Here's wut i thinks goin on

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Here\'s wut i thinks goin on

Has any one here ever heard of the grand father paradox? If so you know it is impossible to travel back in time and then back to present. That is if the everything that happens is one on timeline. When you go back in time you change things-wheather you do it on purpose or not. Just setting foot is another time in the past will change all of the worlds affairs in the future. Time travel into the past is impossible unless there is more then one timeline or universe.

Say you go back a few decades to visit your grand father before he had children. While your there you accedently kill him. What is the out come of the present you came from? there could be a few

1)If there is only one timeline then your father would have never been born which means that you were never born which means the time machine was never built which means your grandfather was never killed. And all that means none of it ever happened and everything would turn out the same.

2)You could have created a seperate timeline where there could be a world without you , your grandfather, or your father. And there would still exist the normal time line where nothing changed.

Please correct me if I am wrong in any thing.
 
Re:Here\'s wut i thinks goin on

This is pretty much my position on the issue also.

Your point (1) is the foundation for my belief that Time Travel is in itself impossible since all scenarios lead to a paradox, even FORWARD time travel. Ergo, the universe HAS no paradoxes and therefore no time travel.

Your point (2) is multiverse theory based on some calculations in Quantum Theory. But to me it leads to the issue of an infinite number of them since if there is more than one universe, there MUST be an infinite number. (No matter how many you can think of, I can come up with at least one more, and vice versa.) Ergo, if there are an infinite number, then everything that ever can happen already has. I ask therefore, why does the universe need to be this complicated? A simpler explaination seems the best. Occam's Razor.
 
Re:Re:Here\'s wut i thinks goin on

There may in fact be other solutions to this dilemma. It is well known that Maxwell's equations, which describe electromagnetism, have two solution pairs. One solution of the pair, produces the retarded waveform which propagates forward in time. The other solution is known as the advanced waveform and actually describes a wave travelling backwards in time. This later case has predominately been iqnored in physics except when talking about anti-matter in particle physics. In fact, R. Feynman pointed out that anti-matter can be thought of in terms of its properties as ordinary matter travelling backwards in time. If this advanced waveform is actually depecting something physical it could have far reaching effects. I believe that these effects could be used to explain away the old grandfather paradoxes of time travel science fiction stories. In other words, give something more sound to the ideas of closed time loops and our interpretation of "free will" when it comes to the interaction with the past.
 
Re:Re:Re:Here\'s wut i thinks goin on

Yes, I understand about the Maxwell and Feynman equations, if of course they can be manifested as materially experimental beyond the purely mathematical.

I suppose one then has to get around the problem of how it only applies to anti-matter since that doesn't result in anything applicable to what man may apply to his physical self.

I'd be interested in why you think this can solve the grandfather paradox however. Please elaborate.

Thank you.
 
Re:Re:Re:Re:Here\'s wut i thinks goin on

I was suggesting that the advanced and retarded wave solutions of Maxwell's equations may provide a deeper understanding of how time actually works. In fact if the advanced wave form actually describes something that is physically occuring, I believe that our conception of linear time would have to be revised. In other words, it would be possible for the future to have an affect on the present or for that matter the past. This idea has been proposed by a few individuals for the interaction of particles. What they are suggesting is that if you have two particles, particle A and B. It could be possible that particle A sends out a retarded wave signal to particle B. As I stated before, the retarded wave signal propagates along as we perceive time to (in a forward direction). Once particle B receives the signal, it has the "choice" to transmit an advanced wave signal back to particle A with the advanced wave signal travelling backwards in time to particle A. This would essentially tell particle A that particle B will meet it(i.e. interact with it). Now, what you wanted me to do is to clarify why I thought this could clear up the grandfather paradox. I have always felt that closed time loops were a very interesting way of solving those sticky problems of paradoxes with time travel into the past because it suggests that those time travellers are fulfilling their own destiny. However, the whole problem with it is the concept of free-will. If you told someone that no matter how hard they tried to kill their grandfather in the past that the laws of physics would not allow them to do it, they would think that you are crazy because surely there is no law that they are familiar with in their everyday life that would prevent them from doing so. It would be like telling them that no matter how hard they try or how precise they aim their gun, the bullet will always miss. I feel that this advanced and retarded wave signal idea, if expanded could provide that physical law that prevents the paradox. It would be like time having its own saftey valve. In other words, events in spacetime could have the ability to "signal" each other to see whether certain progressions("interactions") would be allowed or "accepted". For example in the extreme case of the grandfather paradox, label the event of your grandfather in 1946 New York before you were born as event 1, you travelling to 1946 New York in your time machine from 1999 event 2, and you firing a gun at your grandfather in 1946 and killing him as event 3. In the linear progression of time, we view things as event 1 interacts with events leading up to event 2 which interacts with events leading up to event 3 which interacts with event 1 thus producing the paradox. However, in this other model with the advanced waveform the events should all be linked. I will have to finish this discussion later . . .
 
Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Here\'s wut i thinks goin on

Yes, thank you for your reply.

I'm familiar with the advanced/retarded wave hypothesis and even tho I am not a formally educated Quantum Theorist, I find it more complicated than it needs to be to suit my "Occam's Razor" if you will.

At:

http://compbio.caltech.edu/~sjs/tew.html

is an alternative hypothesis by a Dr. Lewis Little that to me is a bit more "elegant" in that it is really only as complicated as it needs to be to explain particle/wave duality and Heisenberg's uncertainity. Even the current math works, intact, for it and the EPR Paradox is resolved.


I agree with you on the closed time loop analysis for essentially the same reasons you state. "Free will" being a lengthy "proof" it seems we are both aware of so I will not elaborate further here on that.

Dr. Hawking has postulated the existence of some sort of "law of prevention" with regard to paradoxes as we are talking about here. Perhaps there is something to it if one can speculate that the events you describe (1,2 & 3) were ever to be possible in the first place, but I still can't see the process by which the "advanced wave form" would link the 3 however.

Perhaps I'm missing something here but I just don't see the connection.

Thanx.
 
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