Quantum Time Machine Lets You Travel to the Past Without Fear of Grandfather Paradox

Everyone knows that you can only travel back to within your own lifetime. And when you do travel back you have to put right what was once wrong in the hopes that your next leap, will be the leap home. :)

If they can compute quantum entanglement to reproduce a quantum state in space that previously existed at another point in space, then theoretically, this could eventually lead to creation of a quantum viewer?
A way to view the past, as if it was a Discovery Channel show.
That would have major implications for anthropology and religion, but could also give the big evil govts a way to spy on people without them knowing.

Pretty friggin cool

I like to think that gravity is the distortion of time between an object's center of mass. An object's atoms motion in that distortion direction vector would move the objects together.

We could test that theory by heating an object up and seeing if it weighs more.

Captain Janeway said it best:

"Temporal Mechanics gives me a headache."

Am I the only one who read "Seth Lloyd" as "Sith Lord"?

"Quantum Theory forbids a single history." -Thomas Hertog, CERN

This one elegant idea roundly circumvents the grandfather paradox. It has never been an issue. Without fully understanding the implications of this statement, time travel is insolubly baffling, but once understood it all makes sense.

There a known theory in physics that says all anti-particles (like positron, anti-proton etc) are actually particles moving backwards in time.
But obviously it would be bad to apply that to any object bigger than a particle. :-)

No! No! No! You guys have it all wrong. Sheesh! Do I have to trave back again to explain it to you guys?

LOL...good one!

So, essentially, by the time you set out to time travel back in time, anything you would have done in the past *has already happened.* You won't kill your own grandfather because you *did not kill your own grandfather* when you were in the time line earlier than your own existence.

Any added complexity created in the world by your time travel would already have been absorbed and worked out by the world. That would mean you "couldn't" do certain things (like setting out to kill Hitler as a child), because you *didn't* do them or we wouldn't exist in a world where Hitler killed millions.

Here's an interesting question: would your attempts to time travel fail if you set out to do something that would be "incompatible" with our present reality? In other words, would your time machine work if you planned to go back in time to buy ice cream in 1950, but fail to work if you planned to go back in time to kill Hitler?

The universe has a current 'information state'. This state evolves in what we call Time. In order to time travel, it implies that you are moving an object (let's say a person) from the current universal state to a past or future universal information state.

The problem is, where is the past information state being stored? Where is the future information state of the universe being stored?

You can dream up alternative universes and infinite dimensions to solve the problem, but that does not mean they exist.

There is no such thing as time travel. With very marginal exception that you could 'freeze' a small section of the universe (like a coffin-sized object) to the point that 'time' did not affect it as the rest of the universe evolved around it. Hence the plot of Sleeper.

If time travelling is possible in the far future, why aren't there any travellers here in this time yet? They would be if it was possible. Why not? For example here to drop a note to us all to be patient... Or were they here in this time already to orchestrate everything, even the misery because the other options were far worse? Time travellers can only go back to the point of time the machine is invented. Probably the same day it all gets so messed up, we go back one day to destroy it and erase all knowledge and technology.

if time travel does eventually become possible, would not the heisenberg principal come into play, whereby we cannot be in exact same place @ exact same time. we would then be out of phase so to speak with world we travel back to, appearing as apparitions,which would solve grandfather paradox, as we wouldn't be able to act directly in real world.
maybe some of the ghosts that are seen around places these days are actually time travelers from future.

Time doesnt exist! At least not in the way you brave commenting ppl keep insisting. Time factor became the biggest problem to physics and quantum physics and will be removed for complete as the science evolves. Just dont you mix science with cave men perception and limited fantasy because its going to be far beyond your wildest dreams. Imagine all is simultaneous.
The problem we got by visualzing this is made by dualistic and 3 dimensional brain usage, its about urgent we do the next step.

Quantum time travel FTW!!!

Now this is some revolutionary thinking, fresh ideas, but inside the same box and same questions. So we can imagine information and it makes it true? It would be so, if any combination would produce reality, but it doesn't. Only one set of relations between objects is true, other numbers can't produce real world. It's all about gravity and how can the universe remember that. So past must be real, even more than the present moment, we can't really determine, until is past.
Perhaps we're not living in a 3 dimensional world, inside a time/space, but in 2 dimensions, third being the time itself. So any distance to other objects, would be a z value on axes, where did the space go? Nowhere, it become memory of space and didn't exists before that. It means, space doesn't exist right now, until I realized that.
Let try that. Instead of measuring the whole body, lets measure just the gravity center, we need only X and Y polar coordinates for that. When we start measuring 3-D object, we set a 2-D starting point on surface, but when we start to lay sticks, we really move trough time. Each time we measure different point in space, every time we're back on starting point and can't measure anything, because only memory remain, where we began. It's impossible to measure every single particle, we can't determine even one.
So cube would be 5 meter long and 5 wide, but 5 meters in the future? Why not, if you can see an object, it doesn't really mean it's there, it's just light we see and that's already in the past. When we try to measure it, motion of whole system should be also calculated and 5 meters would stretch, same with the stick. If we would forgot what we're doing, it would be impossible to tell, what we've already measured. But if we measure only gravity centers, we'll never know the volume, because we can't measure more than 2 values. We can do that only trough motion and it can happen only in 3-D space, as when we measure distance between two magnetic pole centers. But space doesn't exist yet, it's just a memory of how thing were, from some point of view. And those point are always connected trough time with same energy waves speed, cousin interferences, appearing as straight lines. They exist only because they already happened. So we can never see the 3D dimension, until it happens and light leave information of connected 3-D space behind, leaving us entangled in a moving 2-D box.
I can't remember, where I began, my mind is in one spot and must think about it. Looking back, remembering all sensations in my body, certainly something will come along...

They need to start a new branch of this magazine called "Popular Science Fiction"

The most disturbing thing about the possibility of time travel is the realization that IF it is possible in the future to alter the past then logically the present that we now live in HAS ALREADY BEEN ALTERED possibly (or probably) infinitely and that therefore the present is the ultimate (and presumably therefore "best") outcome. And if this (the present and the past as we know it, including the Crusades, Inquisition, Hitler, Nam, 9/11, etc.)-- is as good as it gets-- that time travellers were unable to come up with any better course of events.

One can only hope time travel to the past is simply not possible.

"The most disturbing thing about the possibility of time travel is the realization that IF it is possible in the future to alter the past then logically the present that we now live in HAS ALREADY BEEN ALTERED possibly (or probably) infinitely and that therefore the present is the ultimate (and presumably therefore "best") outcome. And if this (the present and the past as we know it, including the Crusades, Inquisition, Hitler, Nam, 9/11, etc.)-- is as good as it gets-- that time travellers were unable to come up with any better course of events. One can only hope time travel to the past is simply not possible."

It may be that people may be able to travel to the past, but are unable to alter anything. Or, it may be that backwards time travel is simply impossible. All the idea of time travel has is plenty of science fiction novels and movies that think about the idea, and unproven speculations and guesses.

Backwards time travel is fiction until proven otherwise.

"It may be that people may be able to travel to the past, but are unable to alter anything."

As I said-- IF it is possible in the future to alter the past. So the only options are:

a) can travel to the past but can't alter anything (so really they're only observing the past, not sure if that's really time travel then or more a form of clairvoyance);

b) can't travel to the past;

c) can travel to the past and influence the past which means THIS (the past and present as we know it) is the *best* we could collectively come up with -- EVER.

OK, I think I understand the finite possibilities concept; it's like tetris. We have a bunch of pieces that can more or less fit in the same slot. When we quantum time travel, We remove a piece from the puzzle to put the piece in an available slot (in the past) in another puzzle. Meanwhile, all the pieces in the first puzzle (present) fall into slightly different positions to take up the empty space, therefore, fulfilling finite possibilities. A different reality is created when that piece is removed from the present.

Healing Thoughts

There are two kinds of time travel. One is for the time traveler to go back in time but remain connected to the place and point in time from which they originate. Because they have not entirely crossed the gravitational boundary, they can only observe. They have no ability to affect the place and time they are observing other than collecting a few photons of light which have to be replaced to maintain a tedious balance.

The second is where the time traveler crosses the gravity barrier. It's much more difficult because the exact amount of mass and energy equal to the traveler has to be exchanged. One cannot simply put the traveler in the same place where other mass exists and it won't instantly move aside. They have to do a kind of flip with what ever mass is displaced ending at the point of origination. It's much more difficult, complex and would require an extreme amount of energy to accomplish.

When a time traveler physically travels back in time, they can't return to their point of origin, ever. Once the traveler exists in the past time, they have altered it and are moving onward on a different path of probability. Probabilities are infinite in number. It's like a true sphere of infinite size. It contacts an infinite number of planes. It's impossible for the time traveler to enter the past without entering an entirely different plane. So, they can no long make contact with the other or affect it. They can't affect two or more planes at once. They have to follow this new plane of existence.

This can be useful though. Say your plane of existence brings you to a point where your demise becomes inevitable. For instance, the earth is going to be destroyed by a huge asteroid and nobody can stop it. In theory, you could move to another plane where the earth is not in the path of the asteroid, if you can find it in time. You could end up with something even worse.

What makes you think we haven't already achieved backward time travel? Take a look at the last hundred years...we went from riding horses to landing on Mars. That is an incredible increase in knowledge, on the micro time level. It appears though that physical time travel is too dangerous and it will kill us unless we can advise a system that will protect us from the nature of the incredible speed that has to be achieved to transport our physical form back in time, ie., a shielded spaceship is needed. But, energy time travel and implantation is very easy and the knowledge we transport to the past to our own physical great grandfather is not only possible but beneficial. It only took a couple of generations, or so, to bring that knowledge we implanted in the past to make it back to the present where we were able to use it to advance our society to rapidity. The knowledge to time travel could still be a hundred years in our present future and when it reaches its beginning point it would have developed to the point where we will be able to physically travel back or forward a little more in time.

Seth Lloyd's knowledge, and others like him, of time travel could be the product of his own implantation of knowledge into his great or great great grandfather's physical DNA to become activated at a given time after his birth in the future that is allowing him to advance his research at a much faster pace; allowing him to bring his knowledge to the forefront much faster.

@JamesDavis
Yeah, the evidence is all around us. They just don't want to believe what they can't understand.

Robert1234 None of this concept is actually new. Besides, there is a real question that no possible paradox could exist, since obviously, you already went back in time and killed your father, something you couldn't do if you hadn't already done it. ALL the paradox crap relies on time being a linear, straight-line event yet no one has shown that to be true. Think about it. If it's like a rope, coiled, crossing itself, and an specific interval is all that really exists, then killing your father before you were born would have absolutely no effect on your moving "present" where you already exist.

if time travel is possible the government would keep the knowledge locked up tighter than area 51. or perhaps they would try to pass off the time travellers as aliens (hey, who knows what humans will look like in a ten thousand years especially with genetic engineering, nuclear accidents etc). but imagine what time travel would affect even without paradox issues-- crime investigation etc, or even simpler things like cheating. you could have two marriages in different planes or go off your diet and eat like crazy then go back. would people fix their lives or just have a billion new ways to destroy them? a world living on McDonald's and credit cards with oil gushing into the ocean is NOT a world ready for time travel.

I think humanity is limited in abilities not because things are scientifically or logically impossible but because it's a f*ed up and immature race simply not ready to handle any more power as proved by the current state of the world.

My keybord won't mke letter "ey" or "see" tody, so ber with me.

Let's sey my friend h*s * time mushine. So I give him pen, nd sey, send this bk 1 minute, nd let it rrive on your desk.

He sys, "OK," nd just then uh seond pen pops up on the desk. He storts to send it, but I sy, "weit. Don't send it." So he doesn't, nd it disuppers. But it still wus there momenterily.

So how would tht be expleined? If he ugrees, then mybe it wouldn't uppeir in the first plese, but then, I wouldn't h*ve sed it, so then he would.

Too funny, genedoug!

"Let's say my friend has a time machine. So I give him a pen, and say, send this back 1 minute, and let it arrive on your desk.

He says, "OK," and just then a second pen pops up on the desk. He starts to send it, but I say, "wait. Don't send it." So he doesn't, and it disappears. But it still was there momentarily.

So how would that be explained? If he agrees, then maybe it wouldn't appear in the first place, but then, I wouldn't have said it, so then he would."

We travel backwards and forward in time everyday in our minds.

Memories are biorasterized and transcribed into our dna:
www.stanford.edu/class/ee373b/cognitive_memory2.pdf

Memories, imagination and sense perception are practically indifferentiable in the brain:
www.en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Consciousness_Studies/Neuroscience_1#Brain_areas_used_in_perception_overlap_those_used_in_imagination_and_recall

When we recall a powerful memory we are literaly making the past present in our minds. Not to mention that we anticipate, plan, forsee, dream, and make goals, and with the passing of time actualize realities that began as a thought in the mind. This would seem to suggest that such behaviors are projections into possible future realities.

The Human Being is capable of alot of really incredible things that we take for granted and overlook because, well we can't see past our noses so to speak.

I have written a plausible theory of how and why
time happens, accordingly, the present i.e. right now
is all what matters in nature. Therefore physical time
travel to the past or future is a myth, fiction, imagination.
You can record the past images as in photography. Look in
a mirror and you see your own past a fraction of second before
or take the mirror many light years away and look see your self that many years ago. cosmicdarkmatter.com

time is illusory; the present is eternal. Our concepts of space and time are inextricably connected to our extension, and our duration. This is because we are finite and fixed observers. Everything that will have had ever happen is inextricably entwined. Once upon a time everything in the Universe 'was' a singularity, and it was one, and it still is.

<3 modern metaphysics

I am sure we are completely wrong as of the matters of time. Must I remember even the true intelligent that time is not more and not less a measuring theory of the human mind? Same as it is within our perception of space and distances, all being survived since cave times.
The grandfather paradox feared is the same people feared falling from the flat earth disk once reaching horizon. Take it from that angle because time remains a subject experience and a very flimpsy collective measuring tool.
So we got already three problems here because either we discuss biological time travel or active player time travel (without effecting personal biological estate) or passive observers time travel (like a revers movie strip). Okay, thats what we call "CONDITION" and hereafter joining what we describe QUANTUM which translates into "yet we dont know what we are talking about" but indeed its about time to crack the Einstein and Planck given envelope.
But how shall science understand here if all is build on the "beginning and end" story and people like Hawkins claimed intellectual giants in a lineal world of lineal minded people? And still frecuencies, waves, expansion or curved are terms and tools serving the same error of blindness.
By the speed of a thought we could do both, jump from one planet to another or time travel the moment we do find the right position facing simultaneousity.
Nail it on the wall and come back in 5000 years to check if I was right.

As I see it time travel to the past cannot make any sense. After all the past is just a memory, something we recollect inside our brain, and is different for different people, so how can we ever travel to that?. I know the idea that when we look into Space at distant objects we are looking into the past, and that if it were possible to travel faster than light we could get to an event before we see it happen, but even so these are events that happen once only, whenever and wherever they happen. The paradox is one we create through irrational and flawed thinking. The past only exists as a series of events that occurr one after the other and thats it. It cannot be changed, it cannot be interrogated. The only time that really exists is now, and now, and now, add infinitum....