As movies such as The Terminator, Donnie Darko, Back to the Future and many others show, moving around in time creates a lot of problems for the fundamental rules of the Universe: if you go back in time and stop your parents from meeting, for instance, how can you possibly exist in order to go back in time in the first place?
It's a monumental head-scratcher known as the 'grandfather paradox', but a few years ago physics student Germain Tobar, from the University of Queensland in Australia, worked out how to "square the numbers" to make time travel viable without the paradoxes.
Tobar explained back in 2020:
"Classical dynamics says if you know the state of a system at a particular time, this can tell us the entire history of the system. However, Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts the existence of time loops or time travel - where an event can be both in the past and future of itself - theoretically turning the study of dynamics on its head."What the calculations show is that space-time can potentially adapt itself to avoid paradoxes.
To use a topical example, imagine a time traveler journeying into the past to stop a disease from spreading - if the mission was successful, the time traveler would have no disease to go back in time to defeat.
Tobar's work suggested that the disease would still escape some other way, through a different route or by a different method, removing the paradox. Whatever the time traveler did, the disease wouldn't be stopped.
Tobar's work isn't easy for non-mathematicians to dig into, but it looks at the influence of deterministic processes (without any randomness) on an arbitrary number of regions in the space-time continuum, and demonstrates how both closed time-like curves (as predicted by Einstein) can fit in with the rules of free will and classical physics.
"The maths checks out - and the results are the stuff of science fiction," said physicist Fabio Costa from the University of Queensland, who supervised the research.
The research smoothed out the problem with another hypothesis, that time travel is possible but that time travelers would be restricted in what they did, to stop them creating a paradox. In this model, time travelers have the freedom to do whatever they want, but paradoxes are not possible.
While the numbers might work out, actually bending space and time to get into the past remains elusive - the time machines that scientists have devised so far are so high-concept that they currently only exist as calculations on a page.
We might get there one day - Stephen Hawking certainly thought it was possible - and if we do then this new research suggests we would be free to do whatever we wanted to the world in the past: it would readjust itself accordingly.
Costa said:
"Try as you might to create a paradox, the events will always adjust themselves, to avoid any inconsistency. The range of mathematical processes we discovered show that time travel with free will is logically possible in our Universe without any paradox."The research has been published in Classical and Quantum Gravity.
Reader Comments
Or will be in a minute...[Link]
It turns out they caused it with their actions in the first place, targeting the wrong guy because their History books said so..
Since a VERY LARGE proportion of our history is lies, written by the "victors" , the self-chosen, We better hope time travel never occurs..... or maybe it already did ?
And now - being I've typed it but not yet hit the button - if you read this will you be "meeting" someone ....."from" (or maybe "in") the future?
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Now - pushed the button, but this is a "future edit" - did you know I was going to type this - in the future?
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One more for the fun of it on this 2nd edit - time tis 122523 1619 - what is an interesting aspect of the reciprocal of the square root of 10? (in Base10 math of course....
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Got an answer yet - or will you in the future?
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Here - its the future again - I'll tell:
Earth Matrix
(oh too bad - the site is now apparently "down" - I got a hard copy - I might share it - in the future)
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Happy New Years,
BK
the future
There is nothing not a one of us can do to stop that!
Something dark, perhaps ... ?
Or the Einsteinian mythos of "universe creation in an instant" ... ?
The future.
The definition of Space is, "The absence of matter."
Crunch those two concepts within the context of physics student Germain Tobar 's mathematical GIGO. Mathematics doesn't care about the validity of your premise. It will allow you to be confident in a wrong solution. Like Albert, there's an idiot traversing the college coursework every semester, usually composed of a syllabus concocted by an idiot professor.
To date, no one has found a location where there is no matter.
To date, no one has discovered a way to PHYSICALLY warp, stretch, compress or otherwise distort the "division into parts." Any good mathematician will understand the effects of non-linearities upon regular intervals.
BTW, Time does not move. We do, as do all observed bodies on the Earth below and the heavens above. The Earth's rotation rate as compared to the celestial backdrop (assumed to be unmoving) is the basis of Time accounting, as is the Earth's size the basis for all dimensions of size and weight.
Doesn't anyone get tired of this nonsense regarding Space and Time?
What is 46 times 12?
460 + 92 = what?
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Basic concepts you say - time and space?
Really - really...basic?
Somebody smarter than a sanhettenstaler - that remains to be seen I reckon.
DUH.
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don't be pompous - not endearing - and any left-right housenheffenstauser knows that.
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As for space and time - there are 3-dimensions - we all reside within them - some of us consider time and others not so much - but times moves in one direction only - the future!
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oh yeah - have a hug - temporary it may be...
Can you get there mathematically? Measure the etheric, I dare 'ya.