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Researcher Discusses Whether Time Travel Could Prevent a Pandemic
from the butterfly-effects dept.
University of Queensland student Germain Tobar who worked with UQ physics professor Fabio Costa on a new peer-reviewed paper "says he has mathematically proven the physical feasibility of a specific kind of time travel" without paradoxes, reports Popular Mechanics:
Time travel discussion focuses on closed time-like curves, something Albert Einstein first posited. And Tobar and Costa say that as long as just two pieces of an entire scenario within a closed time-like curve are still in "causal order" when you leave, the rest is subject to local free will... In a university statement, Costa illustrates the science with an analogy 


"Say you travelled in time, in an attempt to stop COVID-19's patient zero from being exposed to the virus. However if you stopped that individual from becoming infected, that would eliminate the motivation for you to go back and stop the pandemic in the first place. This is a paradox, an inconsistency that often leads people to think that time travel cannot occur in our universe. [L]ogically it's hard to accept because that would affect our freedom to make any arbitrary action. It would mean you can time travel, but you cannot do anything that would cause a paradox to occur...." 


But the real truth, in terms of the mathematical outcomes, is more like another classic parable: the monkey's paw. Be careful what you wish for, and be careful what you time travel for. Tobar explains in the statement:


"In the coronavirus patient zero example, you might try and stop patient zero from becoming infected, but in doing so you would catch the virus and become patient zero, or someone else would. No matter what you did, the salient events would just recalibrate around you. Try as you might to create a paradox, the events will always adjust themselves, to avoid any inconsistency."
Posted by EditorDavid 3 hours ago
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28 Comments
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Outstanding
Funny
Magic unicorns can stop covid (+1)
Malays2 bowman 9 minutes ago
Makes just as much sense to spend time doing research on this.
I didn't RTFA or even RTFS, but is this nonsense being funded in any way? God
I hope not! This is a prime example of fraud, waste, and abuse of funds.
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12 Monkeys (+2)
Greeneland 3 hours ago
I invite the dude to explore this subject via the movie 12 Monkeys.
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Re: 12 Monkeys (+1)
klipclop 3 hours ago
The army of the 12 monkeys!
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Re: 12 Monkeys (+1)
ArchieBunker an hour ago
Terry Gilliam always makes brilliant films. They have a claustrophobic style and sometimes require repeated viewings but not in a bad way.
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Hmm (+1)
backslashdot 3 hours ago
Obviously not.
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Re: Hmm (+1)
hcs_$reboot 2 hours ago
Why not? A guy in January 2020 takes a sample of the Covid and goes back to 2018 so that they have time to develop a vaccine. That being said, if that kind of time travel was possible, a Covid pandemic wouldn't be the top priority.
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Re: Hmm (+1)
backslashdot 34 minutes ago
Because the pandemic already happened and no time traveler stopped it.
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Re: Hmm (+1)
tchetch 10 minutes ago
Multiverse. Another spread in a different timeline.
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Douglas Adams hsd it all figured out (+1)
flatulus 3 hours ago
A lot of history is now gone for ever. The Campaign for Real Timers claim that just as easy travel eroded the differences between one country and another, and between one world and another, so time travel is now eroding the differences between one age and another.

"The past," they say, "is now truly like a foreign country. They do things exactly the same there."
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Who's to say (+1)
Train0987 3 hours ago
Who's to say COVID isn't the result of someone from the future coming back here to unleash it on purpose for some greater good that they perceive?
It's all foolishness.
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Re: Who's to say (+1)
ShanghaiBill 19 minutes ago
Who's to say COVID isn't the result of someone from the future coming back here to unleash it on purpose
Occam's Razor says that the simplest explanation is correct.
This is certainly a simple explanation, so, therefore, it must be true.
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Re: Who's to say (+1)
Malays2 bowman a few seconds ago
"Who's to say COVID isn't the result of someone from the future coming back here to unleash it on purpose for some greater good that they perceive"
Watch what you say because we have an endless of mental cases in the world who will take what you said here to heart and feel the need to blather this 'conspiracy' throughout the world. This behavior is largely fueled by the rampant hard drug use that is all too common these days.
Remember, you can't trust people to be mentally balanced. :|
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Enjoy outer space (+1)
Ubi_NL 3 hours ago
Problem with time travel is that the planet moves at a considerable speed, so you need to catch up or sit in empty space where earth is going to be in x years..
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Re: Enjoy outer space (+1)
mark-t 2 hours ago

Why?

Seriously.... when you are simply standing in one spot on the planet and not trying to move, does the planet suddenly move away from under you?

So, why would it do so if you were in a time machine that didn't move itself through space either?

Yes, its obvious that travelling through time means travelling through space, but either way the earth is just going to carry you along with it, so as far as the immediate environment is concerned, you don't actually seem to move at all.
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Re: Enjoy outer space (+3, Interesting)
crobarcro 2 hours ago
If you travel back in time by six months and don't change position or velocity the earth will be about 300000 miles away on the othe side of the sun
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Re: Enjoy outer space (+1)
ArchieBunker 44 minutes ago
Well if one can manipulate time then it would stand to reason you could also manipulate space.
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Re: Enjoy outer space (+1)
hawguy 42 minutes ago
If you travel back in time by six months and don't change position or velocity the earth will be about 300000 miles away on the othe side of the sun
You sure know a lot about something that doesn't exist.
I came back through time to tell you that time travel works by opening a wormhole through time that's attracted by the matter around it, so when you walk through that wormhole through time, you still end up in the same place on Earth that you started. Your worst problem would be a tree or building being there instead, but that will just block the exit so just means that you can't get through.
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Re: Enjoy outer space (+1)
hcs_$reboot 2 hours ago
You're the doc, doc.
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Possibly (or not) (+1)
Black LED 2 hours ago
"Say you travelled in time, in an attempt to stop COVID-19's patient zero from being exposed to the virus. However if you stopped that individual from becoming infected, that would eliminate the motivation for you to go back and stop the pandemic in the first place. This is a paradox, an inconsistency that often leads people to think that time travel cannot occur in our universe. [L]ogically it's hard to accept because that would affect our freedom to make any arbitrary action. It would mean you can time travel, but you cannot do anything that would cause a paradox to occur...."
If the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, the act of travelling back in time (and indeed all actions) would branch off a new temporal reality without affecting the one you left. This would also mean that time travel paradoxes cannot occur. I would like to think that the universe is so nice and orderly but there is no way that we can know.
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Yeah sure. (+1)
fredrated 2 hours ago
Call me when the tickets are for sale.
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If Time Travel Were Real (+2)
zenlessyank 2 hours ago
Then someone would have come back to tell us from the future. We can't be so arrogant to think we are the end players now can we?
All I want to know is can I have some research money for some bullshit like this?
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Re: If Time Travel Were Real (+1)
ShanghaiBill an hour ago
Then someone would have come back to tell us from the future.
Did you read the summary? It is all explained. There is a magic time travel fairy that prevents any paradoxes or inconsistencies.
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Re: If Time Travel Were Real (+1)
zenlessyank an hour ago
I had my way with her once. She is a liar.
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Alternate Universe (+1)
DigiShaman 2 hours ago
Or maybe when you travel back in time, any alterations done in the past instantly forks the universe. From the travelers perspective, he/she changed the course of time without running afoul any form of paradox. Unfortunately, that means the universe they came from remains unchanged going forward; with the exception of them now listed as a missing person.
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Re: Alternate Universe (+1)
fahrbot-bot an hour ago
Or maybe when you travel back in time, any alterations done in the past instantly forks the universe.

The git pull on that would be HUGE, but an "unlimited" network plan might help ...

I wonder what kind of "cloud" storage hosts the Universe.
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The real problem (+1)
h33t l4x0r 2 hours ago
Unless you're planning on nuking every bat and pangolin in China, you're just postponing the inevitable.
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Re: The real problem (+1)
phantomfive 29 minutes ago
Guess that explains all the animal extinctions.
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Re: The real problem (+1)
GimpOnTheGo 19 minutes ago
.....or Chinese level 2/4 biolabs.
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Some people have too much research money... (+1)
gweihir an hour ago
This is both obvious and completely irrelevant.
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