What happens when there is a Time paradox?

[Cogman]

So, I'm watching superman, he does the famous "spins around the earth to make everything go back in time" And while contemplating what would actually happen (People flying up into the atmosphere from the fairly rapid decrease in movement).

Either way, superman saves lois, however the entire reason he moved the earth backwards was because lois was killed. So, he never would have went back meaning lois would have die.. Ect.

So what happens? Does the universe explode, implode, or does superman just faint (Back to the future reference). Or will Some mysterious force cause him to go back in time over, and over, and over again regardless. Or maybe his doom radiation just goes off the chart (Futurama reference).

Is there any physics that explains what would happen or is it just random guesses?

 

[bsobel]

Really depends if you believe in a multiverse or not.

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: bsobel
Really depends if you believe in a multiverse or not.

Ok, so what happens if there is a multiverse, and what happens if there isn't one?

 

[KIAman]

In a multiverse, going back would simply create a different version of the universe. You could even kill yourself from the past and get away with it.

 

[Gannon]

Originally posted by: KIAman
In a multiverse, going back would simply create a different version of the universe. You could even kill yourself from the past and get away with it.

But this would mean each universes timeline would be independent from one another, so what you say is a contradiction, because technically you could not reach the multiverse to kill yourself to begin with (i.e. timeline integrity), to say you could go back in time, is to say that the timelines of all universes are connected, to kill yourself in one universe then would to be to kill yourself in many of them, perhaps all of them. But no one has any scientific experimental evidence of such, so all of this is just speculation.

Not only that, the moment you killed yourself, it's highly likely you would disappear, because the universe in a previous timeframe must logically by necessity be connected to the possible timelines in front of it. Think of it in terms of energy or electron flow in a circuit. This would mean the times in front of you are recursively connected to the times behind you and vice versa.

 

[bobross419]

Originally posted by: Gannon

Originally posted by: KIAman
In a multiverse, going back would simply create a different version of the universe. You could even kill yourself from the past and get away with it.

But this would mean each universes timeline would be independent from one another, so what you say is a contradiction, because technically you could not reach the multiverse to kill yourself to begin with (i.e. timeline integrity), to say you could go back in time, is to say that the timelines of all universes are connected, to kill yourself in one universe then would to be to kill yourself in many of them, perhaps all of them. But no one has any scientific experimental evidence of such, so all of this is just speculation.

Not only that, the moment you killed yourself, it's highly likely you would disappear, because the universe in a previous timeframe must logically by necessity be connected to the possible timelines in front of it. Think of it in terms of energy or electron flow in a circuit. This would mean the times in front of you are recursively connected to the times behind you and vice versa.

Do you think it would be easier for a person to commit suicide by going back in time and shooting their previous self then it would be for them to stick a gun in their mouth and pull the trigger?

Think Lethal Weapon where Riggs just can't pull the trigger. Do you think that it would have been easier for him to do by going back in time and shooting his previous self?

 

[Modelworks]

If you can find it , get a copy of scientific american 9/2002 .
http://www.sciamdigital.com/in...-4F59-814C-C9ACB622ED6
The issue is all about time.
Their solution is:

Mother of All Paradoxes

THE NOTORIOUS MOTHER PARADOX (sometimes formulated using
other familial relationships) arises when people or objects can
travel backward in time and alter the past. A simplified version
involves billiard balls. A billiard ball passes through a wormhole
time machine. Upon emerging, it hits its earlier self, thereby
preventing it from ever entering the wormhole

CHANGING THE PAST
RESOLUTION OF THE PARADOX proceeds from a simple realization:
the billiard ball cannot do something that is inconsistent with
logic or with the laws of physics. It cannot pass through the
wormhole in such a way that will prevent it from passing
through the wormhole. But nothing stops it from passing
through the wormhole in an infinity of other ways.

So you could travel back in time, provided you did nothing that would prevent you from traveling back in time.


Also:

Consider, for example, the time traveler who visits the past and murders his mother
when she was a young girl. How do we make sense of this?
If the girl dies, she cannot become the time traveler?s mother.
But if the time traveler was never born, he could not go
back and murder his mother.

Paradoxes of this kind arise when the time traveler tries to
change the past, which is obviously impossible. But that does
not prevent someone from being a part of the past. Suppose
the time traveler goes back and rescues a young girl from murder,
and this girl grows up to become his mother. The causal
loop is now self-consistent and no longer paradoxical. Causal
consistency might impose restrictions on what a time traveler
is able to do, but it does not rule out time travel per se.

Even if time travel isn?t strictly paradoxical, it is certainly
weird. Consider the time traveler who leaps ahead a year
and reads about a new mathematical theorem in a future edition
of Scientific American. He notes the details, returns to
his own time and teaches the theorem to a student, who then
writes it up for Scientific American. The article is, of course,
the very one that the time traveler read. The question then
arises: Where did the information about the theorem come
from? Not from the time traveler, because he read it, but not
from the student either, who learned it from the time traveler.
The information seemingly came into existence from
nowhere, reasonlessly.

The bizarre consequences of time travel have led some scientists
to reject the notion outright. Stephen W. Hawking of
the University of Cambridge has proposed a ?chronology protection
conjecture,? which would outlaw causal loops. Because
the theory of relativity is known to permit causal loops,
chronology protection would require some other factor to intercede
to prevent travel into the past. What might this factor
be? One suggestion is that quantum processes will come to the rescue. The existence
of a time machine would allow particles to loop into their own past.

Calculations hint that the ensuing disturbance would become self-reinforcing, creating
a runaway surge of energy that would wreck the wormhole.
Chronology protection is still just a conjecture, so time
travel remains a possibility. A final resolution of the matter
may have to await the successful union of quantum mechanics
and gravitation, perhaps through a theory such as string
theory or its extension, so-called M-theory. It is even conceivable
that the next generation of particle accelerators will be
able to create subatomic wormholes that survive long enough
for nearby particles to execute fleeting causal loops. This
would be a far cry from Wells?s vision of a time machine, but
it would forever change our picture of physical reality

 

[destrekor]

I don't think time-traveling, if it is at all possible, would create paradoxes. These paradoxes are from over-analyzing the link between past, present, and future.
In reality, if anything could travel through time, it would escape the confines of its original time and now exist completely outside of time altogether, for the entirety of time spent outside of its original time.

Example:
A man goes back in time and kills his mother back before she had ever gave birth to him in that time frame. A paradox implies that it would be illogical for any possible outcome of this event to be a logical outcome.
The perceived answer to the paradox is the murder could not happen: he would either have an inability to interact with the environment, an inability to actually harm his mother, or immediately following the murder he would vanish from reality.
I find the most likely scenario would be he could kill his mother, but would continue to exist. He now is completely in that time, and in-effect immune from the potential to not exist. Now, this would just throws everyone off because, well how could he exist if he was never born?
As tricky as that thought is, by traveling back in time, he essentially became orphaned and now kind of 'exists outside of time', so to say, or more appropriately, exists wholly in the time to which he traveled back.

This does bring into question the concept of a multiverse, or how I would more correctly label it: parallel universes, although the two are very different. Multiverse implies there are multiple universes, though it is not indicated if these universes are at all connected to each other. For example, in a multiverse system, it is quite likely each universe has its own distinct set of 'universal laws', so physics might be completely different, the table of elements could be completely alien to our, etc etc.
A parallel universe implies that not only are there multiple universes, but they are both linked and not linked to each other. The common belief is that in a parallel multiverse - which is what I'll call a system of universes all parallel with each other - the universes all share the same reality, but the time dimension is independent in each universe.

Whether or not any of this is necessary for my non-paradoxical time travel scenario, I have no idea. Many variables are involved here, chief of which is whether time travel is even possible, which depends on exactly how the dimension of time interacts with the other dimensions. In string-theory, I believe it is implied that with the right technology, one can travel through time, which occupies the fourth dimension, and it is likely time-travel would occur in the fifth or sixth dimensions. I believe it could best be summed up as this: the first three dimensions are rooted in the physical, matter-filled world, and the next three dimensions would serve as the time world. So, the 4th dimension is the equivalent of the 1st dimension - a singular point but location unknown. The 5th dimension, like the 2nd dimension, is the part where points can be identified with a pair of coordinates, able to be plotted on a two-dimensional grid. The sixth dimension adds a third dimension to that 'grid' and thus adds a third number to any given coordinate. Depending on how time travel would operate, a plotted line would either work in the 5th or 6th dimension, depending on how one would traverse in the dimension of time. I'm unaware of the significance of the remaining dimensions in string theory, and I'm partially making it up as I go in regards to the described dimensions above.

But to conclude my example:
the man would kill his mom, but would continue living. He could either continue living in that time, or return to his own time, where his life would be unaltered.
It is suggested that in a system of parallel universes, he would actually return to a different universe than what he called home, in which his mom actually continued to live. But without that footnote, it is possible he would continue living in his own universe as if nothing happened.
But once again it is further complicated. If we return back in time, can the future, no matter what happens in the past, be altered? Take it to the extreme: what if you were to nuke the entire world in the past... would the future continue to exist as if nothing occurred? Could you remove people from existence in the future by going back and murdering their mothers? If someone went back in time and murdered your mother, would you all of a sudden cease to exist? Or would all of these time-travel events simply occur in the parallel universes? Are parallel universes infinite in number, and are simply spontaneously created when time is altered? Is that how the dimension of time works?
Can time-travel happen?


Mind blowing, I know. :laugh:

 

[MarcVenice]

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned but I always thought of it like this. If you go back in time, to rectify something you did, like not buying stock from a company that's about to go bankrupt. Now, you've stopped yourself from buying that stock, but now there is no reason for you to go back in time anymore, so in the future, you don't go back in time because there is no need for it?

Maybe this is just a variation of what I've read above, but I can't quite grasp the concept. And I popped in here by accident anyways, but I've always been intrigued by paradigms like these

 

[KIAman]

Going off of my original comment and what destrekor is asserting about multiverses, I don't think people get the concept of multiverse. It implies INFINITE realities which describe every branch of everything that could possibly ever happen.

So, going back to kill your mother, all you did was to kill your mother in a different universe which now will continue in its own reality where you were never born. This doesn't affect you directly because the universe you came from, nobody came back to kill your mother. Even if they did, a different reality would spawn where you would not exist but your universe is still left untouched.

In essence, there is no such thing as time travel, just reality instance travel.

Of course this is all conjecture on my part but seems pretty clear in my mind.

 

[bsobel]

But this would mean each universes timeline would be independent from one another, so what you say is a contradiction, because technically you could not reach the multiverse to kill yourself to begin with (i.e. timeline integrity), to say you could go back in time, is to say that the timelines of all universes are connected, to kill yourself in one universe then would to be to kill yourself in many of them, perhaps all of them. But no one has any scientific experimental evidence of such, so all of this is just speculation.

Nope, each decision branches the universe.

 

[Gannon]

Originally posted by: bsobel

But this would mean each universes timeline would be independent from one another, so what you say is a contradiction, because technically you could not reach the multiverse to kill yourself to begin with (i.e. timeline integrity), to say you could go back in time, is to say that the timelines of all universes are connected, to kill yourself in one universe then would to be to kill yourself in many of them, perhaps all of them. But no one has any scientific experimental evidence of such, so all of this is just speculation.

Nope, each decision branches the universe.

Which doesn't mean anything, because the multiverse depends on each universe being connected to other universes, you can't exactly have a theory of the multiverse if you can't detect them. It's like the magical pink unicorn., the whole point of my comment was if you can get to a multiverse this means there times are inter-connected intimately and this would have strange effects. Space-time and matter cannot be seperated from one another. We're having semantic issues, each multiverse is not a 'universe' it is merely a different aspect of the real universe(tm) which contains all "universes", if the multverse exists, then there is only one 'real universe' which contains them all, and we aren't in the 'real one', we are in a subuniverse of the one that contains all 'universes' of the multiverse.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Gannon

Originally posted by: bsobel

But this would mean each universes timeline would be independent from one another, so what you say is a contradiction, because technically you could not reach the multiverse to kill yourself to begin with (i.e. timeline integrity), to say you could go back in time, is to say that the timelines of all universes are connected, to kill yourself in one universe then would to be to kill yourself in many of them, perhaps all of them. But no one has any scientific experimental evidence of such, so all of this is just speculation.

Nope, each decision branches the universe.

Which doesn't mean anything, because the multiverse depends on each universe being connected to other universes, you can't exactly have a theory of the multiverse if you can't detect them. It's like the magical pink unicorn., the whole point of my comment was if you can get to a multiverse this means there times are inter-connected intimately and this would have strange effects. Space-time and matter cannot be seperated from one another. We're having semantic issues, each multiverse is not a 'universe' it is merely a different aspect of the real universe(tm) which contains all "universes", if the multverse exists, then there is only one 'real universe' which contains them all, and we aren't in the 'real one', we are in a subuniverse of the one that contains all 'universes' of the multiverse.

In the multiverse model each quantum 'decision' causes a branch to occur. So in the OPs question, if he went back and killed himself, he'd simply be creating yet additional branches. No paradox then exists.

 

[KIAman]

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: Gannon

Originally posted by: bsobel

But this would mean each universes timeline would be independent from one another, so what you say is a contradiction, because technically you could not reach the multiverse to kill yourself to begin with (i.e. timeline integrity), to say you could go back in time, is to say that the timelines of all universes are connected, to kill yourself in one universe then would to be to kill yourself in many of them, perhaps all of them. But no one has any scientific experimental evidence of such, so all of this is just speculation.

Nope, each decision branches the universe.

Which doesn't mean anything, because the multiverse depends on each universe being connected to other universes, you can't exactly have a theory of the multiverse if you can't detect them. It's like the magical pink unicorn., the whole point of my comment was if you can get to a multiverse this means there times are inter-connected intimately and this would have strange effects. Space-time and matter cannot be seperated from one another. We're having semantic issues, each multiverse is not a 'universe' it is merely a different aspect of the real universe(tm) which contains all "universes", if the multverse exists, then there is only one 'real universe' which contains them all, and we aren't in the 'real one', we are in a subuniverse of the one that contains all 'universes' of the multiverse.

In the multiverse model each quantum 'decision' causes a branch to occur. So in the OPs question, if he went back and killed himself, he'd simply be creating yet additional branches. No paradox then exists.

Ok, good, I'm glad I'm not the only one to think so. I'm not crazy after all.

 

[JTsyo]

Time travel would violate conservation of mass, unless there was some kind of workaround. If you had a time machine, it could also act as a replicator. You could have two of something until you send it to the past.

In the X-Men cartoons, paradoxes are rectified by a big twister.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: JTsyo
Time travel would violate conservation of mass, unless there was some kind of workaround. If you had a time machine, it could also act as a replicator. You could have two of something until you send it to the past.

In the X-Men cartoons, paradoxes are rectified by a big twister.

Again, in the multiverse model this isn't an issue. KIAman put it best, you have instance travel will you can jump to any point in the universe, time is just another dimension in that regard.

 

[sturtles]

Actually, there is a very layman explanation by current physics experimental observations, but much less romantic and mysterious.

2 premises.

1) You can move into the future of others, but not your own.

2) You cannot go back in time, ie. not rewindable.

Assuming other ideas such as parallel or micro universes does not exist.

Imagine you leave earth on a space habitat at 10 years of age, moving rapidly, where the faster you go, the further you go into the other person's future, to put in a nice manner. You have your education, you have your life basically on the habitat.

After 20 years on the habitat, you return to earth, only to find your friends are now aged 70, with children and grandchildren. You have slowed down your time in relation to theirs. Romantically, you have entered their future.

This is an experimentally proven observation.

 

[JSSheridan]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
If you can find it , get a copy of scientific american 9/2002 .
http://www.sciamdigital.com/in...-4F59-814C-C9ACB622ED6
The issue is all about time.

So you could travel back in time, provided you did nothing that would prevent you from traveling back in time.

Isn't this assuming people do not possess free will?

 

[JTsyo]

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: JTsyo
Time travel would violate conservation of mass, unless there was some kind of workaround. If you had a time machine, it could also act as a replicator. You could have two of something until you send it to the past.

In the X-Men cartoons, paradoxes are rectified by a big twister.

Again, in the multiverse model this isn't an issue. KIAman put it best, you have instance travel will you can jump to any point in the universe, time is just another dimension in that regard.

For the multiverse model, is conservation of mass/energy for all universes or in each universe?

 

[destrekor]

Going off what others have said about the whole multiverse/'instanced' time scenario, I propose a new way to look at the idea of multiple universes.

I'd say, it's a single universe, but with a physical dimension for time. This dimension, or rather group of dimensions, is like I explained earlier using the string-theory model. The 4th, 5th, and 6th dimensions provide an increasingly more complex model to interpret 'time', and maybe time works like this:
You can locate every moment of time using coordinates, much like our physical world in the 3rd dimension. But what would occur is every single moment in time would visually be on the same exact time-line. But this would kind of kill the whole dimension aspect of time, because if it's equally "3rd-dimensional", meaning 3 real values comprise any given coordinate, than why would the 3rd value exist if it's strictly a line?
Thus, the possibility of parallel timelines, but not truly parallel. Only parallel to a point, and at some point in time having branched off a common point in our timeline. Eventually, and ever since the Big Bang, this graph would look like a increasingly complex infinitely-branching timeline. Maybe every single moment in time, every single event, every possibility, creates a branch in the timeline. We could perceive this as parallel universes, where some things might just be completely backwards from what we see. Hell, one of these timelines could be void of any stars and planets, or maybe all of them share the common universal laws we experience or theorize exist.
But in regards to time-traveling, you could reach these parallel universes simply by determining the coordinates in the space-time continuum and then developing a means to travel to said coordinates. This might be done by manipulating the gravity wells around massive bodies, constructing wormholes, or any other outlandish previously proposed theory, if of course the space-time continuum is actually real, and has the branching timeline discussed above.

edit:
thus, any event that you force to occur in the past if time-travel is indeed possible, could not possibly effect the already established time-line. Branches might not already exist, so as bsobel stated, killing your mother would just create a branch.
This could easily be the answer to the parallel universe question. Everything is one true universe, but everything only exists in one universe, but you could visit and live in a parallel universe, but the profound and mind-blowing reality is that there is ever only one true time, and by visiting and taking residence in a different time branch, you basically make your own reality and have a complete 'disconnect' from the present reality. None are the 'correct' one, because maybe we are currently in some strange branch, and maybe the normal one life was never able to establish anywhere in the universe.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: JTsyo

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: JTsyo
Time travel would violate conservation of mass, unless there was some kind of workaround. If you had a time machine, it could also act as a replicator. You could have two of something until you send it to the past.

In the X-Men cartoons, paradoxes are rectified by a big twister.

Again, in the multiverse model this isn't an issue. KIAman put it best, you have instance travel will you can jump to any point in the universe, time is just another dimension in that regard.

For the multiverse model, is conservation of mass/energy for all universes or in each universe?

It applies to all.

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: JTsyo

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: JTsyo
Time travel would violate conservation of mass, unless there was some kind of workaround. If you had a time machine, it could also act as a replicator. You could have two of something until you send it to the past.

In the X-Men cartoons, paradoxes are rectified by a big twister.

Again, in the multiverse model this isn't an issue. KIAman put it best, you have instance travel will you can jump to any point in the universe, time is just another dimension in that regard.

For the multiverse model, is conservation of mass/energy for all universes or in each universe?

It applies to all.

Well, I think it would truly depend on the definition of the multiverse. Is it one in which our universe is completely distinct from other universes, all potentially - but not necessarily - contained within a larger universe?
The definition of the universe kind of implies that everything we define as universal laws, are in theory strictly only for the universe that we know. We can say we could apply all of the universal laws to all universes in existence, but that defies logic - we cannot theorize that any other universe in existence would share anything in common with our universe. Maybe electrons and protons behave in opposite than that we know, and what we know as the elements are not at all like the elements in another universe - and that's given the notion that elements even exist in those universes, and that primordial elements are combining in fusion in large stars to create other elements.
Yes, I'd like to agree that the universal laws would apply to any and all universes out there, just because that's what we know in science. But that is because we have evidence of what has occurred in our universe. If any other universes exist, and are in no way connected by any means to our universe, we'd have to truly observe it separately to even begin to theorize as to how physics behaves there.

But the only reason I kind of even made this post, is to just kind of make a suggestion of sorts to not hastily apply our known science as the truths of all truths. This has occurred throughout the history of science in general, and many problems have occurred because of that. We are constantly learning, and hell, what we believe we know may be all wrong. Now, I do believe we have a damn good idea and that our many theories of the universe are indeed correct, as it'd been a long road, and theories of the early 20th century still apply after far more advanced research than was ever possible then, so they have stood strongly and I do believe correctly. But, we can never see ourselves at 100% correct. If anything, 99.99% correct is a good thing to achieve, and I'd say certain theories have reached that, like gravity. But we still don't know everything about gravity and the effects it has on a more universal scale, and gravity alone isn't even explaining everything so we have to create ADDITIONAL theories, theories that allude to things we cannot even directly observe, like dark matter.


That was longer that I'd thought it be. lol

 

[bsobel]

I'd say certain theories have reached that, like gravity.

We have no validated theories on gravity at all, just on the effects of gravity (big difference).

 

[Smilin]

Who's played the game Portal from Valve software? What if you place an entrance and exit portal then shoot a billiard ball through the entrace.

Normal Time:
It comes out of the exit and travels on.

Time Travel:
It comes out of the exit BEFORE it goes in. The two copies of the billiard ball may may pass nearby each other even.

Paradox:
it comes out of the exit and collides with itself resulting in a deflection that prevents it from going in the entrance.

Reverse? Paradox:
It comes out of the exit and collides with itself resutling in a deflection that causes it to go into the entrance.



The "reverse" one is the one that makes my head pop.

 

[Shined]

This might be going off on a tangent slightly but..

Einstiens theory oversimply stated. E=MC^2, Energy = Mass x Speed of Light ^ 2

The problem with this is of course is that as you accelerate a mass toward the speed of light that mass will expand requiring more energy to be expended to accelerate it thus infinate energy would be required to reach the speed of light but the mass would never make it intact.

I think a more interesting way of trying to deal with this would be attempting to significantly slow down photons and move the goal post to a point where light is decelerated to the point that future events would become visible in the present. or maybe Im just completely mad.

I feel on the question of altering ones own past to alter ones own present that you would be more likely to create a cataclysmic cascading failure of time, I don't believe that this could self rectify as not only would murdering your own mother cancel your own existance but would exponentialy alter the events which would have occurred when she was alive and indeed have occured as your mother was still alive in the first place to give birth to you.

For these reasons alone I believe that past time travel is not possible ; however previewing future events may be possible. Note - this is not traveling into the future so much as its slowing down the light from future events so that it can be viewed in the present, I don't know how you would slow down these photons as they have not happened yet but maybe something like the event horizon of a black hole would be able to do it as there might be a point in its gravity feild where light is slowed to the point that it could be perceieved as traveling backwards.

Now theres no question im just nuts.