Time Travel - Why it cannot 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. 

In my previous article titled "Time Travel - A Myth that can't change the past" I have put forward my view that - why time travel cannot change the past. Today I am going to put forward the same view in a different way. 

So, time travel considers time as a fourth dimension just like we have three dimensions labelled usually as "X", "Y" & "Z" axis. So, let's call the time dimension the "T" axis. Now before we go to understand why time travel in the past is not possible, lets understand something more simple.

We have an object (lets say a ball) kept at a particular point on the ground. So, its coordinates are "X0, Y0, Z0" Now we apply a force on it to lift it vertically along Z-axis so that its new coordinates are "X0, Y0, Z1" SO, the object has gained potential energy on its way to reaching the new position. Thus the object at the new position is not exactly the same as the object at the previous point. It has a different amount of energy stored in it. Now if the object has to return to its original position, it can't do so without losing its (potential) energy that it had gained previously. 

Now let's replace that object with the time traveler, its movement along Z dimension is replaced by the movement in "T" dimension i.e. time and the energy gained is replaced by the experience and learnings gained over the time by virtue of moving along that axis. Now let's redo the same exercise. Just like the object in the previous example had to return back its energy that it had gained by moving forward along the Z-axis, in order to return back to its original position, the same way a person will have to return back what it has gained while travelling along the time axis. So, by the time it reaches its destination in the past, he won't even exist (assuming he returns to a point of time before his birth). 

Just like one object can't be present at two different coordinates at the same time (X0, Y0, Z0 and X0, Y0, Z1) the same way a person or any object can't be present in two different time dimensions at the same time. So, though some form of communication between time dimensions may become a reality in the future, the physical presence and activities that often lead to paradoxes like grandfather paradox may not actually happen. 

Paradox-Free Time Travel Is Theoretically Possible - Says some studies

 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. 

The struggle of a Butterfly - A small story

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 - A Myth that can't change the past

 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.