Time Travel

[mikechamp]

A topic to ponder on this beautiful Monday afternoon (and there are links galore in the article):

The Missing Time Travelers of 3025 Could Be a Real Scientific Problem

Is time travel truly possible? The prospect presents its fair share of paradoxes.

Of course, there are famous logical examples, such as the Grandfather paradox, which explores what would happen if a time traveler killed their grandparent before their parent was conceived (an idea not so far removed from the plot of the sci-fi great Back to the Future). Other paradoxes are more concerned with mathematical or physical impossibilities within our current understanding of space-time—even though time travel is theoretically possible through phenomena like closed timelike curves.

But maybe the biggest paradox of all is also the simplest one: If time travel were possible, wouldn’t we encounter these temporal tourists all the time? Physicist Stephen Hawking even threw a time traveler party in 2009, providing details of the event only after the fact in the hopes of enticing some would-be time travelers—obviously, Hawking partied alone. Because the world isn’t awash with Marty McFlys, maybe that means time travel isn’t possible after all.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the ins and outs of something immensely complicated like time travel, things are rarely so simple.

In a new study, Andrew Jackson—a research associate from the School of Informatics—explores reasons beyond the scientific or technological as to why time travel appears to be impossible (at least, in this reality). Published in the preprint journal arXiv and titled “Where Are All the Tourists From 3025?,” the study posits that maybe time travel itself is a self-suppressing phenomenon. “I conclude that, assuming my model, time travel is self-suppressing: the timeline is continually rewritten until it inevitably reaches a timeline with no time machines ever being constructed, “ Jackson wrote. “At this point, no further changes to the timeline are possible.”

https://www.popularmechanics.com/scienc ... s-of-2035/