Time Travel book recommendations

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The discussion on time travel book recommendations highlights several notable works, including "Black Holes and Time Warps" and Paul Nahin's second edition book, which is praised for its accessibility and thoroughness. Participants mention various scientific papers and articles by physicists like Robert Forward and John Cramer, emphasizing the complexity and speculative nature of time travel theories. The conversation touches on paradoxes such as the Grandfather paradox and the implications of time travel on causality, with references to the many-worlds interpretation and self-consistent histories. Some contributors express skepticism about the feasibility of time travel, citing the energy requirements and unresolved questions in theoretical physics. Overall, the thread combines literary recommendations with deep discussions on the scientific theories surrounding time travel.
  • #31
MM PROES said:
I accept the constraints of this forum to theoretical ideas and sticking to ‘known laws of physics’...however ...’fictitious laws of physics ’ can also be a valid reference point...as most ideas and concepts are almost always fictitious initially
What's wrong with analyzing time travel in general relativity, which is one of those "known laws of physics"?
MM PROES said:
...as for concepts and views in time travel is not philosophically or logically paradoxical.
Why? What specifically about the GR solutions involving closed timelike curves makes them any more philosophically or logically problematic than other GR solutions?
MM PROES said:
Time travel was originally thought impossible. Now with quantum mechanics and particle physics, it is theorized.
No, theorizing at time travel isn't based on quantum mechanics and particle physics, it's based on general relativity, the theory of how mass and energy curves spacetime which results in the effects we call "gravity", because particles follow geodesic paths, which are the closest equivalent to "straight lines" in curved spacetime. If you're not familiar with these ideas you could check out the series of introductory pages http://www.aei.mpg.de/einsteinOnline/en/elementary/generalRT/index.html in such spacetimes shows that there's no reason this need lead to any logical paradoxes (as was discussed earlier in the thread). If we want to discuss time travel on this forum we should probably stick to discussing ideas like these, since GR seems to be the only existing theory of physics which allows for the possibility.
 
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