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Stoneham Y2264685
Introduction
of Science Fiction writers and their audiences for well over a century, but
only in the relatively recent past have the potential mechanisms and conse-
quences of this most fantastical of ideas been seriously studied in the fields
but on the implications that doing so would have for the traveller and for
Relativity, physicists were forced to abandon the idea that there exists a
universal ’now’. Since then it has been accepted that a distinction can be
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made between the time that one experiences as it passes (which, for the
and the time that passes as experienced by others1 . I will refer to the indi-
vidual wristwatch time as ’Personal Time’ and, for comparison, the time
precedence of events that occur within it. If we accept that objects travel-
say that these frames exist either in the past or in the future relative to each
other.
For this to be true, the external past, present and future must, in some
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similar in many ways to the three spacial dimensions, in which objects are
located and extended. This means that objects possess parts that extend
which everything that ever was, is, and will be, is placed according to the
have to deny a concept which, prima facie, seems fundamental to our per-
ness’ and ’futureness’. In the block model of the universe, events are lo-
the block. It is correct to say that an event will likely occur one week from
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A problem I have with this model is that the language used to describe this ’Block
Universe’ seems to imply a four-dimensional reference frame from which this block is
’observed’. Without a helpful deity to fill the role of ’universal observer’, it’s difficult to
get one’s head around the concept. Nevertheless, the concept of ’time as a fourth dimen-
sion’ is one I suspect most people have a problem with imagining (let alone trying to
imagine what it means to ’move’ through four-dimensional space), and the idea of using
a deity to perform a similar observational function to this is not a new one.
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these properties) after the name given to the complete series of these rela-
also rejected A-Theory, but claimed that since B-Theory only establishes
fixed relations between events and doesn’t take into account the ’flow’ of
time, it too was insufficient to describe it. Thus, he claims, time itself is not
real.
While I won’t go as far as McTaggart and posit the unreality of time, his
into past events. This block of space-time could exist with all its events
mapped out, but without some kind of ’flow’, it remains just that: static.
an effect always follows its cause. Behind the present moment is a wall
of causal forces pushing it forward through the block so that all of their
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causes time’s flow, I am going to retreat from this option for the purposes
of this essay for the reason that, in a universe that lacks a consistent prece-
dence of events, the statement that a cause always precedes its effect starts
There are several physical processes that can add a direction to the flow
of time, but in some way or another, they are all different aspects of the
says that, for an isolated system that isn’t already in equilibrium, entropy
will tend to increase over time[3]. We can thus refer to the direction of
time as the one for which the entropy of the universe increases. This isn’t a
ing the entropy of the entire universe! It is, however, generally accepted[2]
incredibly useful predictive tool. Although this goes some way to provid-
there seems to exist some fundamental difference between the past and
the future.
4
This becomes even more of a problem in a universe that allows backwards time travel
5
There is no physical reason, for instance, why a pond couldn’t radiate waves towards
a centre point and use the accumulated energy of the waves to spit out a stone, but it’s
just incredibly unlikely that such an occurrence would ever happen.
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that have occurred in the past. We can store information about the past
in our memories and recall it whenever we wish; the same is not true of
the future. It makes sense that there would be some sort of ’Psychological’
arrow related to this difference between the knowability of the past and
the veiled nature of the future that causes us to perceive time as passing6 .
crying over spilled milk’-and like to think that we have the ability to direct
difference between the two: the necessity of the past versus the contin-
there are still certain features of the future that must be realised-but the
most important part about the model of time that I am shaping is that if
that once a choice has been made or an action taken, it could not have been
tion that, due to its having occurred, is now a necessary feature of the past.
that that milk was spilled at that point on the space-time manifold.
6
It is interesting to note how we perceive ourselves looking into the unknown future
with the past behind us, while other cultures (the Chinese, for example) picture us facing
into the past, which we can see, while the future comes from behind us.
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river of time[9] and could suggest a way that an object could travel to
an arbitrary point in external time while still obeying the natural laws of
time travel, wherein an object travels into the past relative to external time,
since travelling to a time in the future is far less problematic, and hence
the scope if this essay, although they will be referred to. The term ’Time-
contains a CTC.
man being to travel into the past to the model of time outlined above.
future then the future is no longer contingent; the universe must arrange
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itself so that, at the very minimum, at some point the Traveller steps into a
time, and at whichever place. We can extent this to say that as soon as the
Traveller appears, all facts about his personal past-a set of facts about the
(TNP)[10]:
In other words:
the events that are simultaneously in the Traveller’s past and in the exter-
the past with the intention of killing his own Grandfather at a stage that
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occurs before his Father is conceived. The Traveller must fail in his mis-
stage of his departure, as are all of the events affected by the actions of
his Grandfather that occurred after the time of the attempted assassina-
tion. The paradox arises because, when the Traveller arrives at his desti-
nation time and place, his is, at least in appearances, a free agent who is
essence the paradox lies in the idea that he both can (because he has the
intent and, the story goes, the opportunity) and cannot succeed in his mis-
sion (as his Grandfather lives past this stage in his own personal timeline
then, by TNP, it is now-necessary that his Grandfather lives past this point
There are many versions of this paradox but they all raise a similar prob-
can be undertaken by any traveller to the past. In a way this solves the
paradox: by using TNP to deny that the Traveller can kill his Grandfather,
we seem to beat the paradox by averting it. The problem we are left with, if
is ensured.
Given the almost infinite complexity of a global system like the above case
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constraints imposed upon a time traveller, I will focus on some far simpler
systems.
Consider a TTR consisting of two portals sitting next to each other. Any-
thing placed into the left portal exits through the right portal one minute
earlier. Of course, when and if an object exits through the right portal, it
object at an earlier stage) is placed into the left portal one minute later. This
MUST be placed into the left portal. There is no possible world that
the right portal but no object is then put into the left portal.
2. It is impossible to put the object that emerges from the right portal
back into the left portal one minute later, as this object does not con-
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put the negative of this image into the left portal one minute later (the
same constraints defined above still apply). Of course it’s this negative
that emerges from the right portal, which the camera duly captures, and
one minute later the negative of this negative is placed into the left portal.
negative of itself?
If we assume that the photograph that emerges from the right portal is a
solid shade of grey, then we can represent the colour of the photograph
we then set this function against two axes: ’The colour of the photograph
that emerges’ against ’The colour of the photograph that we will put into
the portal’, there will be a point on the graph where f(x)=x, i.e., where the
’negative’ of the colour is the same as the colour itself. Whatever shade
from the portal will be. The point on the graph where f(x)=x is called a
’fixed point’ of the system, and this system has only one. It represents an
by the boundary of the TTR) such that it is consistent with the global space-
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system that breaks any of the constraints imposed upon it has no fixed
Consider now a third system in which there is a gap between the two por-
tals and the time difference between entering the left portal and exiting
the right portal has been reduced to a second or so. If we were to take a
billiard ball and roll it between the two portals, we would expect the ball
to enter the TTR, continue to move in a straight line between the two por-
tals, and exit the TTR on the other side. This particular evolution is a fixed
point for this system. It it, however, equally likely that as the ball enters
the TTR, another billiard ball emerges from the right portal, knocks the
first ball into the left portal, and is itself rebounded such that it exits the
TTR in the same place that the first ball would have exited had it continued
through the TTR unassailed. This evolution is a second fixed point for this
system. If we were to obscure the entire TTR from view and send in the
first billiard ball, we would know where the ball would exit, since any de-
viation from the ’original’ trajectory would break conservation laws, but
narios was going to play out. To further confuse the matter, it would be
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entirely feasible to alter the system, while retaining consistency, such that
the ball spends different amounts of time within the TTR depending on
which fixed point the system was configured in. To reiterate, once the ball
enters the TTR there is no way of knowing how long it would take to exit
it (among the times allowed by the various fixed points of the system) as
there are no deterministic forces at work. Of course, once the ball does exit
the TTR and the evolution of the system is retroactively calculated, it be-
comes now-necessary that the system did evolve in that way. Moreover, if
the information of how the system evolved were to be sent back in time to
before the ball entered the TTR, it would, due to TNP, be now-necessary
It seems, then, that to discover the fixed points of a system, and hence the
evolution of a system and weed out the ones that lead to inconsistencies[5]!
But how could this happen for a system as complex as our universe, if we
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the space-time within them[1]. This kind of answer, which seems similar to
systems involving more than one fixed point, whose evolutions are impos-
out to be the most elegant solution to the paradoxes created by time travel
the most part by various laws of motion. A problem with this comparison
is that, if the initial conditions of the latter system are known, they can be
used (with reasonable accuracy) to predict the path taken by the projectile.
Moreover, the laws of motion can be used to describe many systems pos-
applied to TTRs are more like quantum mechanical laws. For example,
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constraint upon the states that can be constructed (Exclusion Principle, for
periment will ’collapse’ the evolution of the system into the exact path
predicted.
path from a time t2 to an earlier time t1. Mathematically evolving the sys-
tem, they discover that the effect of the feedback loop on the system is
of the system to the past ”wipes out the alternate possible future, thus
guaranteeing the future that has already happened”. They conclude that,
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reaching the past, ”would only see those alternatives consistent with the
What this means for the murderous Traveller is that the odds of him actu-
ally managing to kill his Grandfather are literally zero9 . This means that
however unlikely the events that lead to his failure, their sum-total proba-
bility will be one. Somehow, the Traveller will fail. A question that remains
is: how limiting are the constraints of this situation on the actions that the
For example, if at some earlier point in his life, the Traveller’s Grandfather
had sat him down and explained in detail about the day he was nearly
shot by a man who looked suspiciously like the Traveller, but fortunately
the man slipped on a banana skin as he was about to pull the trigger, then
it seems quite likely that this will be the means of the Traveller’s failure.
If, on the other hand, the Traveller never knew anything about his Grand-
father’s past, then it almost seems as though he is free to fail in any way
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lar place at a particular time. However, if the information about the fail-
ure isn’t brought back to the past, then the system can feature many fixed
points and the Traveller’s actions are no more constrained than any other
tion about the future, everyone else is immediately subject to a set of con-
straints that serve to make of those facts consistent between the personal
have to act in a very particular way in order to make sure that a now-
necessary event takes place. That person will likely claim that they per-
form all of their actions freely and will not have any knowledge of the con-
straints placed upon them by the existence of the Traveller. The question
is: do these people indeed possess free will in their actions even though it
is now-necessary that they couldn’t have acted in any other way? Not ac-
’If you cannot do otherwise when you do an act, you do not act freely.’[10]
In this case, the moment the Traveller arrives in the past, people’s free
10
That is, unless the Traveller has considered the necessity of the past, in which case he
will be aware from the start that he is doomed to fail somehow
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them. Yet they still feel as though they possess it. This position has been
but the specific details are beyond the scope of this essay.
There are many reasons to dislike the consequences of allowing the possi-
tedly less serious ones than raised by the continuity paradoxes) but is this
declare an idea impossible but only one way to make it acceptable: phys-
giving up your free will!) then we should be all right. I could go on, but
forced to echo the words of Frank Arntzenius: ”The only serious proof of
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References
June 2005.
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?
stanford.edu/entries/free-will-foreknowledge, March
2008.
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