The Bootstrap Paradox and Possible Solutions

646

Physics

Science

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry uses Patronus Charm to save himself and his godfather from dementors. At first, he thinks it was his father who saved them. But later it's revealed it was him all along. While explaining to Hermoine, how he was able to pull off that advanced level magic, he says, he saw himself (the future him) doing it and learned it from there. This is one of the examples of the Bootstrap Paradox. Here we will see what is Bootstrap Paradox is and the problem it causes for traveling back in time. <b><h2><center>The Bootstrap Paradox</b></h2></center> Einstein's Theory of General Relativity tells us that we have got almost complete freedom of movement into the future. But the problem occurs when we think about moving back in time. There can be several paradoxes as a result of moving back in time. One such paradox is the Bootstrap paradox. The Bootstrap Paradox is a theoretical paradox of time travel that <b>occurs when an object or piece of information sent back in time becomes trapped within an infinite cause-effect loop</b>. Then we tell how the loop started, or how the information was sent back in time for the first time. This can be better explained with an example. Imagine a time traveler who went back and taught Einstein the concept of general relativity, before going back to his time. Einstein claims it is his work, and in the following decades the theory is reprinted many times until the copy is finally in the hands of the first traveler who then returns it to Einstein. But now the question arises, who came up with the theory the first time. The same thing happened with Harry Potter. He said he taught himself the Patronus Charm by looking at himself from the future. But how did his future version learn to use Patronus Charm properly? Unlike the Grandparent paradox which has a "self-inconsistent timeline", the Bootstrap paradox has a <b>self-consistent solution</b>. According to the Grandparent Paradox, the origin (you) of the cause of the new event in the past (killing your grandparent, will destroy the origin, and hence the new past event shouldn't have happened. But this paradox has a more consistent timeline. The same piece of information is going back in time again and again. But this paradox <b>violates the law of Causality and the second law of Thermodynamics.</b> <b><h2><center>Possible Solutions</b></h2></center> One of the solutions for almost all kinds of paradoxes related to time traveling in the past is a <b>new parallel universe is created whenever we travel back in the time</b> and hence there are no effects in the original universe. But claiming that parallel universes exist is as far-fetched as claiming that God exists. Basically, you can't prove either the parallel universe exists or disprove its existence. Another solution would be to <b>assume that entropy reverses when we travel back in time</b>. The second law of thermodynamics is thought to be a statistical law and not an absolute one. Hence according to scientists, reversing entropy is <i>improbable</i> but not impossible. Recently scientists have done a few experiments in reversing the entropy (at the local scale and not at global). Though this solution doesn't talk about the origin of the information which still violates the law of Causality.

- Ojas Srivastava, 09:22 PM, 11 Jan, 2022