Predestination paradox In 1943 Rene Barjavel posed the question

“What would happen if a man went back in time and killed his own grandfather?”

Without his grandfather one of his parents would cease to exist and therefore so would he also cease to exist, if he ceases to exist he would not go back in time and kill his grandfather so his grandfather would give birth to one of his parents and he would also come into existence, meaning he would go back in time to kill his grandfather and so on....

Even physicists in the relevant fields can only give their informed postulates on what may happen as no theories directly answer such questions, those many theories indirectly touch upon such problems. This post is not to identify is time travel possible rather the hypothetical question of the grandfather paradox and to put forward a hypothesis on a potential answer.


Step-by-step I want to illustrate that people's inconsistencies on causality causes predestination paradox and other dilemmas and thinking of causality going backwards in time as similar to going forward in time would resolve these problems.  

Imagine being in a time machine travelling forward in time 10 years, looking out the window of the time machine it would look as if everything had just instantly changed, trees look instantly bigger, newer cars, all instantly. In reality all the rules that run the universe have taken place, even when travelling through time. If we believe travelling backwards in time works the same way I can begin to explain why the “grandfather paradox” isn’t such a problem.

Scenario 1
Imagine being in a room with a time machine and a table with a pencil on top of it. You push the pencil off the table and walk into the time machine and go back in time to when the pencil was back on the table. Now looking out the window of the time machine what would you see?  it would look as if the pencil instantly appears on the table. But we are going to suggest that it didn’t just appear and just as travelling forward in time, if one billiard ball hits another one the energy is transferred and it works in the same way traveling backwards in time. So the pencil doesn’t just appear on the table, the energy transferred from the pencil to the floor when it landed goes back into the pencil and the process is reversed until the pencil is back onto the table.

Scenario 2
Imagine the same scenario but this time you pick up the pencil off the floor and take it with you into the time machine. Now looking out the window of the time machine what would you see? If we don’t assume the pencil will just appear there and it has to go through a process to get there how would the pencil get there? We are going to suggest it wouldn't. This is a slightly more complex issue but hopefully we will be able to explain it.

If I was to blast off on a rocket time machine and travel 50 years into the future, I may come back to see my brother has a wife and kids, now it would be strange to assume there would be another me there with a wife and kids as of course this couldn't happen if I was in stasis. Just as you can’t visit yourself in the future we will suggest you can’t visit yourself in the past. Anyone/anything traveling through time puts itself in stasis, so when traveling forward in time everything else ages apart from the items in stasis and similarly going back in time. If we assume that items can visit themselves in the past we will get two dilemmas

1. Imagine I bring the pencil back in time to visit itself on the table and then used that pencil to snap the pencil on the table in half, you will have a paradox analogous to the grandfather paradox.
2. The second problem would be now you have more mass in the universe as there are two pencils, more mass equals more energy braking a fundamental rule of physics.

Scenario 3
The grandfather paradox is more similar to the case where I get someone to make a paper aeroplane and bring that back in time and use that paper aeroplane to kill the person who made it. For this example I can’t use a similar example for going forward in time but we will follow through the same process’ as the last two examples. If I was to blast off on a rocket time machine and travel 50 years in time, the future would be different than if you maybe have stayed on earth and decided to have a wife and kids.

When you put yourself in stasis your interactions with the world change than if you were to decided not to go into stasis. I am also going to suggest this is the same going back in time, that if you put yourself in stasis while going back in time the past will be different but not as you know it. This next part can be very difficult to understand intuitively, but I am going to suggest it doesn't matter if you kill the man who made the paper aeroplane.  When I go back in time the process for everything else apart from the items in stasis goes backwards.Even though it seems strange that an intrinsic part of its process has been taken out (killing the paper folder) as the paper aeroplane has been inside the time machine it hasn’t gone back in time to reach the point where it was folded, so it doesn't need to be folded again.

This is my conclusion for the grandfather paradox as well. The process to make me do not need to be redone when I go back in time to kill my grandfather and I would be able to kill him