Grandfather Paradox
In the past two months, physicist and professor Tim Ralph of the
University of Queensland and his PhD student Martin Ringbauer led a team that
experimentally simulated Deutsch's model of CTCs. This is the first time,
testing and confirming many aspects of the two-decades-old theory. A lot
of their work circles around the "Grandfather Paradox" which is
a hypothetical scenario in which a person travels back through time in a
CTC also known as a Closed Time Curve back in time to murder their
grandfather then preventing them from being born. This creates a paradox that
is infinite unless there is an interjection that disrupts and solves or
destroys the paradox timeline.
Deutsch's quantum solution to the
Grandfather paradox goes something like if a girl were to go back in time using
a CTC and then killing her grandfather. The girl has a probability of 50% of
not traveling back and killing her Grandfather and the Grandfather has
50% chance of escaping her murderous attempt. Thus according to Deutsch, there
are good enough probalistic terms to close the causative loop and escape the
paradox.
In the new simulation developed by Ralph,
they studied the interaction of two polarized
photons within a quantum
system is arguably equal to a singular photon traversing a CTC. They made it so the
second photon
acts as a past incarnation of the first. Because it is currently impossible to
send a person into the past, they created a stunt double of the
"person" and ran them through a time-loop simulator to see if the
doppelganger emerged from the CTC appearing like the original one in that
moment in the past.
By measuring the polarization state of the
second photon
after emerging from the CTC and comparing it to the original first photon before entering the
CTC they found that they were the same and got a successful experiment that
helps to solidify his theory. Of course they are not sending actual objects or
people into the past through CTCs but it is the closest thing to it at this
time.
Question 1: Do you think that through following this experiment,
that it would be possible to traverse a CTC and resolve a paradox?
Question 2: Do you think that CTCs exist and are usable?
Question 3: Do you think people will give up on travelling back
and instead travel to the future?
Patrick Young
