Time Travel Essay Research Paper The concept

Time Travel Essay, Research Paper

The concept of time travel has always been a prevalent idea used in science fiction. Many science fiction stories and novels have dealt with time travel, from classics such as The Time Machine by H. G. Wells to more modern stories such as Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. Most believe that real scientists would scoff at the notion that time travel could be possible. It is widely assumed that only na ve science fiction fans would believe that time travel is actually possible. However, there is much debate between physicists in the science community today over whether Einstein’s theory of relativity allows for the possibility of time travel or not. This purpose of this paper is not to discuss the hard science debate on time travel, however. I am going to assume that there is a way to travel in time which modern science cannot comprehend yet. However, if science does eventually allow for time travel, I believe that the question is whether the paradoxes involved in time travel allow for the possibility of going to the past or future. That is the subject of this paper.

First, let us look at an example of the paradoxes involved in time travel. There is of course the classic paradox that is most widely used when discussing time travel. This is the question of what happens if a time traveler goes back in time and kills his parents. The answer is he was therefore never born. But if he was never born, how could he have traveled in time to kill his parents. He could not have, so therefore his parents should meet and he should be born. And so on, the paradox spiraling in an endless loop of impossibility.

An example similar to the previous one is found in Robert Heinlein’s 1941 story “By His Bootstraps”. While in the future, the narrator, who is also the main character, receives a notebook from an older version of himself. The notebook contains a dictionary of futuristic vocabulary to help the narrator on his travels. As the years pass and the notebook becomes tattered, the narrator recopies it into a new notebook from the present. As an old man the narrator then proceeds to give this notebook to his younger version. But the paradox that is created is where did the notebook originally come from (Ross). Originally someone had to have created it. But no, it seems that the notebook was written by nothing. The original knowledge seems to have been lost in a closed temporal loop (Ross). How is this possible. There seems to be no explanation.

One more example of the paradoxes involved in time travel is the man with no past. Let us say that a man is trying to invent a time machine, but is having no success at it. Suddenly, an old man appears out of nowhere and offers the aspiring inventor the secret to time travel. The man then proceeds to become wealthy from gambling on the horse tracks and sporting events. Then as an old man he goes back in time to give the secret of time travel to his younger self. Where did the original idea come from.

How are these paradoxes resolved. Does the universe simply cease to exist in order to end the paradox. Or is it something more simple, such as the time traveler and whatever he causes to become a paradox just wink out of existence, and the world moves on as if they had never been there. Or is there another explanation that could be given to resolve such a paradox.

One idea to deal with the problem of paradoxes is that there are an infinite number of timelines that can be created which are parallel to, but at the same time different from the original time line (Kiekeben). This means that as soon as a time traveler arrived in the past or future, that time line would split off from the original one. As a result of this, a time traveler would not be able to change the history of his time line. For example, let us say a time traveler wanted to go back to Nazi Germany and assassinate Hitler in order to prevent the Holocaust. If he was successful in his assassination attempt, the time traveler would be surprised to learn upon his arrival home that the Holocaust did in fact occur and that nothing had changed. This would be because when the time traveler assassinated Hitler, that time line split off from the time traveler’s original time line. If this theory is accepted, then this could not actually be considered time travel. As soon as the time traveler arrives in the past, he is no longer in his past but is instead in another temporal continuum. Therefore this is traveling to parallel universes, which is not really time travel (Kiekeben).

Another theory is that time travelers would merely play out the role they have in history (Kiekeben). If we take the example of the assassination of Hitler in the previous paragraph, then the time traveler would go back in history and for some reason he would be stopped in his attempt. This theory says that the time traveler was present during this period of time but the natural course of history plays itself out and Hitler continues on with his plan of genocide. The problem with this theory is that the time traveler could simply figure out what he did wrong on his first attempt, travel back to the present, and proceed to go back to the past to try again and again until he succeeds (Kiekeben). Eventually there could be a whole army of time travelers trying to assassinate Hitler. Why could they not succeed. A solution to this problem would b