Time Travel

PARADOXES

GRANDFATHER PARADOX

• What if you were to go back in time and kill your grandfather? Logically, you would cease to exist because you were never born. Except if you were never born, you could never go back in time to kill your own grandfather, so your grandfather would continue to live, resulting in your birth, thus allowing you to go back in time and kill your own grandfather, etcetera, etcetera.

PREDESTINATION PARADOX

• What if you were to go back in time to investigate an event, only to find you were the cause of that event? Where did the event originally come from if it created itself? And what does such a situation say about free will?

CAN IT EVEN BE DONE?

WORMHOLES

• Wormholes are one theoretical means of time travel. Essentially, it is a shortcut through time and space. Think of a worm eating its way through an apple. Were it to eat straight through the apple, it would end up on the other side of the apple faster than if it had gone around.

Faster-than-light

• According to Einstein's theory of relativity, the faster you go, the slower the rest of the universe appears to be. This is called, "time dilation." Theoretically, were you to travel at the speed of light, the rest of the universe would appear to be frozen in place. To you, time has stopped. So if, hypothetically, were you to travel FASTER than light, you would actually go BACKWARDS in time.

INTENSE GRAVITY

• Gravitational pull has an effect on the flow of time; the more gravity, the slower time goes. Being near an object with intense gravitational pull will slow down your personal time flow such that the rest of the universe will appear to speed up relative to you, effectively causing time travel to the future.

Moral Implications

have we the right?

• Does being a time traveler give one the right to shape history? Can we, say, go back in time and kill Hitler?

references

• Billings, Lee. "Time Travel Simulation Resolves “Grandfather Paradox”". Scientific American. N.p., 2016. Web. 12 June 2016.
• "Faster Than Light". Math.ucr.edu. N.p., 2016. Web. 12 June 2016.
• "Time Travel & The Bootstrap Paradox Explained". Astronomy Trek. N.p., 2015. Web. 12 June 2016.
• "What Is Gravitational Time Dilation". Users.sussex.ac.uk. N.p., 2016. Web. 12 June 2016.
• "Wormhole Time Travel". Andersoninstitute.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 12 June 2016.