Have you ever made a mistake that you wish you could undo?
Correcting past mistakes is one of the reasons we find the concept of time travel so fascinating.
Butis time travel really possible in our universe, or is it just science fiction?
Our modern understanding of time and causality comes fromgeneral relativity.
For decades, physicists have been trying touse general relativity to figure out if time travel is possible.
But physics is not mathematics, and equations are meaningless if they do not correspond to anything in reality.
However, there is no proof that it is impossible to create exotic matter in sufficient quantities.
Furthermore, other equations may be discovered that allow time travel without requiring exotic matter.
Therefore, this issue may just be a limitation of our current technology or understanding ofquantum mechanics.
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There are several types of such paradoxes, but the most problematic areconsistency paradoxes.
Therefore, it is not destroyed, so I can go back in time and destroy it.
In other words, the time machine is destroyed if and only if it is not destroyed.
Since it cannot be both destroyed and not destroyed simultaneously, this scenario is inconsistent and paradoxical.
However, this conjecture so far remains unproven.
The laws of physics would somehow conspire to preserve consistency.
So, is this the final nail in the coffin of time travel?
In fact, it can resolve any paradox you throw at it.
The idea is very simple.
When I exit the time machine, I exit into a different timeline.
So, can it?
But these are just speculations.
This article byBarak Shoshany, Assistant Professor, Physics,Brock Universityis republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license.
