Ashan Warnakulasuriya

There is nothing in Einstein’s theories of  relativity  to rule out time travel, although the very notion of traveling to the past violates one of the most fundamental premises of physics, that of causality. With the laws of cause and effect out the window, there naturally arises a number of inconsistencies associated with time travel, and listed here are some of those paradoxes which have given both scientist and time travel  movie  buffs alike more than a few sleepless nights over the years. The Time travel paradoxes which follow fall into two broad categories, namely 1) Closed Causal Loops, such as the Predestination Paradox and the Bootstrap Paradox, which involve a self-existing time loop in which cause and effect run in a repeating circle, but is also internally consistent with the timeline’s history, and 2) Consistency Paradoxes, such as the Grandfather Paradox and other similar variants such as The Hitler paradox, and Polchinski’s Paradox, which generate a ...

In the first half of the 20 th  Century, a whole new theory of physics was developed, which has superseded everything we know about classical physics, and even the Theory of Relativity, which is still a classical model at heart.  Quantum theory  or  quantum mechanics  is now recognized as the most correct and accurate model of the universe, particularly at sub-atomic scales, although for large objects classical Newtonian and relativistic physics work adequately. If the concepts and predictions of relativity (see the section on  Relativistic Time ) are often considered difficult and counter-intuitive, many of the basic tenets and implications of quantum mechanics may appear absolutely bizarre and inconceivable, but they have been repeatedly proven to be true, and it is now one of the most rigorously tested physical models of all time. Max Planck is sometimes considered the father of quantum theory Quanta One of the implications of quantum mecha...