Complications involved in Time Travel

Pre Script- It would be better if you read my previous post about "time travel" before going through this article, just for the sake of better understanding and getting the feeling of being more involved in it. You can read it by clicking here

I hope that the reader is acquainted with the nuances involved with time travels, I thought that its imperative to show what troubles we might face in this yet to be accomplished but mighty dream of ours. If we are ever able to develop a workable theory for time travel and invent some sort of time machine, we would open up the ability to create very complicated problems called paradoxes. A paradox is defined as something that contradicts itself. Here are some common examples that I could think of.

I Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you could travel back to a time before you were born. You will say, whats the big deal in that? Isn't that one of the purposes of the time machine? To see the unknown... But the mere fact that you could exist in a time before you were born creates a paradox. If you were born in 1986, how could you exist in 1947 to see Jawaharlal Nehru unfurling the flag of India's independence?

II Possibly the most famous paradox is the grandfather paradox. What would happen if a time traveler went back and killed one of his or her ancestors/blood relatives (say father or mother... not that one would actually do that... but its just for the sake o example) before the traveler was born? If the person killed his or her grandfather, then how could that person be born some years later and then go back and kill his or her grandfather? Mind-blowing stuff, one would say but its just a part of infinite intricacies involved. Movie buffs like me would relate this with the famous John Connor from the Terminator trilogy (the 4th part is yet to be released, at the time of writing). If we could change the past, it would create an infinite number of paradoxes.

III And the most baffling one would be if you go just some hours ago in time, at the same space where you existed... Consider seeing a duplicate of oneself for some moments but there are many theories that don't allow such things. Space-time continuum laws, though hypothetical are surely not a piece of cake to understand.

IV Another theory regarding time travel brings up the idea of parallel universes, or alternative histories. Remember the awesome movie Butterfly Effect and its sequel !!! (If you still haven't done that, then be sure to do that the first thing after reading this blog... you are missing something really vital.) Let's say that you do travel back to meet your father when he was a boy. In the theory of parallel universes, you may have traveled to another universe, one that is similar to ours, but has a different succession of events. For instance, if you were to travel back in time and change something in order to alter the future, you've only done the "change" in that one universe, and sadly its no longer the universe that you exist in. And if you then try to travel back to your own time, you may end up in another parallel universe and never be able to get back to the universe you started in the first time.

The idea here is that every action causes the creation of a new universe, and that there are an infinite number of universes that exist. When you killed your ancestor, you created a new universe, a universe that was identical to your own up until the time you changed the original succession of events.

V Predestination Paradox and Ontological Paradox

Consider the following examples...

A man travels back in time to discover the cause of a famous fire. While in the building where the fire started, he accidentally knocks over a kerosene lantern and causes a fire, the same fire that would inspire him, years later, to travel back in time.

On his 30th birthday, a man who wishes to build a time machine is visited by a future version of himself. This future self explains to him that he should not worry about designing the time machine, as he has done it in the future. The man receives the schematics from his future self and starts building the time machine. Time passes until he finally completes the time machine. He then uses it to travel back in time to his 30th birthday, where he gives the schematics to his past self, closing the loop.

A professor travels forward in time, and reads in a physics journal about a new equation that was recently derived. He travels back to his own time, and relates it to one of his students who writes it up, and the article is published in the same journal which the professor reads in the future.

Confused yet? Welcome to the amazing world of time travel. Makes you think a lot. Just imagine how complicated the ticket prices will be. Anyone up for grabs?

Please post your comments and views with free will...