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One of the leading newspaper of the country has published an article, where it is said that over 2/3 of the Delhi University students surveyed have said that they are not in a state of mind to prepare for exams. As per the article referred above, "The analysis was an attempt by the students to highlight the mental and emotional stress experienced by them to make out a case for not holding the final-year exams." Further it says that "Among those students who participated in the survey, 27.2% had tested positive for Covid-19 and almost 54% of their immediate family members had been infected by the virus."
These results reminded me of the time when we were in school at junior level and used to make excuses to our parents that today its raining heavily so we won't go to school or that today we have stomach ache and can't go to school. But I also remember that whether it was rain or flood (not literally flood), whether we had pain in stomach or a fever, we used to go to schools because we knew that if we don't go, we won't get another chance and our one year may be wasted. Of course the rain and stomach ache cannot be compared with the physical & mental pain that one had to suffer because of this COVID, but have we not developed our pain bearing capacity with time. If a school student in junior level knows that exams are important and they must take the exams unless very very serious problem is there, then the students in the final year of any graduate college are expected to be much more mature than those kids and should understand the importance of exams. Shall they not?
Now, exams is not a big issue, as we have read time and again that these 2-3 hour of exams cannot judge the capability of a person. But what alternative is proposed for the students of final year to judge their comparative capabilities with other fellow students. When thousands of students will apply for higher education in one of the top colleges of India or when they will apply for a job in a company where hundreds of students from same batch will be there, how will the other person evaluate their capabilities and competitiveness over the others. Till some alternative mode is put into place, these exams and their scores are the documented way to evaluate two or more candidates for the same post. So, if the exams are cancelled what will happen?
There has been long discussions and research over the possibility of time travel & the paradox associated with the same. Of course, not only the great scientists and intellects but also common man often feels fascinated by the topic of time travel.
Recently I have gone through some articles on time travel (just some casual reading) which explains that how time travel may be theoratically possible. It says that even if the time traveller changes the incident in the past, the time will correct itself to the same future thus keeping the time traveller motivated in the future to go back in the time and thus leading to no paradox. Often the example citid in this regard is that of COVID-19's "patient zero"
these articles often quote that "You might try and stop patient zero from becoming infected, but in doing so, you would catch the virus and become patient zero, or someone else would." Now what they will often ignore or not elaborate is that this is one particular case where two different objects (persons) are involved and the actions of the person from the past (Patient Zero in this case - referred as Person-A now onwards) may not have a direct bearing on the actions of the person from the future (Time Traveller - referred as Person-B now onwards)
So in this particular case, even if the person-A is killed before getting the COVID-19, some other person may become patient zero and the COVID may spread, thus leading to the motivation for person-B. So, as these theories say, paradox may not happen. But, it is only one particular case with one particular outcome assumed to be true. There may be different outcomes:
For example, lets assume that person-B had sucessfully stopped person-A from getting infected and become patient zero, but someone else became patient zero (lets call him person-C now onwards). Now, what if this person-C comes in contact with either of the parents of person-B (mom or dad) and caused his/her death. In such a case, person-B will cease to exist and paradox will happen again. Above theory of non-paradox assumes only one particular outcome, which may not always be true.
Another case is that if paradox is not to happen and time is bound to realign itself so as to keep the person-B motivated to go in the past (time traveller from the future) then this theory shall be true for all instances of time travel. In the case above, person-A was saved from being patient zero for COVID-19, but in case of grandfather paradox, if the grandparents or the parents of the person-B are killed or prevented from meeting each other thus leading to the non-existance of the person-B himself, what corrective actions will the time take to reallign itself. May be his dad will meet another lady and marry her and their son may travel back in time in a similar fashion, but that son won't be person-A.
So, unless a reasonable examples and different possible situations arising out of same cause are evaluated, it is not correct to say (even theoratically) that time travel paradox wont happen. I strongly disagree with the same.
*However I believe that time travel paradox won't happen because the past cannot be altered. I had written my views a few days back on the same in this same blog. (These views are not supported by any facts & figures, so I simply call them views)
Thanks for your time & reading my views.
A man found a cocoon of a butterfly.
One day a small opening appeared. He sat and
watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body
through that little hole.
Until it suddenly stopped making any
progress and looked like it was stuck.
So the man decided to help the butterfly. He
took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The
butterfly then emerged easily, although it had a swollen body and small,
shriveled wings.
The man didn’t think anything of it and sat
there waiting for the wings to enlarge to support the butterfly. But that
didn’t happen. The butterfly spent the rest of its life unable to fly, crawling
around with tiny wings and a swollen body.
Despite the kind heart of the man,
he didn’t understand that the restricting cocoon and the struggle needed
by the butterfly to get itself through the small opening; were God’s way of
forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings. To prepare itself
for flying once it was out of the cocoon.
Moral of the story:
Our struggles in life develop our strengths. Without struggles, we never grow and never get stronger, so it’s important for us to tackle challenges on our own, and not be relying on help from others.
*Source: wealthygorilla.com
Time travel is a very interesting subject that has attracted the attention of not only the great minds (scientists) of the world, but many other people (referred as common man) especially the younger ones often get fascinated by the idea of time travel. However those who have tried to study the time travel a little must have come across the paradox associated with the time travel. One such paradox is the "Grandfather Paradox"
Simply stated, "Grandfather paradox" puts forward a hypothetical situation that if one travels back in time and kill their grandfather before he conceives one of their parents, which precludes their own conception and, therefore, they couldn't go back in time and kill their grandfather.
Now, as a layman and thinking about it, I have developed a query on the same. To understand that, lets consider a example where a rat has travelled in a two dimensional floor from point A to point B. In doing so, the rat has travelled through several walls that had one way doors to let him travel from point A to point B but not the other way round (point B to point A). The rat is now trapped at point B as it doesn't know that there is another way (Z axis) through which it can travel back. It keeps moving ahead and the path follows a third dimension which takes him vertically and the rat follows a path exactly backwards towards the point A and reaches a point C that is vertically above point A. Now, the rat which understands only two dimensions, feels that he is home at point A and tries to find his home (hole in the earth), but can't find it. Why? Because he is not exactly at the same point. He is in a different dimension. Some scientists may take is as a parallel universe in view of time travel, but for me it is not.
Coming back to the original equation, when a person travels back in time, he is still bound by the dimension of his own time. He is still ageing in the same forward direction as he was before the start of his time travel. So, when he reaches the point where he sees his past, he is actually seeing just a reflection of the past and is not actually at the exact coordinate because he is still bound by his own time dimension. Confusing, isn't it? Yes, but the question is that to be able to change the history, person who has to be at the exact coordinates where that event happened in the past and these coordinates include not only space coordinates but also time coordinates .
We all might have heard of 3 dimensions and we can locate an object in space by assigning three coordinates to that position. Lets assign position of any object as (X,Y,Z). Now lets add time dimension to his position and define his position as (X,Y,Z,T).
Now, in the grandfather paradox, lets make a small change and assume that the person wants to kill himself at a much younger age. Lets call those coordinates of his younger self as (X1, Y1, Z1, T1) & present self as X2, Y2, Z2, T2). Now when he wants to travel back in time, he has to leave the plane of his present time dimension. But as soon as he will leave that plane, he is no longer bound by his original time dimension. But all his memories are bound by that time dimension in which he has travelled through his life. So, those memories may not hold good when he leaves his original time dimension which means he will not have any purpose of travelling back in time and will be blank on reaching in the past time. So, he won't remember that he had travelled back in time to kill his past self. And hence, he may not be altering any reality.
However in my opinion, leaving the time dimension to reach that exact time & location where the original incident happened, may not be possible. We all are bound by time which always travels forward and unless we find a way to reverse the time itself, we are likely to be travelling to the past as a meager spectator from a different time axis. We can't change anything and there will be no parallel universe either.
And if we can find a way to reverse the time itself then by the time we reach that past point, the world itself had went to the past. So, it will mean the future itself has never happened and whatever happened has become a clean sheet of paper again. There won't be existence of any future self. Only the past self will be there and hence again, no alterations to the past will happen.