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Research Project: Grandfather Paradox

“Time Travel may be possible but it is not practical.” Grandfather Paradox is a logical problem that will arise if a person is to travel in the past. It sounds fictional, but as per concepts in physics time travel is possible. Let’s go a bit deep in this and understand the grandfather paradox in this reading. You can create a poster to explain this paradox.



Introduction:


A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement. It is also known as an antinomy

It is a declaration or rather a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically unacceptable conclusion.

  • The paradox asks what happens if you were to travel back in time and kill your grandfather

  • Your grandfather would be dead, meaning you would never have been born

  • Which means you could not have been alive to go back in time and kill your grandfather

  • But that means your grandfather would be alive and you would be born

  • This goes on, and we don’t seem to find any definite answer even by applying all concepts and theories we have or empirically proved


History:

  • It is a proposed physical paradox of time travel first described by the science fiction writer Nathaniel Schachner in his short story Ancestral Voices, and by René Barjavel in his 1943 book Le Voyageur Imprudent (Future Times Three)

  • The name comes from the idea that if a person travels to a time before their grandfather had children, and kills him, it would make their own birth impossible

  • If time travel is possible, it somehow must avoid such a contradiction


Facts:

  • The logical consistency of time travel largely depends on the concept of time

  • Physicists have many different ways of conceptualizing time.

  • All-time travel stories work under an assumption that time travel is possible

Conclusion:


The grandfather paradox is an unexplainable situation regarding time travel. Since, as far as we know, time travel of this kind is not possible, the paradox is not one we will face in practice.


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