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Posted on 09/24/2025 6:49:08 AM PDT by Red Badger
A new study explains that time travel itself eventually leads to a reality without it.
Is time travel truly possible? The prospect presents its fair share of paradoxes.
Of course, there are famous logical examples, such as the Grandfather paradox, which explores what would happen if a time traveler killed their grandparent before their parent was conceived (an idea not so far removed from the plot of the sci-fi great Back to the Future). Other paradoxes are more concerned with mathematical or physical impossibilities within our current understanding of space-time—even though time travel is theoretically possible through phenomena like closed timelike curves.
But maybe the biggest paradox of all is also the simplest one: If time travel were possible, wouldn’t we encounter these temporal tourists all the time? Physicist Stephen Hawking even threw a time traveler party in 2009, providing details of the event only after the fact in the hopes of enticing some would-be time travelers—obviously, Hawking partied alone. Because the world isn’t awash with Marty McFlys, maybe that means time travel isn’t possible after all.
Unfortunately, when it comes to the ins and outs of something immensely complicated like time travel, things are rarely so simple.
In a new study, Andrew Jackson—a research associate from the School of Informatics—explores reasons beyond the scientific or technological as to why time travel appears to be impossible (at least, in this reality). Published in the preprint journal arXiv and titled “Where Are All the Tourists From 3025?,” the study posits that maybe time travel itself is a self-suppressing phenomenon.
“I conclude that, assuming my model, time travel is self-suppressing: the timeline is continually rewritten until it inevitably reaches a timeline with no time machines ever being constructed, “ Jackson wrote. “At this point, no further changes to the timeline are possible.”
Jackson illustrates this idea with what’s known as a Markov chain, named after Russian mathematician Andrey Markov, which describes a sequence of possible events wherein the probability of those events depends only on the current state. In the paper, Jackson shows that introducing time travel into any timeline would create dynamic instability that would eventually (at least, statistically) create a timeline where time travel was never invented, which is the most stable state for any timeline. The process of this continuous timeline change would, however, feel instantaneous to non-time travelers such as you and I.
Why would this happen this way? Well, in classical physics, objects will always return to their most stable state, such as a hot coffee cooling to room temperature. If time machines introduce temporal instability, then timelines will similarly default to the most stable state, which would be a timeline with no time machines at all.
“[The paper] shows that time travel—by enabling timeline alterations—induces a dynamic instability that—with very high probability—leads to its own erasure,” Jackson wrote. “This self-suppressing mechanism results in the asymptotic convergence of all timelines toward states in which no time machines ever exist.”
Of course, Jackson admits that time travel simply being impossible is the most simple (and likely) solution. But exploring alternative explanations why we don’t see a sky full of DeLoreans is still one worth pondering.
“It may simply not be possible to travel through time,” Jackson wrote. “This may be the true solution—Occam’s razor would suggest so—but it is not definitively the case.”
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We all travel through time.
However, it's a one-way street.
time travel is only possible to the future.
the Past is the Past and passed, no going back, but the Future is present to all.
“A new study explains that time travel itself eventually leads to a reality without it.”
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OK, now I need a nap. 😏
However it is possible for Time to stand still.
Just look inside any government office.....................
Or my desk when I’m at work
Here’s how that works:
If you travel back in time, regardless of how far, you have changed ‘something’ that will cause the ‘present’ that you left to be different from when you left it, so that the mere presence of your machine and yourself will negate the existence of it, and possibly you, in the past’s future..............
Yet, the study was performed by Andrew Jackson, indicating that time travel IS possible.... ;-/
Since no time traveler never showed up to kill Hitler, or to stop Booth from assassinating Lincoln, it's safe to say it will never be possible.
The State Song of West Virginia....................
I was just discussing this with someone next week.
I’m pretty sure Rod Serling did a The Twilight Zone episode on a very similar theory.
In the, late 70s? early 80s? a Kalamazoo-based band called "Home" used to gig in Grand Rapids a lot, and put out (I think) one recording that WLAV used to play, "Time Traveler". It used to be a download on the West Michigan Hysterical Society website, then a remake by one of the former bandmates was available, now there's bupkis. Too bad, too, I really wanted to post the link.
What we call time is the mind’s rendering of the unending sequence of cause and effect, before and after.
That is not something that you can travel through.
The sequence is beyond our control. It is not possible to jump out of it.
Only God is not bound by the limits of material reality, and is not part of the sequence of cause and effect.
So no, there is no possibility of time travel.
The past is read only
“The Vulcan Science Directorate has officially stated that time travel is impossible”
Well said.
But Stephen King had a guy going back to 1958 and just hanging around until 11/22/63 to prevent JFK from being assassinated.
Time really tried hard to keep him from changing history.
(The one and only King book I’ve ever read. I’m a sucker for time travel novels/movies.)
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