Parallel Timelines
Time travel could be possible, but some theorists say only with parallel timelines. Forget the time machines of science fiction. I love all of those stories but science doesn’t support it. Science does seem to support parallel universes.
Stephen Hawking formulated his chronology protection conjecture, which states that time travel should be impossible. However, this conjecture so far remains unproven. Too many paradoxes.
One attempt at resolving time travel paradoxes is theoretical physicist Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov’s self-consistency conjecture, which essentially states that you can travel to the past, but you cannot change it.
What if there are multiple histories — AKA parallel timelines? That might resolve any paradoxes.
Let’s say that I get in one of those time machines. When it stops and I get out, I don’t step into a different time but a different timeline. In that timeline, if I change something from my timeline it doesn’t matter (no paradox). If I destroy the time machine, the one in the original timeline still exists.
Brian Greene, physicist and science writer, wrote The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos asking “Is our universe the only universe?” His multiverse journey has an endless series of big bangs. In the multiverse, there is a duplicate of every one of us. In another one, all we consider real are holographic illusions,.
Once upon a time, “universe” meant all there is. Everything. However, several theories are converging on the possibility that our universe may be but one among many parallel universes populating a vast multiverse. Greene says that “soon we may have to redefine that word, along with our own meager understanding of the cosmos.”
