Time paradoxes

Stephen Hawking and many other physicists agree that time travel to the past is impossible since it would always create a paradox. Not only that, but there is hardly any known methods for travelling to the past at all unless we were somehow able to grasp the nature of the common wormhole (wormholes exist all around us in extremely tiny proportions, smaller than an electron) or to grab spacetime and literally jerk it backwards.

Anyway, by travelling to the past, people say it would create an issue/problem or a paradox. For example, say you start sharpening a dull knife enough to stab someone. Then, once it's sharp, you open up a wormhole to the past where you were still sharpening, then you kill yourself. This doesn't work and makes our brains hurt because it technically can't happen. Well it can, just not with the physics people think of today.

What I'm proposing is that perhaps linear spacetime is not actually linear, but has a 2nd visual dimmension added on top of the 4th dimmensional fabric for it to branch out at specific moments where a paradox could occur. If spacetime were in fact linear, this would mean that everything, every choice you make, is not in fact out of free will but a universally preset destiny. Since the universe would have to compensate for every minor detail involved in decision making and the possibility for different paths to be taken, everything would have had to already be set in stone. This would mean that, technically, everything would have already happened and that time either goes on to infinite, or that it perhaps acts as a mathematical straight line and eventually curves back into a circle. This would suggest one big time loop, where the universe ends in a big bang just as it started (but, our universe is exponentially shaped meaning it will forever expand and will not end).

Anyway, back to the dimmensional fabric I was speaking of before. If you could have the universe calculate everyaction of every decision, you would effectively have a line of spacetime with many branches, forming the shape of a tree. This would completely eliminate time paradoxes. Say for instance time travel to the past was possible, and one day someone did it. There would have to be compensation for the paradox or else the universe would be thrown off balance and would just fuck up all over the place (I don't even know what would happen). This is why I've started to think that wormholes don't link two times in the same "branch" but link two different "branches" where the outcome of events was different. This would mean that no paradox would occur, and the knife guy from the example I mentioned earlier would effectively kill himself in another branch but continue to live in his own branch.

Now, if you were to consider the loop thing I was talking about earlier, the same would apply except that beyond spacetime there would be yet another container containing these time loops (also in a 2D fashion) where each loop would interconnect at similar moments, say the birth of a child. They would all theoretically start at the same point, but perhaps be bigger than the others, smaller, or of a different shape.

Anyway I've got no math to back me up since I haven't learned any of this shit yet, just spewing out ideas. Thoughts?

 

Surely absolutely everything is a paradox. By walking across grass, say, I wear it down that tiny bit more, meaning that at some point it will have to be watered or replanted. If I went back in time and walked a bit deeper, or did it twice, the maintenance would need to be done at a different time. Flowing on from that the gardener's day would change, and so on.

 

(but, our universe is exponentially shaped meaning it will forever expand and will not end).

Well personally i dont like Hawking, but on to the main thing as why i copied that part of what you typed is i hope this is true? People predict the world will end in 2012. I really dont know what to believe i read your whole thing but my puny brain could only condense certain parts ha.:love:

 

You sure you read my entire post? You're just restating what I gave an example of about halfway through.

2012 is just another conspiracy theory. Remember y2k? Same shit, different smell.

 

I did read it, I don't think I quite understand what you're trying to say >_<

 

I'm a firm believer in branched dimensions, not merely linear, but more likely several spherical dimensions. I say spherical became time isn't linear, neither is space, as you approach a point in time and space, you are at a point on the sphere. In order to travel in time, you'd have to move back along that sphere.

Now where it gets confusing is if you consider time running in a spherical pattern, you run into the problem that there is only so much space on this sphere. As the sphere reaches its end so too does time and space, thus an end to the dimension, or more over a resetting of it. This could also be used to explain the origin of the universe as well as wormholes to an extent. As you image a wormhole as a line between these points on the sphere.

Another way you could see it. Each dimension is tied to the others in a web like formation, each point in that dimension correlates to one in another. If you were to step through this hole you'd be in a parallel dimension.

I don't know, it is difficult for me to illustrate by word, but easier on paper. just my $.02

 

Yep i thought the same thing i was a kid when y2k was supposed to happen back then i was having fun and had no clue.

 

If your time branching/4th dimension theory or whatever were to be true then if you went back in time and branched into a new future then you have still effected the future you came from simply because you have removed yourself from future A and placed yourself in future B, that in itself creates a paradox because you were part of the first future and you now exist twice in the second, this will effect the people around you who knew you in future A, are their emotions and memories of you meant to disappear because you no longer exist?

 

Ah, but you fail to see that if you deviate from the original branch you simply opened a new path. That same stem will continue from where it left off, simply because it is waiting for the time to happen.

 

Space-time can be thought of as a 4 dementional peice of spandex. When an object that has mass sits in that spandex, it creates a dimple. This dimple is a manifestation of spacetime bending to accomodate this mass. The bending of space-time causes objects to move on a curved path and that curvature of space is what we know as gravity. Mathematically one can go backwards or forwards in the three spatial dimensions. But time doesn&#8217;t share this multi-directional freedom. In this four-dimensional space-time, you&#8217;re only able to move forward in time.

According to Einstein's theory of special relativity, time slows as an object approaches the speed of light. This leads many scientists to believe that traveling faster than the speed of light could open up the possibility of time travel to the past as well as to the future. The problem is that the speed of light is believed to be the highest speed at which something can travel, so it is unlikely that we will be able to travel into the past. As an object nears the speed of light, its relativistic mass increases until, at the speed of light, it becomes infinite. Accelerating an infinite mass any faster than that is impossible.

I will not comment on wormholes because string theory is a long, drawn out subject and quite frankly i'm too lazy to argue about that right now, even thought I could.

 

Before there can be an actual argument about this, I think there is a burden of proof to be answered.

Prove that time is part of the physical world.

Or otherwise we're going to be discussing something that has a fallacious premise in the first place.

Time is a standard of measurement.

Do you mean to say that an object slows down before it can achieve the speed of light?

Maybe because it's matter?

 

There are 2 reasons why you cannot travel at the speed of light:
1. The universe does not allow it. As you approach such a speed, time begins to slow to make up for the fact that you're going at such a speed only achieved by light. It will keep slowing until the border between 300000km/s and 99.9% of that is reached.
2. Once that border is reached, matter can no longer effectively exist. I forget what happens, I believe that the law of conservation of mass still applies here, perhaps the particles of matter are broken down so much that they become waves?

 

as if you have traveled at the speed of light before?

 

As you approach the speed of light, ones mass would become infinitely large.

Since F=MA to accelerate an infinite mass you would need infinite force which cannot be done.

Only had a basic level physics class but this is what I got out of it. I don't believe your explanation using time can be used because time is all relative to the reference frame that one is on. The person going near the speed of light would feel no change in time on themselves.

 

Is nobody paying attention?


This one is for blupig.
Do you think it is theoretically possible for a human to travel through time unscathed? Or do you think that only inanimate matter can do it? You talked about paradoxes which lead me to believe that you think a human could one day travel through time.

I believe that there HAS to be a law to prevent paradoxes.

I too believe the same thing, it's interesting to find someone with the same idea as me.

 

Time isn't anything, it's just a measuring tool.

Why do you think time is something physical that can be slowed and sped up?

 

Because it's relative to the speed of light.
Saying it's a measuring tool is redundant.

 

Regardless, it's still not anything physical. Maybe if someone explains the concepts behind how they think time travel would work, it would give me some insight on your perspective.

 

The universe's fate definitely isn't decided. The uncertainty principle takes care of that. In addition, while a person's decisions are made at a level that is unlikely to be affected by that, the minute changes in the world resulting from the principle can.

 

Quantum mechanics states that some things are completey random and cannot be predicted. How does that factor into predeterminism?