Stuff you didn't know about Time Travel
Having a thought with Aristotle or sipping a drink with the great Alexander, these are dreams of an aspiring time travelers. As exciting as it sounds the time travel theory has a number of loopholes which may never let allow it to happen. These loopholes are the paradoxes which will be created if someone traveled into some other time!
1. The Grand Father Paradox
The famous grandfather paradox is the one loophole which can be a result of a twisted and complex dimension of time. This was first described by the science fiction writer Nathaniel Schachner in his short story, Ancestral Voices.
The paradox can be explained as follows: Suppose you enter a time machine and travel back in time when your grandfather was 12 years old. Instead of hugging the younger version of your grand dad you mercilessly shoot him with your laser beam gun, hence killing your ancestor. But, if you killed your grandfather at the age of 12 then your father was never born and you too never existed which means you never took that time machine to travel back in time and killed your grandfather. But you did, right? But you shouldn't have!
This completely doesn't make any sense, hence the grandfather paradox!
2. Bootstrap Paradox
Bootstrap paradox, or the casual loop paradox, is the name given to a paradox which occurs in the future and is caused by an earlier past event. This creates a loop and its impossible to decipher which event happened before. Since the loop has no independent origin it is called as Bootstrap Paradox.
The best way to explain this loop is by lets say a 20 year man goes back 21 years in time and meets a woman, has an affair, and returns home four months later without having any idea that the woman was pregnant. Her child grows up to be the 20 year old who then travels back 21 years through time, meets a woman, and so on. There is no origin for the man!
3. Predestination Paradox
Predestination Paradox is an event that creates an event which in turn prevents the orginal event to occur. Let me get it simpler for you. Lets suppose the love of your life dies due to a car crash and you are left devastated. You then build a time machine and travel back in time to save her. You are successful to do that but to add to your horrors your love dies anyway almost immediately due to someother problem, lets say a viral infection.
You again try to prevent that death and everytime you do it, your love dies due to something else all the time.
This can be best understood as you developed the time machine only because your lover died and if you went back in time and saved him/her you would never be grieved enough to built the time machine. But since you really went back in time your lover would have died and he/she will die anyhow, no matter how much you try. If you save her from one cause he/she will certainly die of another.
