply to post by Robbed In Albion.


That would depend on the observer.
The grandfather would notice nothing, but as it is you that has gone back in time, then it is you who has noticed a change in the timeline.

But what we percieve to be a timeline may not be fixed.. becuase you've come back, the future has to go on without you, so the course of events in the future would would only change for those present in it. You would be unaware of what was going on in the future, only aware of your current time zone.

OK im only going to say 2 words,
Doctor Who
But i did find this which is very instresting let me know what you think
Link To Source

Enjoy

reply to post by wheresthetruth


Something that doesn't really get discussed is once we are reaching those speeds, how do we slow down? Wouldn't we also require a lot of energy to slow us down very quickly or we may end up slipping way past the destination point...

Just a thought.

Originally posted by InfaRedMan
I honestly see time travel and time travel paradoxes as nothing more than a cool thought experiment.

IRM

I tend to agree IRM, its fun to play around with but in the end what has happened has happened.

reply to post by Athink


I was thinking the exact same as you throughout this entire thread...

I think we can safely say that there's probably little weight in any Doctor Who based theories within the community.

Time is the measurement of Motion, specifically the earth spinning on its axis, earth rotating around the sun, solar system revolving within the galaxy, and the Galaxy moving within Universe. From this range of motions we get seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, ages and cycles.

Attempting to travel in Time would require knowing exactly where the earth is located at a particular point in time in the past, which we can never know due to not knowing the center of the universe or the path of Earths position within all these ranges of movement. Time travel is a wonderful exercise in physics, quantum theory, etc, but it can never occur.

I wrote this on another thread but noone replied so i'll try again sorry if its written badly.
when people talk about the paradox of going backwards because of affecting the future etc, I don't get it (I'm not new to the subject) because, for one in quantum mechanics people talk of "the observer" so if something happens to you(the time traveller) it does'nt happen to everyone (the world would be a pretty strange place). theoretical scientists also talk about multiple realities the theory that because we live in an infinite universe perhaps every possibility has happened, so if one was to go back, doing so would surely only effect them they would create a new different line/reality/universe and so it would'nt effect their previous universe whatever, nothing would change there but something would be added to the whole of existense/possibilities. so the grandfather paradox is a misnomer. Hope I've explained my thoughts all right I'm not very good at this writing melarky

[edit on 25-7-2010 by Disjecta Membra]

Proof would be nice, i do love doctor who tho

reply to post by Athink


There is no proof.
This is entirely theoretical.. Which is both an advantage and hindrance.

Whilst we can't prove anything, the logical possibilities are astounding, which means they're great for thought experiments, etc.

[edit on 25/7/10 by Robbed In Albion.]

This is the most interesting time-travel theory I ve come accross for awhile. These CTC's are fascinating. I have always thought that how you understand reality (time/space) is going to affect how you interpet time paradoxes llike the grandfather paradox. If you see causality as rigid and linear the paradox is interminable. But I realized one day that if you believd in a non-linear reality then the paradox lost all relevance as causality no longer has to go along that single line in the thought diagram, it can branch out infinitely, it can change shape, etc. I like was Disjecta says, they are the first I ve ever seen to state a similar opinion. There are any number of possible theories of time available - for eg. what time progresses in waves, so that travelling in time is travelling to a previous time wave front - paradox solved. The more you think about actual time travel the more you realize it has to do with probabilities and potential realities, so that it starts to look more like dimensional shifting - they would definately have to be related. So while I think that the post-selecting is probably uneccesary, its still a very novel and interesting idea. Also, there s that humdinger of an ending to the article . “Because the theory of P-CTCs relies on post-selection, it provides self-consistent resolutions to such paradoxes: anything that happens in a P-CTC can also happen in conventional quantum mechanics with some probability.”

What? this could happen on its own, naturally?

Originally posted by Disjecta Membra
I wrote this on another thread but noone replied so i'll try again sorry if its written badly.
when people talk about the paradox of going backwards because of affecting the future etc, I don't get it (I'm not new to the subject) because, for one in quantum mechanics people talk of "the observer" so if something happens to you(the time traveller) it does'nt happen to everyone (the world would be a pretty strange place). theoretical scientists also talk about multiple realities the theory that because we live in an infinite universe perhaps every possibility has happened, so if one was to go back, doing so would surely only effect them they would create a new different line/reality/universe and so it would'nt effect their previous universe whatever, nothing would change there but something would be added to the whole of existense/possibilities. so the grandfather paradox is a misnomer. Hope I've explained my thoughts all right I'm not very good at this writing melarky

[edit on 25-7-2010 by Disjecta Membra]

I was going to post the same thing. In the theory of a multiverse, every decision branches off a new universe. So if you go back and kill your grandfather, then that universe would not have you ever born but the one you were conceived in would not be affected.

Originally posted by Athink
OK im only going to say 2 words,
Doctor Who
But i did find this which is very instresting let me know what you think
Link To Source

Enjoy

Wibley wobley timey wimey.