Debate Paradox Free Time Travel Is Theoretically Possible, Researchers Say

Noah_A_S

Noah_A_S

Member
Messages
330
"Researchers ran the numbers and determined that even if you made a change in the past, the timeline would essentially self-correct, ensuring that whatever happened to send you back in time would still happen."
"In other words, a time traveler could make changes, but the original outcome would still find a way to happen — maybe not the same way it happened in the first timeline but close enough so that the time traveler would still exist and would still be motivated to go back in time"

It reminds me of the "What If...?" episode that just dropped last night.

What are all your thoughts? Is a Paradox-less/Paradox-Free Time-Travel-Rich Possible Really Possible? Is a future where time travel & time machines exist in harmony and synchronicity with the timeline and people, really possible? Does this rule in predeterminism again? What does it mean for the double-slit experiment? How does it affect ideas like destiny & religion? Will a new religion be born of time travel?
 
Mayhem

Mayhem

Senior Member
Zenith
Messages
6,742
Sound interesting, "Researchers ran the numbers and determined that even if you made a change in the past, the timeline would essentially self-correct, ensuring that whatever happened to send you back in time would still happen."
 

Noah_A_S

Noah_A_S

Member
Messages
330
Mayhem said:
Sound interesting, "Researchers ran the numbers and determined that even if you made a change in the past, the timeline would essentially self-correct, ensuring that whatever happened to send you back in time would still happen."

What numbers?
Click to expand...
no idea but that's what it said. I also just found this post.
 

unholy_dragon

unholy_dragon

Junior Member
Messages
71
Noah_A_S said:
"Researchers ran the numbers and determined that even if you made a change in the past, the timeline would essentially self-correct, ensuring that whatever happened to send you back in time would still happen."
"In other words, a time traveler could make changes, but the original outcome would still find a way to happen — maybe not the same way it happened in the first timeline but close enough so that the time traveler would still exist and would still be motivated to go back in time"

It reminds me of the "What If...?" episode that just dropped last night.

What are all your thoughts? Is a Paradox-less/Paradox-Free Time-Travel-Rich Possible Really Possible? Is a future where time travel & time machines exist in harmony and synchronicity with the timeline and people, really possible? Does this rule in predeterminism again? What does it mean for the double-slit experiment? How does it affect ideas like destiny & religion? Will a new religion be born of time travel?
Click to expand...
Timelines branch out so in sense you can't change the past but just create a New branch of timeline.
 
Num7

Num7

Administrator
Staff
Messages
12,444
The timeline would self-correct.

What kind of cosmic mechanics make this possible? How does it work? What force is behind this? Destiny and Fate?
 
Num7

Num7

Administrator
Staff
Messages
12,444
Possibly, but wouldn't that mean it's sentient, and has kind of infinite means, from our 3rd dimensional point of view?
 
Harte

Harte

Senior Member
Messages
4,562
Num7 said:
The timeline would self-correct.

What kind of cosmic mechanics make this possible? How does it work? What force is behind this? Destiny and Fate?
Click to expand...
No. What's been shown is that in different regions of spacetime that are connected by closed time-like curves (CTCs,) events can occur (actually, be made to occur) that violate classical deterministic mechanics. These forced events (referred to in the paper as "operations") can have causality that is observed by the regions connected to it, but in the non-connected regions no causality is apparent.
That's how I read the paper, but I skipped a lot after the first 4 or 5 pages and went to the conclusions. I might have that observation above backwards.

Harte
ETA: The paper, surprisingly, is not behind a paywall and is available as a pdf at the link given in the article.
 
Last edited:
Harte

Harte

Senior Member
Messages
4,562
What's been shown in this paper is only true for multiple spacetime regions connected by CTCs.
While CTCs are (theoretically) allowed by the Theory of Relativity, no known way of creating one has ever been shown that doesn't involve an amount of energy practically equivalent to all the energy in the universe AND proposed forms of matter-energy that haven't been shown to exist.

Still, an interesting idea.

Harte
 

Top