Time-traveling consequences: Part 1:- Bootstrap Paradox
Prologue:-
“Distinction between Past, Present, and Future is only a stubbornly persistent Illusion!” — Albert Einstien.
We trust that time is linear. We believe yesterday, today and tomorrow are consecutive and flows unidirectionally but what if they are all connected in a never-ending loop. Generations after generations we evolve and get better of our previous mistakes, meaning the Future is being influenced by the Past but what if the Past is also influenced by the Future.
We always fantasize about time-traveling. Though time-traveling is still an imaginary concept, time-traveling brings along many paradoxes that may alter the whole vision of the world we believe up to.
One such paradox we are going to study now is the “Bootstrap paradox”.
Picture as you read:-
Let’s understand the “Bootstrap paradox” through an example story.
Suppose one fine day you were walking towards home from school when you saw a middle-aged man lying down. You got near him and he said, “Take this book and read.” Moments after, he passed away.
You got home and opened the book. It has shocking content. The book explains the whole process of building a time machine. You laugh at first but the thought haunts that it was the last request of a deceased person.
You follow the whole instruction on the book and finally after 15 years you were able to build the time machine.To test the machine, you traveled 15 years back and got so amazed that you have time-traveled, you had a cardiac arrest.
At final moments, you can see a boy running towards you. You give him the book. Yes… that boy is Young-you. You passed yourself the book. BOOOOOOM.
What’s Bootstrap Paradox here?
Consider the object “Book” here. At first, it came from the future, which enabled you to build a time machine, and using that machine you traveled back and finally passed the book yourself.
Thus the book turned out to have no true origin. It hadn’t been written or published by any author. It is simply traveled back to the past from the future, the cycle repeated and got stuck in an endless cycle. Thus it is what we refer to as the Bootstrap paradox.
At this point, I would love to quote a very interesting question.
“Where is the beginning? When is the Beginning? Is there a beginning at all?”
Time for some definition:-
An object, idea, or thought if traveled back to the past from the future, without having a true origin and gets stuck on an endless cycle, it is referred to as Bootstrap Paradox.
Consequences of Bootstrap Paradox:-
Bootstrap paradox is based on the fact that Future influence Past. Maybe a time-traveler of present generation traveled back to past and met with an “ordinary ” Issac Newton and he shared with him all the scientific breakthroughs he made over time and thus as Sir Issac Newton was aware of all of his discoveries and theories, he made them public one by one, thus owning all the credits. Needless to say, it’s just an example but the point is these kinds of stuff are absolutely possible if time-travel exists.
Just pause and think if “Bettings” are made on basis of known outcome, what if the “Wars” are being influenced by a time-traveller getting side with the winning team, what if the “Global Pandemics” were known and country is led into prevention beforehand, what if ... JUST THINK.
Now we have seen events which are made to occur in the Past as in the Future we know the events. Can we possibly try its negation?
That is, to prevent an event that occurred in the Past. Now this theory is very interesting as preventing an event means that event didn’t happen but we already knew in the future that the event happened.
How can then this be possible? To support this idea, the multi-verse theory comes in nature. Like every change of event that already occurred in the past creates “another branch” and it acts as a parallel universe happening without that event.
Crossing all limits:-
So, as we understood, the Bootstrap paradox can exist for an idea, thought, or a non-living object. Does it apply to “living organisms” also? Fasten your seat-belts, have a deep breath, and then read ahead a small story.
A married couple Polo-Carla have a daughter Rebeka. Small sweet family. Eventually, Rebeka grew up and married a man. They had a baby girl as a child. But that unfortunate night, the night that beautiful girl was born, she was stolen by a “time-traveler” and human-trafficked her. The girl grew up in an orphanage. In time she became a grown-up girl and married a man. And they had a baby girl.
Okay, another sweet family, right? Oh, I forgot to mention that the orphaned girl is named Carla. She married Polo and their baby is named Rebeka.
Heartbeat skipped! You are not alone.
Turns out Carla’s daughter is Rebeka whose daughter is Carla again. They are both mothers as well as daughters of one another. Or in other words, they are their own grand-daughter or their own grand-mother.
This “mother-daughter relation” is stuck in an endless loop, and this “relationship” didn’t have any true origin, i.e, they both are mutually dependent on their existence. Or in other words, they themselves are responsible for their own existence. And this is what the definition we studied for “Bootstrap Paradox”.
Epilogue:-
If you enjoyed the concept and want to live in it, do watch “Dark”, A german Netflix original show which is based on genre Sci-Fi Mystery Thriller which beautifully takes into account various examples of Bootstrap Paradox.
Thanks for your patience reading. Clap if you liked the article and do read it’s sequel story based on Grandfather paradox from the given link.
Follow me here, in GitHub and Linked-in. Stay happy and safe. Keep reading and remember one thing, “Don’t let your imaginations blocked. Think of the unthinkable.”
