Time Travel, truth, and Tweets

To Donald: A sweet tweet is worth more than a thousand trivial tweets.

Advocates of “cookoo” theories often chime the loudest and are always on time.

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That Pesky Time. On the time travel paradox. One of the most frequently applied scenarios against the possibility of time travel is the “grandfather” paradox. Here it is. Right now, you travel back in time with a pistol to see your grandfather walking in a park long before he has even met your grandmother. You shoot and kill him. Therefore, grandpa never meets grandma, and thus you cannot exist to travel back in time. (This where the time travel paradox usually ends. But it goes on…) Now then, since you don’t exist you couldn’t have traveled back in time to kill grandpa. Thus grandpa does meet grandma, and eventually you are born. But now you can travel back to make the kill. This repeats ad infinitum. What seems to be created is a time-conflict. Kill, no kill, kill, no kill, … Doesn’t this set up some bizarre perpetual time loop? Tricky.

Such a paradox sound similar to the Zeno-type paradoxes for distance. One problem with resolving them back in their day and for about the next two millennia, was that the language to discuss was unavailable, in fact, not even invented. Even if someone said what we understand now, it would have been be rejected. Eventually, with new concepts of infinity and infinite processes the Zeno paradoxes have been resolved. It seems a similar concepts for time are needed to resolve the grandfather paradox. Yes, we are suggesting the need for inventing new ideas, of which none can conceive just now. Recall, Pasteur suggested new ideas and language for the explanation of disease. Rejected at first, incontrovertible analysis emerged; suddenly we had bad germs. Inoculations, vaccines, and more have saved our lives.

Currently, the multiverse idea is rampant, and provides an explanation to our paradox. It proposes that there are an infinity of universes, somehow existing in parallel, but unable to communicate. At every instant, the current branches to a new universe. In the context of our problem, when the grandson kills his grandpa, then time branches to another universe. An entire TV series, Fringe, was dedicated to a possibility of exchanges between just two of these. Good series, but riddled with difficulties.

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For a new revelation, it is as often said, first you need the concepts, then the language, then you discuss, then you become accustomed, then you accept, and finally then the problem is solved.

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Evangelist Franklin Graham, son of American religious icon Rev. Billy Graham, has indicated God intervened in the past presidential election. Cynical critics will say, “Graham claims God hacked the election,” ecclesiastically speaking of course. This errant diatribe diminishes all, even the most devout Muslims and atheists.

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