It has been revealed the fact that paradox-free time travel is possible theoretically. Check out the latest reports about this below.
Time travel possibility
It is currently unknown whether time travel is possible, as no one has yet been able to do it. However, scientists are still intrigued by the idea and are trying to determine whether it is theoretically feasible.
The idea of time travel has been explored in various movies like The Terminator, Donnie Darko, and Back to the Future. However, it also creates a lot of complications for the basic rules of the universe.
For instance, if traveling back in time enables you to prevent your parents from meeting, how can you even exist to travel back in time in the first place? This paradox is called the “grandfather paradox.”
Recently, Germain Tobar, a physics student at the University of Queensland in Australia, discovered a way to make time travel possible without such paradoxes. He was able to “square the numbers” and create a plausible theory for time travel.
“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,” Tobar explained back in 2020.
“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.”
The calculations indicate that space-time can adapt itself to avoid any paradoxes.
For instance, consider a time traveler who travels back in time to prevent a disease from spreading. If the mission is successful, the time traveler would have nothing to go back in time to prevent.
However, Tobar’s research suggests that the disease would still find a way to spread through a different route or method, thus removing the paradox. Whatever the time traveler does, the disease will not be stopped.
Although Tobar’s work is challenging for non-mathematicians to understand, it examines the effect of deterministic processes (without randomness) on numerous regions in the space-time continuum.
It shows how closed time-like curves, as predicted by Einstein, can coexist with the principles 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.
Although the calculations may work out, the ability to manipulate space and time to travel back in time remains an elusive concept. The time machines that scientists have developed so far only exist as theoretical models on paper.
However, the possibility of time travel is not entirely impossible. Stephen Hawking believed it could be achieved. If we do discover a way to time travel, recent research suggests we could alter the past without any consequences to the present. The world would simply adjust itself accordingly.
“Try as you might to create a paradox, the events will always adjust themselves, to avoid any inconsistency,” said Costa.
We strongly suggest that you check out more details about this complex matter in the original study.