∆ Impossibility of Physical paradoxes
The impossibility of Physical paradoxes.
Seeing it in a timeless view clarifies the facts, and shows how and why consequences can never become paradoxical, everything just physically exists and moves here now, so the idea of a Time-based paradox becomes the idea of a ‘topological paradox’ by this I mean 'can we make a physical object or shape that cannot be made', to which the simple answer is no.
Or perhaps in simpler terms can we ‘do something that cannot be done’, can someone for example run around a city block so fast that they are still where they started from, as they also arrive around the block from behind themselves, to tap themselves on the shoulder?
This sounds ridiculous and of course it is, but it could be kind of possible in theory, even in a timeless world, if you consider the discussion on the ‘speed of gravity’ and recall the ‘stretched elastic example.
If our subject was very flexible then perhaps the front of the person could be moved so quickly that it was stretched all around the block before the back of the person had began to move.
In reality of course we couldn’t do this you would kill the person, but you might be able to pull off the effect with a block of rubber or ‘silly putty’, and you could almost certainly pull off a similar effect with one of those ‘mega bubble making kits’.
Figure 18‑1 If warping space is like looping a Bubble back on itself then we can see how 'behind' and 'in-front', 'before' and after' can get contorted.
If you created an open ended bubble and moved the front of the bubble all the way around faster than its back could follow, (See diagram), then if you chose to see the object as just one thing you could legitimately say that one part of the bubble, the front, had arrived ‘before’, or ‘in front of’ the back !
(You could also achieve this effect with any object living or dead if we could make ‘tame warped space’ as discussed elsewhere.)
The point being here that if you see the world from a timeless point of view you can see how the kind of paradoxes we associate with time become impossible, simple and self explaining because we just see everything as being here now, while also accepting that objects and even space itself can be stretched and warped in unusual but never impossible ways[1].
But we also accept that while objects and even the space that they are in may be warped in the most extreme and complicated ways imaginable we can still see in a commonsense way that it would be impossible to twist things around in impossible ways, so ‘causality paradoxes’ simply make no sense,
In other words if everything just exists here now, then no matter how much or how fast you distort any object of any bit of space you can never make a thing, or a part of a thing, arrive somewhere if it hasn’t left somewhere, and just as we directly observe all around us in reality we can never make a ‘physical paradox’.
So although if we made a soap bubble fast enough and moved the bubble hoop around fast enough we could ‘put the back of the bubble inside the front’, or even make the ‘bit ahead touch the bit behind’, or in other words ‘make the front, or future bit, cause an effect at the back, or past bit’ this would be unusual but still wouldn’t be paradoxical.
If we tried to greatly exaggerate the effect and see if we could actually make the actual ‘bubble making hoop’ go around the pole so fast that the front of the ring touched the back of the ring, before it had naturally started to move. And do in this way we would be trying to force a condition where the ‘future event’ – or front of the ring, caused an effect in ‘the past’, or ‘at the back of the bubble’.
We would find this wasn’t even possible in theory, because even if we moved the front of the ring extremely fast around the ‘pole’, the message, or consequence of moving the front of the ring only has to travel a few millimetres to the back of the ring to start it moving.
So, in a slightly clumsy way I am saying that the laws of physics (and logical reason) must always dictate that we can’t make an effect travel so fast that it could take a physical shortcut and be, or affect something, be-fore, or 'ahead of' where it 'is'.
M.Marsden.
See...
∆ Prof Hawking's Mad Scientist Paradox.
[1] If only because the only ‘tools’ we have that could warp space must be made from the stuff of the universe, so we could not for example rip or tear space, and even if we could, it would still be an acceptable, or workable thing that could happen in the universe, i.e. it’s the ‘there is nothing you can do that can’t be done’ rule again.