Time Travel

Causal Loops in Time Travel

About the possibility of time traveling based on several specialized works, including those of Nicholas J. J. Smith (“Time Travel“), William Grey (”Troubles with Time Travel”), Ulrich Meyer (”Explaining causal loops”), Simon Keller and Michael Nelson (”Presentists should believe in time-travel”), Frank Arntzenius and Tim Maudlin (“Time Travel and Modern Physics“), and David Lewis (“The Paradoxes of Time Travel”). The article begins with an Introduction in which I make a short presentation of the time travel, and continues with a History of the concept of time travel, main physical aspects of time travel, including backward time travel in the past in general relativity and quantum physics, and time travel in the future, then a presentation of the Grandfather paradox that is approached in almost all specialized works, followed by a section dedicated to the Philosophy of time travel, and a section in which I analyze Causal loops for time travel. I finish my work with Conclusions, in which I sustain my personal opinions on the time travel, and the Bibliography on which the work is based.

Keywords: time travel, grandfather paradox, causal loops, temporal paradoxes, causality

CONTENTS

Abstract
Introduction
History of the concept of time travel
Grandfather paradox
The philosophy of time travel
Causal loops
Conclusions
Bibliography
Notes

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.17802.31680

MultiMedia Publishing: https://www.telework.ro/en/e-books/causal-loops-in-time-travel/

Causal Loops in Time Travel

Grandfather paradox in time travel

The most well-known example of the impossibility of traveling in time is the grandfather paradox or self-infanticide argument: a person who travels in the past and kills his own grandfather, thus preventing the existence of one of his parents and thus his own existence. A philosophical response to this paradox would be the impossibility of changing the past, like Novikov self-consistency principle (if an event exists that would cause a paradox or any “change” to the past whatsoever, then the probability of that event is zero, thus it would be impossible to create time paradoxes).
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.31279.79521

Grandfather paradox in time travel

Time travel is a recognized concept in philosophy and science, but whose scope is highly disputed, giving rise to numerous paradoxes in both philosophy and science. Time travel is considered by some accepted both in general relativity and quantum mechanics, but there is a unanimous consensus that it is not feasible with current technology. (Hawkins 2010) The raised issues are different for the time travel in the past compared to the time travel in the future.

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.29776.76804

Time Travel