Paradox Waves - Time Travel to the Past Does Not Affect the Present

Paradox Waves - Time Travel to the Past Does Not Affect the Present

by John Skieswanne


Faster than light travel is said to be impossible because of two reasons - one of which I agree and one of which I disagree:

-First of all it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate anything past the speed of light (good point),

-and secondly going faster than light would allow for time travel into the past, causing time paradoxes (not so good of a point).

Now I am going to show how so-called time paradoxes are in fact solved using simple logic. And furthermore, we will discover what I like to call, Paradox Waves.

Let us imagine that the Earth is suddenly hit by an asteroid, and, using a faster-than-light mail system (ignoring the energy requirement for such a feat, of course - energy requirement is not the point of this article, time paradox is), calls a ship for help.



The ship decides to alter the Earth's history. So it speeds away from Earth at, say, 0.3 the speed of light:



This acceleration warps spacetime in accordance with Special Relativity Theory. Now all the ship has to do is send a faster-than-light message back at Earth, and the spacetime frame's tilt relative to the Earth's frame makes it possible for the message to reach the Earth's past, at the time where the asteroid was still far from Earth.



The Earthlings were warned about their fate, and they destroyed the asteroid:



But now we have a paradox, right? At one time, the Earth was destroyed and had to send an S.O.S., but just one second earlier, these very same earthlings just eliminated the threat:



So how do we solve this paradox? How can Earth be destroyed if, in its past, it was saved?

The answer is so simple: the Earth is both destroyed (in the present) and saved (in the past). History simply rewrites itself. And the area where the new history takes over the old history looks something like this:



It looks like a wave in time which sweeps across all space dimensions, and travels at the future at the speed of 1 second per seconds. I call it a paradox wave. The reason why its effects are not felt in the present, is because the present, too, travels future-ward at the speed of 1 second per seconds. Thus, the historical re-write and the present are always separated by an amount of time, and since both the paradox wave and the present stay at an equal time interval relative to one another, then the paradox wave never reaches the present. In our example, an amount of three seconds separate the paradox wave from the present:





And thus, even if an assassin would go back in time to kill my grandfather, I would still exist, because the future-bound present, the "old" timeline, would forever be travelling one step ahead of the "new", historical re-write.

And this conclude my presentation on paradox waves and how they solve the time travel/present paradox.

What do you think?

a reply to: swanne

what if instead of history rewriting itself it just caused a new universe to be created/the stream of time to be split off. so when the message is sent back it then creates a different timeline one where the earth isn't destroyed while the timeline where earth is destroyed still exists but in a parallel universe? its early so i apologize if that doesnt make any sense

Just one question

The Lets say YOU are the one sending the message...
would it be YOU that are saved or the one that WAS
saved....

To me it sounds like there will be A WHOLE LOT OF you´s

a reply to: Rabb420

Actually this was my first thought too, but further studying of Einstein's Minkowski spaces show that when we go back in time, we stay in the same "universe". But... I checked the geometrical aspect of space, and your suggestion could indeed work if the Universe had one more time dimension. The good news is, I cannot falsify your theory, because we don't know if the universe has one or more time dimension - we are only assuming it has only one because that is what fits best Occam's Razor.

originally posted by: Miccey
Just one question

The Lets say YOU are the one sending the message...
would it be YOU that are saved or the one that WAS
saved....

Let's say I am dying of poisoning.
On my deathbed I send a message to the past, saying to my past self that I will die of poisoning and I (my past self) must stop eating sushi.

My past self receives my message. He stops eating sushi.

I still die in the present, because the paradox wave is located in my past. And since the present flees from the past at the speed of 1 second per seconds, the paradox wave never reaches me on my deathbed to save me.

Good presentation very clean.

You're essentially suggesting alternate realities. My belief (and a pretty popular one as well) is alternate realities are formed with every single decision we make. We don't travel down a linear timeline. I envision it as a musical vibration and each decision changes the frequency and we move up or down-maintaining harmonic frequency with our "original" timeline.

I believe it's the same with consciousness, our planet and the entire universe as well (frequencies and vibrations are the basis for unified field theory aka "string theory") but that's a whole other discussion.

So if we were able to travel back in time by achieving FTL travel (which the Higgs Boson may unlock the secret to that-Mass Effect [yes I know they're games] is a good example of how this could theoretically be achieved but I digress) the decisions and changes made wouldn't affect the timeline you left. You would be creating a whole new song.

Also I believe it would be difficult to return to the exact frequency one left from.

All and all well said

in my opinion, you write the best type of threads for this forum which I consider to be the ALTERNATIVE science forum. so, thanks for your good work and diagrams... it is so nice to see someone willing to push the boundaries with concepts of their own creation.

I can't say that I understand what you have done here because special relativity is one of those topics that no matter how much I study it, it never really comes together in my mind.

but again, thanks for keeping ATS a place worth coming to.

a reply to: tgidkp

Hehe, my pleasure, thanks for the kind word mate!


a reply to: phoenix9884

One of the most interesting things about paradox waves is that they seem to undergo refraction. When they reach a different Minkowski space, their angle of propagation change accordingly, as if they underwent refraction in a new medium.

a reply to: swanne

Can you comment on the chain of causality in this model?

As I interpret, it only works if there are infinite outcomes on a single world line. If you break the causal chain, the present never catches up to become the future so you don't have the future to begin with.

a reply to: swanne

> "old" timeline, would forever be travelling one
> step ahead of the "new"

These must be the parallel universes.

Is there infinite amount parallel universes or are their amount limited to concious actions, interventions? I mean that the amount of parallel universes might be limited to actions that don't "just happen" like caused by laws of nature but caused by some kind of "free will" + action thereupon.

This is one point that I cannot reconcile with Einsteins theory.I cannot see why travelling faster than the speed of light would give you time travel. OK, say you are travelling away from Earth faster than light, the light you are experiencing is made of photons so you are"seeing" those photons faster than just light speed. The same when you look back, the light photons are slower so you wouldn't experience them for they would be trying to catch you up. These experiences have nothing to do with the time continuum. Time is relative. Another way to look at it. You are travelling away from Earth faster than light and you "see" a planet explode, as you travel towards it you will "see" the photons of the planet before the incident but as the planet is already exploded somewhere along your journey you would reach a point where, with the planets destruction, there would be no more photons produced. The speed of light is just another of mans constructs to try to explain the physics behind the phenomena. Who says you can't travel faster than light. As I've often said before Einsteins theory is just a theory and not fact.

a reply to: swanne

Time travel into the past or future does not exist for if it did the past would not have existed.

a reply to: crayzeed

This is one point that I cannot reconcile with Einsteins theory. I cannot see why travelling faster than the speed of light would give you time travel.

Any discussion on the subject would have to leave Einstein out, because in relativity theory no physical object can travel faster than the speed of light.

Who says you can't travel faster than light. As I've often said before Einsteins theory is just a theory and not fact.

You know, this 'theory' was published 109 years ago, and has survived countless attempts to disprove it.

OP, could you please explain how the behaviour of these 'paradox waves' is wavelike?

originally posted by: Rabb420
a reply to: swanne

what if instead of history rewriting itself it just caused a new universe to be created/the stream of time to be split off. so when the message is sent back it then creates a different timeline one where the earth isn't destroyed while the timeline where earth is destroyed still exists but in a parallel universe? its early so i apologize if that doesnt make any sense

This makes more sense - It also agrees with the latest notions that our reality is made up of all possibilities at once, that any given outcome to every probability exists in a separate universe.

originally posted by: DeathSlayer
a reply to: swanne

Time travel into the past or future does not exist for if it did the past would not have existed.

You mean "Time travel...will never exist..." I think.

And for the record I don't buy the "every decision we make creates another universe" ... that is the stuff of fiction IMO. It just puts a (potential) grand importance on everything we do for the storytellers. Would this be limited to human decisions? I can't accept that I'm "here" in part because a dog decided to crap in my yard rather than in my neighbor's driveway

a reply to: Astyanax
You're wrong. It's all about Einsteins theory of relativity because the poster alluding to the negation of his theory by concluding that you can travel faster than light. What is the speed of light? Now the speed is determined by a bunch of scientist and has been altered a number of times in the last century alone. The theory will stand as long as itlasts till someone comes along with the new paradigm. As for not travelling faster than light look at the Scharnhorst effect.

a reply to: DeathSlayer

Time travel into the past or future does not exist for if it did the past would not have existed.

I think that's part of the concept, that the past doesn't exist, at least not to the same degree as the present. To me, this theory is a more sophisticated way of looking at the "alternate realities" problem- not so much "other realms with their own physicality," more "all reality at once lurks right behind the veil of the present." If we could really understand the past, present, and future, we would see how little they actually have to do with each other.

That paradox of not killing your grandfather isn't, you go back and kill your grandfather after he has sired your father, strange how people never seem to grasp the blindingly obvious.

originally posted by: swanne
a reply to: Rabb420

Actually this was my first thought too, but further studying of Einstein's Minkowski spaces show that when we go back in time, we stay in the same "universe". But... I checked the geometrical aspect of space, and your suggestion could indeed work if the Universe had one more time dimension. The good news is, I cannot falsify your theory, because we don't know if the universe has one or more time dimension - we are only assuming it has only one because that is what fits best Occam's Razor.

If we allow faster than light signals, the 'time direction' effectively becomes traversable. According to your hypothesis, changing the past would create a region in space-time where the universe has been changed, and everywhere outside that region it would remain unchanged (the boundary of this region corresponds to the paradox wave).

This basically means that the entire universe will be discontinuous on the boundary. On one side of the boundary, earth is destroyed, on the other it is not.

This boundary could actually be crossed, even without backwards time-travel. All you need to do is to step into a spaceship (on 'alive earth'), travel at light-comparable velocities for a while, and then return to earth (now being dead). (remember, it's always possible to 'time-travel' into the future by travelling at high velocities).

One could actually hang out near the boundary, crossing back and forth, and seeing the earth as alive one moment and dead the next.

This type of boundary in space-time is bad news for any physical theory, since the universe is discontinuous on it. It implies all kinds of things that will be hard to account for. First and foremost, whenever a superluminal signal is created anywhere in the universe, it would create one of these boundaries. Unless superluminal signals is something that can only be achieved by intelligent beings, there would be discontinuities all over. Such a universe would make very little sense. You could be traveling around in a space ship, and suddenly notice that the entire universe changed around you, because you crossed a paradox boundary.

If time-travel was possible in this way, from the big bang, the universe would probably have evolved into a hot mess of particles, 'teleporting around' from place to place, and not into the ordered universe we see today. (because there would be boundaries, particles would cross them, and when they do, the entire rest of the universe will look different. This would mess up the dynamics of everything).

However, we could always entertain the notion that no superluminal signals have ever been created in the history of the universe, either by intelligent beings or by natural processes. Then the aforementioned would not be a problem.

I guess the major point I'm making is that the 'changed past-time line' would not be contained; it is in fact possible to emerge from it into the 'unchanged' time line. And since these time lines are not kept separate, you still have to deal with a bunch of paradoxes. Just to name one: if the people of the 'saved earth' decide to cross the boundary into the future time line, where earth is destroyed, there would suddenly exist two copies of each person in the same universe (albeit half of them would be dead).