We can say that the idea of time travel is not often spoken about by science fiction writers, and even more so by scientists. But if it is scientists who begin to speak (even if they hypothesize), then most often they repeat their thesis about the danger of interference in the course of history and the unpredictable consequences of such a step.
One of the most famous caveats on this issue came, for example, on September 21, 1994. Scientists from America stated in the Daily Telegraph newspaper that "the creation of time machines is possible, but only for flight in Time it will need energy commensurate with the energy of the stars." And thank God, the authors of the article say, because imagine that “a traveler leaves from 2010 to 1930, meets her grandfather, talks to him, an amazed young grandfather shares his impressions with his bride … As a result, the bride decides that her betrothed went crazy, their wedding in 1940 will fail, in 1941 they will not have a son, in 1975 they will not have a granddaughter, the same one who in 2010 …”A terrible end and a terrible puzzle: if the Granddaughter is not even born, then who will brew all this mess, and if the Granddaughter is born, then she … was not born,and if she was not born, then no one interfered with the grandfather and she was … born !?
Earlier I already wrote how to solve the arisen paradox by completely legitimate scientific methods. In addition to our World, there are many so-called parallel Worlds, and each World has many options for the development of the Future and one unchanging version of the Past. This Past is not able to change the time travelers, interfering with the History, they create a new World with different variations of the Future. Parallel world! What will happen to our Granddaughter?
Having come into contact with her grandfather, she most likely thereby violated the existing (in the Future) safety instructions. The engagement will be upset. This is a trifle, but the course of world History has been disrupted. Something happens that probably does not happen without intervention from OUTSIDE - the existing reality becomes bifurcated. In the old world, everything will remain as before (Grandfather marries, Granddaughter is born, flies into the Past and does not return), in the new reality, the opposite is true. The grandfather remains a bachelor, he has no descendants, the granddaughter will not be born, but she is already an adult, at the age at which she disappeared in the old world.
Let's spin the intrigue even more. Let's say the Granddaughter realizes her mistake when she comes to her home and finds strangers there (Grandmother nevertheless got married, but for another, these are her children).
It is impossible to correct a mistake, it is not humane to destroy the "wrong" world, and it is useless, it has the same right to exist as our "correct" one. It remains to decide how to get the Granddaughter back. If her apparatus can fly through parallel worlds, this is a matter of a few minutes (onboard time). If not, she will have to go back and correct the mistake. But even if the wedding takes place (for example, the Granddaughter convinces the grandmother), there is still no guarantee that the new, third reality will be similar to the first, and even more so that it will become the first. There is no guarantee that a failure will not occur (for example, a chatty grandmother will tell neighbors about the future 2nd World War and other future events) or just one mistake of those who are aware of their own fate grandmother and grandfather (the temptation to do "the best" is always great). In any case, even minor changes by 2010 will grow like an avalanche.
No matter how much our granddaughter tried by chance or on purpose to change History, all the same, in her former World, everything will remain the same, and besides unnecessary troubles for herself, the granddaughter will not achieve anything.
Suppose the granddaughter decides to resort to radical measures - to advise Herself (the younger one) not to mess with the grandfather. Of course, in order to see herself as the younger, she the elder must again use the MV (time machine). We will talk about the consequence of this terrible step - meeting with oneself - below, but now we assume that the granddaughter has achieved her goal. Only after the second intervention in the Past (the first time - a conversation with her grandfather, the second - with herself, the younger one), she was able to return to the previous branch of History and, using it, with the help of MV, get to her native threshold.
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“Well, that's good,” you say, “in this case, the disappearance of a whole branch of“alternative”descendants of the grandfather was prevented!… It’s also good that the granddaughter, even if she were a maniac, would never destroy grandfather or anyone whatever it was in the Past …
And what if the granddaughter's attempt failed to destroy, but, on the contrary, to save someone? The same grandfather, for example, killed in 1943. Paradoxically, a purely theoretical assumption about the possibility of salvation of a person in the Past with the help of a time machine evokes from critics … a more indignant reaction. Well, is it not surprising that scientists are generally humane, when talking about the paradoxes of Time they use theoretical examples with murders, but never with salvation. So, it is impossible to kill a person in the Past (the killer will not return to his former reality after the assassination attempt), we have already understood this. But what about salvation?
Do you think this question is more fantastic than the previous one? I am ready to assert that society is more ready for this kind of posing of the question. As evidence, I can demonstrate dozens of letters that came after my first popular articles on the topic of travel in Time, and the subject of these letters, in general, was unexpected for me. Their meaning can be rewritten approximately as follows: "I am ready to give my last savings to create a time machine, but when it is created, I beg you, take me at 19 … so that I can save my beloved (beloved) there! …"
Letters from men and women are approximately equally divided; they are united by the fact that each of them speaks of an irretrievably lost loved one. It is irrevocably, because MV is here as the last hope, the only straw in the turbulent river of Time. And since the addressees "like smart people" hardly believe in the possibility of this, most letters have a return address or "to the bearer of the document number …", or "post office box number …"
Is it possible to reassure anonymous inconsolable lovers? To begin with, let's go back to our "bloodthirsty" example with the girl-traveler.
Imagine a granddaughter went to rescue a grandfather who died in the war in 1943. Physically, it is not difficult to do this: first, you need to look at the details of the death from the outside, then return a minute earlier and take the necessary measures (what is called "spread straws, knowing where it will fall"). But, as you might guess, this salvation is also regarded by Nature as an interference in the course of History, and the granddaughter with the wounded, but surviving grandfather will end up in a Parallel world, in ours - the name of the grandfather will remain in the lists of losses, and the name of the granddaughter - in the lists emerging from the Past.
But - do not rush to mourn them! In such cases, they say - if you cannot change the Past, but you really want to, then … No, no, we are not talking about any exceptions to the general rule, but about the general property of physical three-dimensional Time. It turns out that Time is an essentially humane thing, which does not allow killing in the Past, but gives an opportunity to save in the Past, at the same time, in an arbitrarily distant Past !!! And there are three options for salvation:
1) The first option - Granddaughter and grandfather enter the Parallel World, and from there they fly to our "correct" world on their aircraft, and immediately to the Future, in 2010, until this year, Grandfather's appearance "at large" is excluded. But, this method is bad because we use the Parallel World for the operation. It cannot be ruled out that the cosmic laws that are still unknown to us in some way regulate the amount of interference in the life of Paramir, connected by invisible threads with ours. But maybe these fears are absolutely in vain - the aliens (not in time?) Interfere in our history at least occasionally. However, while observing, as a rule, strict neutrality and non-interference. The last argument, however, can be counter argued - we do not know whether flying saucers came to interfere in our History from the Future or simply from other planets.
2) Option two - The granddaughter, a second before his death, takes the grandfather from 1943 and transfers him to the Future. Attention! The removal of a body, even if lifeless, is also an intervention in the Past (perhaps, forgive me for naturalism, someone ate it) !!! Therefore, instead of the murdered grandfather, you need to throw in his place a protein-fat dummy (it will not be difficult to make a copy that is almost indistinguishable in chemical composition in the 21st century) … Or you can act differently: bring grandfather to visit your granddaughter, let him live out his life and die his own death, and then ferry a lifeless body in an old tunic directly under the bullets of 1943 … I don't know if anyone noticed strange transformations with corpses during the war, but in the post-war period, for example, Volgograd researcher G. Belimov counted several cases,when, just before the moment of death, strange inexplicable changes in appearance were noticed in the future dead, up to sharp aging. Then, right up to the funeral, the relatives doubted who they were burying …
As, for example, farmer Reutov from the Tula region still doubts that in 1987 he buried his 17-year-old son Andrey Reutov. The story is more than strange: the teenagers went for a ride in a truck and they were joined by a taciturn boy who assured him that he knew Andrei (met with him at boxing competitions), but Andrei himself did not remember him. There was no time to sort it out - they were in a hurry to ride with the breeze … The overturned truck almost instantly crushed three people, including Andrey, and their new acquaintance simply disappeared without a trace. However, who disappeared and who died?
To this day, the surviving fellow travelers cannot figure it out (they say that only later they realized that Andrei and the stranger were like two drops of water), and the police (at the named address and in the named city, the unknown boy never lived, as indeed, never appeared in the lists of boxing competitions), and even the father himself (he did not recognize his son as the deceased, and the judicial investigation reached a dead end). Moreover, from 1987 to 1991, he met his son several times, he flew to his home … on a UFO that landed not far from the house, while powerful light phenomena and the landing of the object were observed by neighbors in the village. Now, since June 1997, Andrei Perepelitsyn, a researcher from Kaluga, has begun to re-investigate this case, so perhaps new details will appear …
3) And the third, the simplest option is when the Chrono-Rescuers believe that the absence of a corpse will not entail any changes in History. Dozens of people could have been kidnapped at the epicenter of the Hiroshima explosion, and no one would ever have noticed. Who can prove otherwise? The technique is very simple - arrive on time and pick up. For example, what happened (possibly) with the South Korean Boeing-747 airliner, shot down over Sakhalin in August 1983. After the explosion of 2 air-to-air missiles, the plane allegedly went up sharply under the influence of external force (the maneuver is not only incomprehensible, but also dangerous), and then collapsed into the sea.
The divers carefully examined the bottom, but among the wreckage they did not find a single body out of 269 on board (they found only one severed hand). They were surprised that they saw a lot of used, old, obviously unnecessary things (like, for example, a bunch of left-hand sneakers!). At the same time, the Soviet authorities put forward a version that the passengers were taken out of the liner during an intermediate landing in Anchorage, then they stuffed the plane with junk for show and sent them directly to the Soviet air defense for the purpose of provocation. But perhaps the passengers were actually picked up, but not in Alaska at the airport, but right in the flight? For what? There are several possible reasons: for reasons of humanity (let them live for themselves), out of curiosity (curious to talk with people from the 20th century), for political purposes (it's high time to ask the captain of the airliner Chon why he made a note in Anchorage,changing the route of movement 250 km to the north, and took part in the provocation) …
And now the passengers of that ill-fated flight live in some distant century in the Future. And their rescuers are already looking for new candidates for release from the tenacious clutches of death …
V. Chernobrov