We have all heard the famous 'Do not kill your Grandpa from the past' theory, in short the 'Grandpa Paradox'. Now most may say that we need not talk about this, as we cannot travel to the past in the first place as discussed in the part 1 of the Understanding Time Travel Series. Let's assume for a while that such technology exists. Using this technology we travel to the past when grandpa was just a child. Now think for a while, what would happen if we kill him before we were even born in this timeline?
This is called the Grandpa's Paradox as, if we kill our own grandpa when he was just a kid then we would not even be born in the first place! Which means there is no way we can kill him, or can we? Well for those who say that we would ruin the whole timeline by killing our grandpa, let me tell you that the timeline is already ruined by us entering it. This again brings us to the fact that we can't travel in time. But what if you still exist even after killing your grandpa? Yes you guessed it! We would not be born. But the 'we' whom we are referring right now are us from this timeline. Hence we haven't actually time traveled, but we have traveled to another dimension/timeline. Killing your grandpa won't change your original timeline as you are already born, but it will cause a big effect on this timeline where you killed your grandfather.
This is similar to Schrodinger's cat theory, which says that for every action done in a timeline, there exist infinite other universes and dimensions where that action hasn't been done, or has been done in some other way. For an action having two possibilities, like the Schrodinger's cat being alive or dead, there are two alternate timelines where cat is dead and cat is alive.
This can be called as the basic theory of Multiverse concept. In short, the universe we live in may not be the only one out there. In fact, our universe could be just one of an infinite number of universes making up a "multiverse". Most people are convinced that this theory is true and multiverses do exist.
Many articles and books dogmatically proclaim that the multiverse is an established scientific fact. Source
Whenever a theory is proposed in physics, there are at least a few known facts which forms the base of the theory. For the theory of multiverse, there is none. Moreover, physics theories are known to have many mathematical equations and graphs which calculate/predict a possibility. Whereas the theory of multiverse just simply states that there are 'infinite' timelines for every moment you sneeze, blink or basically do anything.
Now the problem is that infinity is a mathematical term rather than a physics one. However harder you try, you can never find infinity in real life. The least that the multiverse fans can do is give a equation to define what exactly they are talking about. Now by no means I'm saying that multiverse theory is illogical. I do think that it has some logic behind it that makes everyone believe this theory when they hear it for the first time. It's one of the most popular physics concepts that are mainstream (There are a lot of shows out there that talk about multiverse).
But there are many more theories out there which say that all the possibilities merge into one timeline and a random possibility happens and rest all possibilities are discarded. As all these theories are merely hypothesis without any scientific proofs, we must pay equal attention to all of them rather than calling the multiverse concept superior to others.
For the time being, we can only talk about Time Travel in hypothesis and can fantasize about it. For more cool time travel theories, follow Usual Queries and keep an eye out for the latest posts in this new collaborative 'Understanding Time Travel Series'.
That is all for the multiverse theory, hope you liked it. If missed out anything, let me know in the comments. Also make sure check out my blog: The Scintrovert.
This was a guest post written by Thilakraj Bhandary. To know more about guest blogging on this blog, contact me.
Posts before October 2021 have been marked as "Old Posts". Less likely, but they might have out dated or incorrect information, ugly looking bits of code, no labels, etc. Don't get me wrong, many of these posts are top-notch and interesting too.
I thought it would be better not to delete or revamp these posts, even if they suck. The bitter truth is that old works always suck, but I take that as a positive tool to convey that I am growing. Besides there's no better way to showcase my journey without these old, messy, poorly written posts!
I thought it would be better not to delete or revamp these posts, even if they suck. The bitter truth is that old works always suck, but I take that as a positive tool to convey that I am growing. Besides there's no better way to showcase my journey without these old, messy, poorly written posts!
Old Post