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This idea is something I've had floating around in my head for a while now, and is based more on gut feeling and intuition than any actual knowledge of what I'm talking about. You've been warned.
I am strongly inclined to think that time travel is impossible, for reasons related to my absolute worst subject in school, mathematics. You know how, in early algebra, they teach you to define functions in terms of other functions? E.G., if f(x)=x^2, and g(x)=x+5, f(g(x))=X^2+10x+25. This is only useful assuming you will later assign some actual value to X, though, like all functions. Like my computer teachers say, Garbage In, Garbage Out. A function is only as valuable as its input is accurate. So f(g(x)) is really only useful as a shortcut, compressing two formulae together so you can apply both at once at a later time.
What you have with time travel, however, is something like f(f(x)), without the possibility of value ever being assigned to X other than f(x). Because the future exists as a consequence of the past, and events therein, putting yourself into the past is much like f(f(x)); you're defining something in terms of itself, and the resulting definition means you have to redefine it as itself again, and that means you have to redefine it again, and again, and again, and again. In the case of the f(x) I mentioned above, you would wind up just squaring a nonsense variable over and over again, until you wound up with something like x^thirty million, and you'd still be no closer to a meaningful definition than when you started.
Of course, this is pretty much common knowledge, albeit in a slightly different form, as the cliched "grandfather paradox." The way to avoid the GP, ostensibly, is to avoid doing anything that will change the flow of time, but that doesn't sound possible to me. Merely by existing you inhale and exhale oxygen and other gases, give off waste heat, reflect light, etc. These don't seem meaningful, but the fact remains that you are swapping around molecules, or energy, or something, not to mention exerting an influence on your environment in terms of electromagnetics and gravity. It's a tiny, impossible-to-notice influence, but you're still stuck defining certain events in terms of their own consequences, and the changes will affect the present you that causes them in one way or another...right? If we can tell that stars an unfathomable distance away have planets from the slight tug gravity puts on them, surely molecules as close together as within the atmosphere of our own earth have some miniscule effect on each other. The tiny effect changes the nature of the particles that will later compose the future you, which then is presumptively manifested in the you in the past, which in turn has a -slight- effect on the past again, and again, and again. I'm guessing so, that is. I know most of my quantum mechanics from "Timeline," for crying out loud. Cut me some slack.
I am strongly inclined to think that time travel is impossible, for reasons related to my absolute worst subject in school, mathematics. You know how, in early algebra, they teach you to define functions in terms of other functions? E.G., if f(x)=x^2, and g(x)=x+5, f(g(x))=X^2+10x+25. This is only useful assuming you will later assign some actual value to X, though, like all functions. Like my computer teachers say, Garbage In, Garbage Out. A function is only as valuable as its input is accurate. So f(g(x)) is really only useful as a shortcut, compressing two formulae together so you can apply both at once at a later time.
What you have with time travel, however, is something like f(f(x)), without the possibility of value ever being assigned to X other than f(x). Because the future exists as a consequence of the past, and events therein, putting yourself into the past is much like f(f(x)); you're defining something in terms of itself, and the resulting definition means you have to redefine it as itself again, and that means you have to redefine it again, and again, and again, and again. In the case of the f(x) I mentioned above, you would wind up just squaring a nonsense variable over and over again, until you wound up with something like x^thirty million, and you'd still be no closer to a meaningful definition than when you started.
Of course, this is pretty much common knowledge, albeit in a slightly different form, as the cliched "grandfather paradox." The way to avoid the GP, ostensibly, is to avoid doing anything that will change the flow of time, but that doesn't sound possible to me. Merely by existing you inhale and exhale oxygen and other gases, give off waste heat, reflect light, etc. These don't seem meaningful, but the fact remains that you are swapping around molecules, or energy, or something, not to mention exerting an influence on your environment in terms of electromagnetics and gravity. It's a tiny, impossible-to-notice influence, but you're still stuck defining certain events in terms of their own consequences, and the changes will affect the present you that causes them in one way or another...right? If we can tell that stars an unfathomable distance away have planets from the slight tug gravity puts on them, surely molecules as close together as within the atmosphere of our own earth have some miniscule effect on each other. The tiny effect changes the nature of the particles that will later compose the future you, which then is presumptively manifested in the you in the past, which in turn has a -slight- effect on the past again, and again, and again. I'm guessing so, that is. I know most of my quantum mechanics from "Timeline," for crying out loud. Cut me some slack.
good point
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