I was just going through Michio Kaku's Parallel Worlds
and I found a very interesting article about Time Paradoxes which I thought to share with you guys!!
Grandfather Paradox : In this paradox, you alter the past in a way that makes the present impossible. For Example, by going back into distant past to meet the dinosaurs, you accidentally step on a small, furry mammal that is the original ancestor of humanity. By destroying your ancestor, you cannot logically exist.
Information Paradox : In this paradox, information comes from the future, which means that it may have no origin. For Example, let's say a scientist creates a time machine and then goes back in time to give the secret of time travel to himself as a youth. The secret of time travel would have no origin , since the time machine the youthful scientist possesses was not created by him but was handed to him by his older self.
Bilker's Paradox : In this kind of paradox, a person knows what the future will be and does something that makes the future impossible. For Example, you make a time machine to take you to the future, and you see that you are destined to marry a woman named Jane. However, on a lark, you decide to marry someone else instead, thereby making your own future impossible.
The Sexual Paradox : In this kind of paradox, you father yourself, which is a biological impossibility. In a tale written by the British philosopher Jonathan Harrison, the hero of the story not only fathers himself, but he also cannibalizes himself. In Robert Heinlein's classic tale "All You Zombies", the hero is simultaneously his mother, father, daughter, and son -- that is, a family tree unto himself. Unraveling the sexual paradox is actually rather delicate, requiring knowledge of both time travel and the mechanics of DNA.
The Terminator movies hinge on an information paradox -- a microchip recovered from a robot from the future is studies by scientists, who then create a race of robots that become conscious and take over the world. In other words, the design for these super robots was never created by an inventor; it simply came from a piece of debris left over from one of the robots of the future. In the movie Back to the Future, Micheal J. Fox struggles to avoid a grandfather paradox when he goes back in time and meets his mother as a teenager, who promptly falls in love with him. But if she spurns the advances of Fox's future father, then his very existence is threatened.
Scriptwriters willingly violate the laws of physics in making Hollywood Blockbusters. But in the physics community, such paradoxes are taken very seriously. Any solution to these paradoxes must be compatible with relativity and the quantum theory. For Example, to be compatible with relativity, the river of time simply cannot end. You cannot dam the river of time. Time, in general relativity, is represented by a smooth, continuous surface and cannot be torn or ripped. It may change topology, but it cannot simply stop. This means that if you kill your parents before you are born, you cannot simply disappear. This would violate the laws of Physics.
We still don't know the exact solutions of these time paradoxes. Physicists have forced to entertain two outrageous solutions : either there is a cosmic consciousness that watches over us all, or else there are an infinite number of quantum universes.
That's all!!
and I found a very interesting article about Time Paradoxes which I thought to share with you guys!!Earlier, physicists dismissed the idea of time travel because of time paradoxes. A paradox is a seemingly true statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation which seems to defy logic or intuition. For Example, if you go back in time and kill your parents before you are born, then your birth is impossible. Hence you could never go back in time to kill your parents to begin with. This is important, because science is based on logically consistent ideas; a genuine time paradox would be enough to completely rule out time travel.
These Time Paradoxes can be grouped into several categories :
Grandfather Paradox : In this paradox, you alter the past in a way that makes the present impossible. For Example, by going back into distant past to meet the dinosaurs, you accidentally step on a small, furry mammal that is the original ancestor of humanity. By destroying your ancestor, you cannot logically exist.Information Paradox : In this paradox, information comes from the future, which means that it may have no origin. For Example, let's say a scientist creates a time machine and then goes back in time to give the secret of time travel to himself as a youth. The secret of time travel would have no origin , since the time machine the youthful scientist possesses was not created by him but was handed to him by his older self.
Bilker's Paradox : In this kind of paradox, a person knows what the future will be and does something that makes the future impossible. For Example, you make a time machine to take you to the future, and you see that you are destined to marry a woman named Jane. However, on a lark, you decide to marry someone else instead, thereby making your own future impossible.
The Sexual Paradox : In this kind of paradox, you father yourself, which is a biological impossibility. In a tale written by the British philosopher Jonathan Harrison, the hero of the story not only fathers himself, but he also cannibalizes himself. In Robert Heinlein's classic tale "All You Zombies", the hero is simultaneously his mother, father, daughter, and son -- that is, a family tree unto himself. Unraveling the sexual paradox is actually rather delicate, requiring knowledge of both time travel and the mechanics of DNA.
The Terminator movies hinge on an information paradox -- a microchip recovered from a robot from the future is studies by scientists, who then create a race of robots that become conscious and take over the world. In other words, the design for these super robots was never created by an inventor; it simply came from a piece of debris left over from one of the robots of the future. In the movie Back to the Future, Micheal J. Fox struggles to avoid a grandfather paradox when he goes back in time and meets his mother as a teenager, who promptly falls in love with him. But if she spurns the advances of Fox's future father, then his very existence is threatened.
Scriptwriters willingly violate the laws of physics in making Hollywood Blockbusters. But in the physics community, such paradoxes are taken very seriously. Any solution to these paradoxes must be compatible with relativity and the quantum theory. For Example, to be compatible with relativity, the river of time simply cannot end. You cannot dam the river of time. Time, in general relativity, is represented by a smooth, continuous surface and cannot be torn or ripped. It may change topology, but it cannot simply stop. This means that if you kill your parents before you are born, you cannot simply disappear. This would violate the laws of Physics.
We still don't know the exact solutions of these time paradoxes. Physicists have forced to entertain two outrageous solutions : either there is a cosmic consciousness that watches over us all, or else there are an infinite number of quantum universes.
That's all!!
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