Scientists find a way to resolve quantum time travel paradox

One paradox of quantum time travel that has long worried scientists is what would happen if a person travelled back into time and killed his grandfather or mother. The very existence of the person, in such a case, would be at stake.

An international team of scientists might now have solved the mystery surrounding this difficult paradox to give quantum time travel theory a boost. In the study, published in the International Journal of Quantum Information on Nov. 24, 2015, scientists claim that they have found a way to break the closed timelike curves (CTCs) to resolve the time travel paradox of quantum physics.

The study suggests that scientists may have found how to use time travel without breaking casualty, or causing the paradox to take place. The key, they say, is to use open timelike curves (OTCs) instead of CTCs. OTCs and CTCs are both time-loops which are formed, according to Albert Einstein’s general relativity theory, by travelling through wormholes.

In the case of CTCs, causal paradoxes -- such as a man killing his grandfather in the past -- are created as the object entering the wormhole can interact with causal factors in its own past. In the case of OTCs, however, this kind of interaction cannot take place. “[It] is completely isolated from anything that can affect its own causal past during the time-traveling process,” the study states, according to The Epoch Times.

The study further points out that this theory can help solve complex mathematical equations by breaking down the functional constraints of quantum theory. Scientists are able to bend the rules that make solving some equations seemingly impossible, thus making the solutions possible.

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