Talk:Temporal paradox

Excessive Focus on Modern Media
This reads like someone got high and felt like editing. Honestly, how can an article be taken seriously when the entire thing is written in the 2nd person while the third person is hitting the joint? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.103.137.34 (talk • contribs) 09:35, 3 February 2008 (UTC)


 * This article is based primarily on references to media, popular culture, and unverifiable assumptions. It seems better suited for a site dedicated to media references.  This page should be dedicated to the facts surrounding scientific research on the temporal paradox and not be a promotion for modern media.  Just one example—the Multiple universe hypothesis was not created by an unverified author of a single Dragon Ball episode.  It was created by William James in 1895.  Are we to credit the entire series as an example of a literary device catalogued so comprehensively at TV Tropes?  How do you verify the metrics for fan speculation?  Almost all of this page should either be deleted or researched to include accredited experts on the individual topics.  Otherwise, it should be moved to a broader literary device article. —StonedPerson (talk • contribs) 04:00, 30 July 2011 (UTC)


 * All of the fictional references in this page should be moved to the Ideas from fiction section of Time Travel.— StonedPerson (talk) 19:03, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Timeline protection hypothesis
Hey folks, I found an article on the Timeline Protection Hypothesis, which was suggested by Steven Hawking a few years back. He calls it the "Chronology protection conjecture", but it seems to describe pretty much the same thing as our own "Timeline protection hypothesis" Nevertheless, we may wish to make our own reference to the T. P. Hypothesis link to the above article. ZZYZX 07:38, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Final Countdown as an example is suggested (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Countdown_%28film%29) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.3.233.12 (talk) 20:26, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm just an anonymous user passing through but I'd like to point out that the use of the Legend of Zelda franchise as an instance of the creation of branching timelines is a FAN CONJECTURE and was not intended by the creators or an official part of the series canon. It should be noted as such, at least. Not to mention that since the "branching timeline theory" came about as an attempt to create a consistent timeline for the Zelda games on the part of fans, it really amounts to circular reasoning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.184.189.20 (talk) 18:38, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Night Watch
I think that the novel Night Watch might be a further example of the Temporal Merging Hypothesis, but I am not entirely sure and even if I was, I can't seem to explain how it is understandably.--SurrealWarrior (talk) 20:00, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Past cannot be changed?
Im not sure if this is an established theory or if it is the correct name for it if it is, but the idea is that one cannot change the past since the past has already happened. Wouldn't this make it impossible to be present in the past? Since the time-travelling you were not there when this happened? Or make it impossible to view the past since you didn't witness this event in this manner or during current circumstances? And even if one could circumvent that, your presence would inevitbly change the past on some other miniscule level (like the displacement of a microscopic entity)?

Oh, and another theory i have issues with is that if someone travels back in time and touches a past self it would trigger some kind of paradox. The deal being that matter cant be in physical contact with itself in this sense. Wouldn't this result in absolutely nothing (other than the fact that you just did it)? If you can do it, then it would acctualy be physically possible and the universe would NOT explode? If you are doing something that is absolutely impossible by the laws of physics, then it would mean that the laws of physics were wrong. 95.109.102.252 (talk) 14:53, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

I add a soultion
I add a logical soultion to the timeless paradox. I fixed a few spelling errors also. 75.71.180.250 (talk) 07:42, 23 May 2010 (UTC) Peter Merrick. USA,Colorado

Think of time travel as traveling along a "timeline". If you are able to travel back in time and kill your father when he was a child, for example, then a supposed paradox will emerge. How can you do this if your father was killed before you where born? Therefore, how did you travel back to kill him if you never existed? Wrong! It is simple. If you travel back in time and again, for example, kill your father when he was a little boy you then go forward in time, (as normally you would), on a different timeline or parallel/branched universe as it is sometimes looked at. You now exist on this timeline "alongside" the event that your father is dead as a child. You can never return to the original timeline even if you travel further back in time to stop you killing your father as a child. Chaos theory dictates that even the smallest change in a timeline would mean that you branch off on a different timeline altogether. Although if time travel is possible, (for humans), you can continuously travel back in time and theoretically branch off on different time lines infinitely or for as long as you live naturally. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.100.10.155 (talk) 05:12, 20 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I found this same information in the wiki page, but it is inconsistent. Simply saying it's impossible to travel back to the timeline you altered is not sufficient to prevent a paradox. In fact it is exactly the same as when the paradox occurs since all events that would cause you to travel back in time are not present in the future. What you're simply doing is denying the paradox. That's not much of a solution.
 * Techsin (talk) 13:48, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Merge with grandfather paradox
Should we merge this article with that of the Grandfather Paradox? They are nearly the same 1215drew (talk) 03:27, 13 October 2010 (UTC)


 * No. This article talks about temporal paradoxes in general, while the separate other pages (grandfather paradox, bootstrap paradox, predestination paradox) have their own pages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.62.184.165 (talk) 16:05, 7 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Isn't there already an overview of all the temporal paradoxes in the main time travel article? If the overview there covers everything, and the individual paradoxes have their own articles, then there doesn't seem to be a lot of point to having this page. Hypnosifl (talk) 04:39, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Removed "Joule's Animation Time hypothesis"
I removed that section for the following reasons:
 * It appears to have been edited solely by the person who created the hypothesis.
 * Lacks any references.
 * Original research is not allowed in wikipedia (and the writer seems to lack applicable credentials anyways).
 * The idea is very unclear as presented, and sounds like pseudo science.
 * The only relevant results I found on google for this phrase are related directly to this wikipedia entry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JoshuaPearce (talk • contribs) 08:22, 10 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Most of those comments could apply to this whole article; the whole thing is original research and lacks references. Robofish (talk) 22:49, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Terrible Article Considering It's Title
It seems that most of the theories in the article are ones postulated by various comic books, films/TV shows, video games modern fiction, etc. A lot of the theories rely upon ulterior entities, or an "intelligent" universe, which serve as protectors of timelines. While these theories are not necessarily incorrect, they are based purely on speculation rather than practical theories or empirical observation. Perhaps they should be moved to their own article? Either way, theories such as "Time Corruption"/"Doomed Timeline"/ (in which the universe just magically "deletes"/"crashes" itself as a result of a timeline change), "Self Healing Hypothesis" (postulates that the Universe would "heal" itself, implying that the universe is capable of intelligent, organism responses to timeline modifications), "Temporal merging hypothesis" (for some reason, time travelers modifications would "merge" with each other, though no mechanism is which this could occur is even speculated upon), etc, etc, should not be in an article about the concept of temporal paradoxes. Essentially, this article has turned into "Temporal Paradoxes in Popular Culture" rather than a theoretical inspection of temporal paradoxes. The other problem is that this article is not actually about temporal paradoxes themselves, but their solutions. It barely even mentions any paradoxes, and has ONE main section labeled "Solutions". Um, solutions to what? LiamSP (talk) 01:56, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I see what you are saying, but it does not seem to be totally at lost to theories without such fictional origins. The Novikov self-consistency principle was from an esteemed physicist, for example. Also, many of the theories being presented in the article may be best represented by referencing works of fiction, as that is the the best way to explain them to a layman. But I don't think changing the name to "Temporal Paradoxes in Popular Culture" is apt. It would be odd to have a "Temporal Paradoxes in Popular Culture" article but no "Temporal Paradox" article, if it were to be moved to that new title.  Editor0000001 talk 12:47, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
 * We would have to write a new Temporal Paradoxes article that is based on science instead of Dragonball Z. 75.186.5.185 (talk) 07:07, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Silly, Silly, Silly
Looks like someone has just strung together a bunch of synopses of science fiction stories. While no doubt science fiction writers can tell a good tale, there's nothing grounded in science here - perhaps the article should be called "Temporal Paradoxes in Fiction" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.51.66.32 (talk) 21:06, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
 * FYI and as a general statement to all involved, the definition of "Science Fiction" directly contradicts this statement. The very definition of "Science Fiction" includes the idea that the fictional universe of the story is governed by the scientific, "known laws" of the universe, hence the word "Science Fiction". As a secondary, "outlier" sub-genre of Science Fiction is one in which the known laws of the universe are deliberately altered, or amended by the author.  "What if" gravity wasn't, or Einstein's theory wasn't, etc... Similar to the idea of "What if the South had won the Civil War."  The definition of Science Fiction is based on the idea that there are either "known laws", or "hypothetically known laws".  Most of the classic science fiction writers were actual scientists, with doctorates in science, etc...  This is in direct contrast to the literary class "Science Fantasy" which basically means "anything goes", including time travel.  Many Science Fiction literary works deliberately explored the time-travel paradox, where the author attempted to reconcile the idea of time travel with the time travel paradox, but all of those works explicitly adhered to the "known laws of the universe".  This is an important distinction to make, as many people today describe works like Star Trek as "science fiction", despite the fact that several (many?) episodes ignore the time travel paradox (someone goes back in time, "does something", and comes back to their starting point in the future and nothing has changed, which is a scientific impossibility once you start thinking about causality.  You can't go back in time, and kill your grandfather, because if you did, you wouldn't be there to go back in time to kill your grandfather.  The obvious logic of this is an important thing to explicitly mention in this Article, since many people think "Star Trek" is Science Fiction, and not Science Fantasy.  This, despite being absolutely true, is also in at variance to popular belief and opinion, so finding, and then getting consensus to include RS that describes this could be difficult.  I am willing to work on this Article to bring this information into the Article, but am unwilling to do it alone.  Is anyone else in agreement with my thesis, and is willing to work on this with me?Tym Whittier (talk) 15:33, 23 May 2019 (UTC)
 * No original research please. If you want to add information to the article please provide references to reliable sources. Bright☀ 17:43, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

Back to the Future II reference wrong?
After looking through the theories, I noted that Back to the Future II actually more clossely resembles the Branch theory, rather than the Time corruption theory. At first, I had added it to the branch theory mini-section, but then noticed it was mentioned in the time corruption theory. Before I change it, I'd like to make sure I'm not missing something, as this is what I would have put in the section relating to branching: Another example of this theory is in the Back to the Future series of movies. In Back to the Future II when Marty McFly consults with Doc about why this future is completely different from the one he always knew, Doc explains on a chalkboard that time had branched off from the original timeline, due to a change in the past that old Biff caused.

The reason why I don't think this belongs in the corruption theory is that there really are literal branches, and alternate timelines in the series. In my opinion, the only thing that even gives an indication of the "butterfly effect" is the fact that the effects of changing the past are not immediate. Is that why this was put there, instead? Nerketur (talk) 23:39, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

merge sections?
How is the Choice timeline hypothesis different from the Time line protection hypothesis? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gujamin (talk • contribs) 18:26, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

New theory?
What if, by reversing time and entering the past, you don't replace your past self at that instant, but insted turn up an the past as a third person, exactly like yourself in the future (technically, the present). So in the first case, let us assume your past and present self never meet during the course of your time travel. That means in the past, it is possible that your future self would have been there, but you just didn't see him. In the second case, your present and past selves meet each other. That means that in the past, you would've seen an older version of yourself at some point in time (which happens to be at the exact same time you travelled back to from the future), but you may not have recognised your future self at that time, because your past self doesn't know that time travel will be invented in the future. So if you find someone who looks a lot like you, and is older - it's your lucky day! 95.109.102.252 (talk) 22:21, 14 December 2012 (UTC) ____________________________

New Theory, Bible Travel, Time travel has been proven if you have read the Original 1611 King James Bible. If you look, Jesus Christ as we call him, his spirit was said to be some how injected in to Mary’s womb or egg, from the future. These people had to of come from the future? He was also said to have traveled back in time further when he was crucified and when raised he went back to the future. He descended first to the past and then he ascended to the future. The same with Jacob’s ladder: the angels were doing the same thing. All through the Bible they were coming and going through time and telling us about the future. But you have to actually set down and read this Bible several times before you begin to see? I’ve been reading it over and over for over 20 years and I know! Modern day preachers only study what they are told from people who don’t try or actually read it themselves. Get one yourself and read it, don't be so egger to trust just anyone when it comes to your time travel. And don't be left stuck in time!!! Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.192.86.196 (talk) 11:59, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

here is what i have experienced
i once traveled from one part of oslo to another but when i got from the center of oslo to the area below holmenkollen it was earlier than when i left the center of oslo. another strange event i experienced was that the metro traveled through a hole and ended up skipping one station entirely. on the way back it was on one station twice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.208.59.120 (talk) 16:21, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Really! I suppose you have proof of that, right? --Againme (talk) 22:02, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

This article is an embarrassment
I realize braying for the deletion of incomplete content is peanut gallery fodder, but how can this pile of comic book logic possibly meet notability standards for an article in a science category? It's been flagged as crap for two years since 2012, please, please jettison this garbage. 98.247.126.245 (talk) 04:20, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Temporal modification negation theory
"If the specified note said to go back into time, stop the assassination, copy this note, and place it in the same spot it originally was, one might be able to intentionally stop the assassination."

Unless there is a work of fiction to cite where this was done, then this should be removed, because it's logically impossible. If a time traveler prevents JFK's assassination, then that event is not in the history books for anyone in the future to decide to assign a time traveler a mission to prevent the assassination. That's basically the whole point of the theory.


 * Actually, the point is that in this case the cause of the time travel would be the note rather than the assassination itself. Essentially resolving the Grandfather Paradox by creating a Predestination Paradox (although the note in question would likely need to be very persuasive). I'm certain I've read examples of this, but I cannot recall a particular title at this time. As I collect Time Travel books it would take some time to locate one of them, however if I should run across one I will post back. And, incidentally, the lack of a fiction story to reference does not, in and of itself, negate a theory. Just saying. AeonsAblaze (talk) 03:07, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Should turn Time Paradox into a disambiguation
Searching for temporal paradoxes, that article is showing by default and with so many links in the header of this article seems to me that you could make a disambiguation. Should be sufficient to move that article, perhaps to Time Paradox (game) and then create the disambiguation there. --181.95.134.147 (talk) 03:49, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Good idea. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 00:08, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Missing explanation
This article is incomprehensible. It doesn't explain how the paradox arises or what it means. It assumes the reader already knows and jumps on to more sophisticated meta discussion. I suspect that this results from over-editing. Wikipedia editors drive me crazy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Skysong263 (talk • contribs) 05:13, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
 * It stems mostly from this page needing to be a disambiguation page that links to other articles. Bright☀ 15:52, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose merging grandfather paradox into this article. At least half of the content in the grandfather paradox article is relevant to temporal paradoxes in general. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:20, 16 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Support. Don't forget to create a redirect when done. Good idea. - DVdm (talk) 22:25, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Support. As above, due to overlap. Ravenclawed (talk) 11:20, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Now merged. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:02, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Merged in Causal loop
There was a clear case of a WP:CFORK between this article and Causal loop, so I've WP:BOLDly merged them together. If they should be split out again, we need to more clearly delineate between the two, but for now we're well within the bounds of article size. &#32;- car chasm (talk) 21:45, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Should we delete?
should we delete information loop and predestination paradox? neither of those sections have any sources. Industrial Insect (talk) 15:46, 6 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Correction: No citations Industrial Insect (talk) 17:24, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure we need to delete the whole sections, I remove some possible OR, but it looks like the claim in "bootstrap paradox" is attributed to Smeenk, and I was able to verify that source. The first sentence of the other section, "information loop" is probably supported by one of the citations above as well; but I've added a cn tag to it. I also renamed the section to "information paradox" to be more consistent with the other headers since that seems to be another alternate name. &#32;- car chasm (talk) 21:45, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Ok. Thank you. Industrial Insect (talk) 17:57, 7 September 2023 (UTC)