Time Travel Simulation May Have Solved "Grandfather Paradox"

[Jeroenr]

The image reminded me of another I've seen for a movie that might interest anyone that likes time travel and the such - Primer. The two seem very similar, actually.

Sorry the text is a bit small. I think it's still easy enough to read. Anywho, the movie takes a fairly grounded and realistic approach to time travel compared to others and lays on the science very thick.

That was the most comprehensible explanation of primer i have seen.

Spoiler

That was their plan, in theory anyway.
Once one of them made a second (and more?...) box, my head started to hurt.
Then it became like this.

http://i.imgur.com/O2CpJ7J.png

Also i didn't get the leap from making a really slow growing mold grow fast by accelerating time inside the test chamber to traveling back in time.

 

[ExtraDebit]

Time travel is more fiction than science, Time is simple the movement of mass in space. Once something is moved it cannot be unmoved.

 

[Roofstone]

Why yes, I know some of those words!

 

[Savagezion]

The only part I don't like is "that person would be born with a one-half probability of killing their grandfather, giving their grandfather a one-half probability of escaping demise" Meaning it could happen or it could not. Which IS the paradox in itself. We knew this going into the study.

 

[zumbledum]

raises 2 questions in my mind, who gave them the funding for this and if i start a project to see if i can eat the same doughnut twice can i get some?


its a long quote but its funny so ill leave you with Mr Douglas Adams view on this whole time travel debate.

?One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is no problem with changing the course of history?the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.

The major problem is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be descibed differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is futher complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.

Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later aditions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.?

 

[oooooooooooooooooooooooooo]

As I understand it, that would mean that the outcome would vary between loops over whether the grandfather dies or not. So would the grandson within a one-half probability loop where he succeeds just go on existing then?

 

[Lunar Templar]

o_o

I can in fact confirm the use of words in that news story, they even seem to be in English, as to what they mean, I have NO fucking clue

 

[AgentLampshade]

Is this really recent? I've seen people reason FFVIII's plot like this for years.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

Ah, gravity. It keeps you from flying off into space and it can warp the fabric of space-time to create a time portal if you get enough of it in one place. No other force gonna do that!

And it's still the weakest of the four known forces in the universe.

 

[CaitSeith]

This sounds like something from Chrono Cross.

 

[Fsyco]

I feel like if backward time travel were possible, we'd have already met time travelers and seen the effects of it. I don't know why we keep trying to work out the paradoxes when nobody has any idea of how the mechanics of it would work. It's like designing traffic regulations for a vehicle that doesn't exist yet.

I also find it amusing that alot of these posts are "I find this confusing". It's like a bunch of kids in a class putting up their hands going "OOOH! OOOH! I don't know."

 

[TakeyB0y2]

Maybe I'm just a big ol' stupie-head, but to me it just sounds like they're saying the grandfather paradox can be avoided by you simply being unsuccessful in killing your grandfather.

... Well... Duh?

 

[Ylla]

LOL this article is wrong, their explanation is for the quantum physics which are not valid in the macroscopic level. Both are obviously entirely different things (i.e. are you solid? do you continuously exist trough a period of time?)

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

LOL this article is wrong, their explanation is for the quantum physics which are not valid in the macroscopic level. Both are obviously entirely different things (i.e. are you solid? do you continuously exist trough a period of time?)

That's exactly what I was going to say.

Quantum physics, by its very definition, can only be applied to sub-atomic particles. Any larger scale than that and it completely falls apart, which was the whole point of Schroedinger's cat as a thought experiment: it isn't supposed to make sense. It would be like saying "the electrons in my body are moving at thousands of kilometers a second, so why can't I run that fast?"

 

[Creedsareevil]

Err.... why would a gravity field actually allow to GO BACK in time?

If they said you can park in the gravity well for a few years and have the outside world move on for a few thousand, well sure i can see that being plausible but actually going back?

Try to imagine the proxess involved. The physical process of how this is supposed to look.

Do you fly into the hole, veer off at an angle and use the slingshot to get out again and voila you are in the past?

Doesnt that, like, do the opposite? Deposit you in the future because your stupid ass just spent some time in time dilation?


Someone explain that to me when they say "bend space time". Isn't time purely a concept of the human mind?

And why a spinning black hole? What the fuck does spinning have to do with gravity?! Centrifugal forces are not gravity. Thats inertia of mass transformed into getting flung the fuck away?

???

And why does everyone wanna go kill their parents and grandparents? Can't you go kill hitler or something? I mean i am sure we can find better targets for temporal assasinations than granny and gramps.

 

[TessaraVejgan]

I think time travel is quite possible and if you do go and kill your grandpa (you sick freak) nothing will happen. I mean for us, as for you the future changes a bit (if you stay in that alternate reality or whatever) depending how big of an impact your grandpa had on history. In my opinion you wouldn't disappear either since you are a separate entity. I don't think time flows from point a to point b, its more like a web or intertwined. I think nature has a way of compensating for these things otherwise the entire universe (or multi-verse) would of collapsed. Besides what is time anyway, just because we perceive it the way we do doesn't mean some other civilization perceives it the same way.

 

[Saetha]

What.

Heh, whatever. Figure out time-travel, you brainy thinky folks. I can't wrap my head around this physics stuff.

 

[thedarkfreak]

It's time we accepted that black holes just have super gravity, and photons have mass.

"It's time we accepted the Earth is flat."

"It's time we accepted that the Earth is the center of the universe, and everything revolves around that."

"It's time we accept that we will never understand the way the body functions."

"It's time we accept that we will never leave the Earth."


I can understand a healthy amount of skepticism, but saying that we don't understand something, and therefore we should just stop trying to understand it, just seems beyond idiotic to me. Yes, we don't understand it right now. That's why we'll poke and prod at it, come up with theories, test those theories, determine them true, determine them false, and keep going. We will understand it someday, but you have to take that first step. You'll fuck up a lot, but that's how you learn.

For fuck's sake, we're advancing our world every day. We're in the middle of technological revolution. We can replace even damaged human retinas with machines and help blind people see(although very low resolution) again. We are starting to be able to read minds using machines, and we've already decoded many of the signals the brain sends to the body, which is how we're able to make robotic body parts that work like a real human part. Stuff like true virtual reality is seeming more and more possible.

This day and age is awesome, and it only got that way because we question the world around us. Why stop here?

 

[blackrave]

I think time travel is quite possible and if you do go and kill your grandpa (you sick freak) nothing will happen. I mean for us, as for you the future changes a bit (if you stay in that alternate reality or whatever) depending how big of an impact your grandpa had on history. In my opinion you wouldn't disappear either since you are a separate entity. I don't think time flows from point a to point b, its more like a web or intertwined. I think nature has a way of compensating for these things otherwise the entire universe (or multi-verse) would of collapsed. Besides what is time anyway, just because we perceive it the way we do doesn't mean some other civilization perceives it the same way.

May I interest you in my understanding of time travel?
I call it False Loop Hypothesis (or whatever)
Lets say you travel from 2150 to 2000
Year you came from can be considered 2150A
The moment you time travel 150y into past said 150 years cease to exist
So come to 2000 and do or don't something (doesn't matter really)
There will new 150 years happening so eventually there will be 2150B
Lets assume that in 2000 you killed your grandpa (hey, accidents happen... sometimes on purpose > )
That means that in the new timeline your "dad" and "you" will never exist
But that's the trick it isn't your dad and his child wouldn't be you either
You are product of totally different timeline that exists no more
So you can do whatever you want without causing paradox.

Comments, objections, death threats?