Why is time travel necessary?

Question

Assume that you invent a time machine that lets you go back and forth in time. You go back in time to prevent a problem that happened in your life, then come back to the present and the problem is fixed and things have changed. Why did you have to build a time machine in the first place? The problem would have already been fixed by the future you when you were younger, so you never would have had the problem in the first place. You would have lived your life without the problem, never knowing that it would have even happened, assuming your present self didn't talk with your past self.

Is time travel this confusing all the time, or am I putting too much thought into it?

Yes, your future self would have to some time build the machine, but how would they know they had to if the problem was already fixed?

Answer 1

This is a classic case of the greatest time travel paradox: THE GRANDFATHER PARADOX. If you went back in time and killed your grandfather, then one of your parents would never be born, so you wouldn't be born, so you couldn't have gone back in time to kill your grandfather, but you did because it happened in the past.

That's why Einstein hated Time Travel. He liked a clean and ordered universe and was famous for saying "God doesn't play with dice."

According to Einstein Time Travel is impossible. However, according to Steven Hawking if you have access to a rotating black hole then all bets are off. The laws of physics break down inside a black hole and time travel is possible, but you can’t travel to any point in history before that rotating black hole was created. If the black hole is not rotating then you will be collapsed down to a single point; i.e. nothing. If you pass through a rotating black hole then you will have to somehow survive the gravitational sheer that is trying to tear everything apart, but that is considered a minor problem, although it is currently unsolvable. However, once you do that then time travel is a reality (at least in theory—we won’t know for sure until some tries it).

Not only does God play dice with the universe, but he hides the results; inside a black hole (and they have been proven to exist). There the laws of nature and physics break down. ANYTHING can happen in a black hole, including time travel. Luckily all black holes are decently shrouded in an event horizon (the Schwarzschild Radius). Past this point no information can be received since for that information to get out it must exceed the speed of light, which is impossible in the Einstein Universe.

That still doesn’t solve your problem. What happens if you do find a way to survive the gravitational sheer, and you do travel back in time? That is the field for science fiction authors. Ray Bradbury proposed the idea that even a minor change, like the death of a butterfly will have drastic consequences changing a lot of things in our universe. Another theory is the elasticity of time. If you go back and try to kill your grandfather then time itself will work to avoid the paradox. Your gun will jam or misfire, you won’t be able to find your grandfather or something else will stop you. Then there is the theory of a time quake. If you do kill your grandfather then you will disrupt time changing the events between your time travel trip and the paradox. The time quake will change history and probably wipe you out so the paradox will not happen. Then there is the multiple universe theory. It states for every possible decision a new universe will be created, one with each possibility in the decision. So if you kill your grandfather then you will come back to a universe where you never existed, or you could come back to a universe where your grandfather was never killed, or you could get unstuck in time and end up who knows where. Then there is the time bubble theory. If you create a paradox then you create a closed time loop where you will be forced to reenact your deeds until the end of the universe, or you do something that wouldn’t create a paradox. Are you confused yet?

If you go back in time to fix a problem, then you will either be forced to build the time machine, if you don’t build a time machine then a time quake will wipe the paradox out, or you will return to another universe, or just get stuck somewhere lost in time.

Logic proves that things can happen or not, and keeps order in our world. According to logic you cannot make a paradox; you cannot go back in time, or you will have to build the time machine, or someone else will build it for you. Of course logic also proved that bumble bees can’t fly and that atomic bombs won’t work. We found out that bumblebees curl their wings creating an airfoil, which improves their lift, but logically atomic bombs don’t explode. Einstein didn’t invent the atomic bomb, his work may have helped, but the a-bomb was still invented. It was invented when we still weren’t sure exactly how it worked or why; this took the genus of several people. Quantum Mechanics proves that atomic bombs do explode and they describe the atomic world, but they don’t match the physics of Newton. So the solution to your problem will require more understanding before it can be answered. We need to develop time travel and then learn the theory and physics of it. That’s why you and I don’t have a handy-dandy Ronco Time Travel machine. To get one we will need another genius like Hawking or Einstein to solve the problem, and find out the physics of the situation and how those physics can avoid paradoxes. The universe is a neat and tidy creation. It doesn’t like paradoxes and there is always an explanation for the reason why something happens. We might not know what the reason is though, or how it works, but the reason is there. Science is the search for those fundamental reasons of how things work; unless logic doesn’t always work (we just assume it does).

Give me a working time machine, that will return me to the spot in time/space where I started, and I can find an answer to your question. Until then it is all speculation. However, logically you cannot solve your problem and return to your time and not build or acquire the time machine. Why, this is true I don’t know. But, there is no proof that logic always applies. After all Quantum Mechanics is only logical in the world of atomic physics. In the world of Newtonian Physics it doesn’t work. So maybe you can travel back in time, kill your grandfather, return and refuse to build the time machine. I just wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when that happens, because we have no way of knowing what will happen to you. Logically the paradox won’t be created and if it is created then the effects will be bad for you.

Answer 2

Everything that has physically happened in the past is existent at present. All the past is in the present. All the bodies, buildings and objects of a thousand years ago are present with us today - they just have changed into dust and gas. We, of the present, are made up of things of the past, just as those of the future shall be partly composed of ourselves, and what we have been.

The problem with "time travel" is that it cannot be done. We cannot move past our own existence, that there is no "machine" that is able to be constructed of such manner that it is not composed of the same "stuff" as ourselves. So, there is no place to go when considering time travel - it's all right here, both the past and future.

Answer 3

This is a classic paradox for which there is no solution. But it shows something interesting for those people that still believe that someday we’ll all be saved by time traveling humans from the future. Since every day people keep dying either from problems that could have been solved if only we’d known about the problem in advance or could have been saved if only we had some fantastic medicines from the future, then people from the future either have no ability or no interest in helping us out.

Answer 4

To begin with, time travel is not possible. I mean come on; time is something that humankind invented as a tool to manage our lives. Day and night and the distances in between are what we consider to be time. If earth stood still and did not rotate around the sun, would time be standing still? No of course not. One side of earth would be forever day, and permanent nightfall for the other side. Time travel is only possible in history books and in our memories; we can relive the past there, and we can even alter it using our imagination. I hope all of this made sense to you.

Have a nice day…

Answer 5

Time travel is both possible and impossible. It is theoretically possible, but not currently practical. (maybe in 500 years or more) The problem is similar to what you describe. Either you cannot get to the past ( it is not your true past if changing events does not change your present ), or you can never return to your starting point. ( same problem at the other end ) From here it gets really complicated, but then again, I don't think that anyone alive today really needs to worry about it.

Answer 6

I believe the only realistic way to travel through time would be to build a ship that is faster than the speed of light (which is very unlikely as it is). While some of the light that reaches Earth is absorbed, a lot of it is refracted and flys off into space. Theoretically if we could catch up to this light, we could see events that happened seconds, minutes, even hours ago. It would take a very long time to catch up to light that hit Earth years ago though. And the worst of it is that even if we could catch up to this light, we would not be able to interact with it, only view it.

Answer 7

One you are putting too much time into it. Two, if it were possible-your future you at some point WOULD have to have a timemachine otherwise no one would go to the past and fix it.

Answer 8

There was a story about a man who told his three friends about his time machine. After showing it to them, one of them snuck back and used it. He never did like his grandfather so he stealthily killed the man when he was young. Then there was the story about the man who told his two friends about his time machine.

Don't worry too much about it.

Answer 9

Maybe you just like to travel through time. If you have the smarts to invent something like that, why would you not build it? I would go back in time to buy stocks like microsoft when they were dirt cheap.

Answer 10

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