An ever larger community of scientists and fictional science leaders is raising questions and proposing solutions to the concepts of multiverse and backward time travel. Looking at the question from a pataphysicist’s perspective, one wonders if the two concepts are not related. Would one be the cause and the other the consequence? Or one is a sufficient, but not necessary condition for the other? There are a multitude of relationships that could link the two concepts, yet it is not obvious to prove any relationship between them.
In an extended version of Einstein’s general relativity theory, under certain extreme conditions, it seems that even science accepts that ‘present’ can loop back into the ‘past’ at certain intersections of the spacetime fabric. In practice, however, it will be a while before any scientifically designed experiment or test could prove or refute the relationship.
Among conceptual/philosophical arguments against backward time travel has been the idea that if one travels back and interacts with that environment while maintaining the knowledge of the future from which the person has come－in other words, the person would know what happened from that time to which he/she has travelled back－then the chances are that the future will be revised, which could impact and recreate a new future, in which even the time-traveller may not exist to come back. Consequently, we have a paradox. Or it seems.
However, one theory presented by one of the world’s most renowned pataphysicists claims that this paradox would disappear if a certain theory of multiverse construction in the cosmos prevails. As we are not sure if he would appreciate us mentioning his name, we will refrain from identifying him.
The pataphysicist’s line of argument is that:
- If a future earthling travels back to any time, and remembers all the future history, he/she has come for a reason and a purpose. Consequently his/her interactions with this past environment would give a tug in Earth’s evolution that could slightly modify its future compared to what it had actually gone through.
- But the Earth has already had a future which did not include this time-traveler’s modification of the past. Consequently, from that point onwards, this will be a different Earth, even if minutely different at first. Since the universe contains Earth, then a different Earth evolution would imply a different universe history, even if only infinitesimally different from the original one.
- Here we use inspiration from Einstein’s special relativity which declares that time is a fourth dimension (the other three being X, Y, and Z axes of location) and is variable depending on the observer’s position. Consequently, this new universe will become a parallel universe with a common history with the original one until the moment of the time-traveler’s interaction with it.
- As the number of time-travelers increases, so does the number of universes, thus the link between backward time travel and multiverse.
Although the line of argument is compatible with fictional science, and it may even be so with pataphysics, we have not taken a firm position on its potential validity. Our pataphysicist was not able to declare with confidence if in this theory, the backward time-traveler will be able to return to his/her original time and universe, or whether he/she will remain forever in the new universe launched by his/her interactions with the universe in the backward time.
March 24, 2024, Cambridge,
Berta Seintan, PhD & Charlene Wardin, PhD