# What's the latest research on time travel? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 6, 2009, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-latest-research-on-time-travel/512790 "2009-10-06T08:07:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2009, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-latest-research-on-time-travel/512790/41 "2009-10-09T20:24:44Z")
> [@BlinkingDuck](#): > > I think Kip’s jist is that the paradoxes are resolved if you allow the ‘future’ to ‘influence’ the past. […]It is a consistent turn of events and creates no paradoxes. It seems more like the ‘time police’ but without actual entities. This seemed like a really interesting resolution when I first read about it. But it’s extremely counter intuitive. I think we need a flash game simulation where you can play with the initial conditions and see for yourself what happens. Could also be a really cool premise for a video game puzzle lol. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2009, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-latest-research-on-time-travel/512790/42 "2009-10-09T21:34:44Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > That’s easy enough to say for billiard balls and bombs, which can have a continuum of different states, but it’s considerably trickier for quantum systems which genuinely have two and only two possible states. I’ve dabbled a bit in the question myself, but I’m sure that Kip has done more than dabbling on it, and has actually approached the question rigorously. That’s what I’d like to look up. At first glance this appears to create a “paradox” of another kind. You can send a complex system back in time without a time travelers paradox ? But you can not send a simple system with a very small number of finite states ? ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2009, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-latest-research-on-time-travel/512790/43 "2009-10-09T22:12:28Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > At first glance this appears to create a “paradox” of another kind. > > You can send a complex system back in time without a time travelers paradox ? > > But you can not send a simple system with a very small number of finite states ? I cannot speak for **Chronos** of course nor am I a physicist. That said, because this made me pause as well, I think the notion is if you are a complex system it can be supposed there are a lot of states to be tweaked we can suppose it all somehow works out that some parameters or others are tweaked to avoid a paradox. You can’t account for them all and the Universe does one of its sleight of hand things and voila…no paradox. I am guessing **Chronos** is posing a simple system that has only two possible states. Period. Then you setup the experiment such that a paradox must occur if you put the thing through a time machine. Now, the Universe has no choice, it can’t pull its sleight of hand and either you get a paradox or the Universe intervenes to just stop it altogether (forbids time travel in this instance) or some other interesting possibility (spawn a new universe maybe). In short, **Chronos** is trying to back the Universe into a corner on this one. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2009, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-latest-research-on-time-travel/512790/44 "2009-10-09T22:42:05Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I cannot speak for **Chronos** of course nor am I a physicist. > … > > … > > In short, **Chronos** is trying to back the Universe into a corner on this one. 😉 Hey, my brain just hurt bringing up the point 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-latest-research-on-time-travel/512790.md?page=2)