The paradox of time travel!

I think it's safe to say that we've all thought about traveling back in time at least one or twice. Maybe it was to change what you said or what you did. Maybe it was to see a lost loved one. We all have our reasons, and it would be a lie to claim the thought has never crossed your mind.

We have all seen at least one movie about time travel that dives into the consequences of changing even a small thing in the past. For example, in the Back to the Future franchise (my personal favorite), Marty McFly accidentally travels back to 1955. After he fell out of the tree in front of his would-be mother's house, he realized that event created a dangerous and dramatic change in the timeline. To fix it, he convinced his would-be father to ask his mother to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, but she initially refused because she wanted a strong man that would stand up for himself. Not a timid nerd like George McFly.

After realizing that his siblings were disappearing from his photograph, he convinced George to stage a fight with Marty: One in which George would become the victor. However, Biff, the brute bully in the story, attempted to sexually assault Marty's mom in the school parking lot and George was left to defend her.

Once Marty returned to 1985, he discovered that the events he changed in 1955 would come with some positive changes. George went on to publish a science fiction novel that afforded him to buy the truck Marty dreamed to own and Biff ended up working for George.

Movies like this are great for entertaining, but fall short in the more logical approach to the consequences, or rather possibly of time travel. Think about it: the events of the first Back to the Future movie might be possible since Marty's time travel experience wasn't intentional. However, in the second, when Biff discovers the Time Machine, he travels back to 1955 to deliver himself an almanac that would reveal the winner of every sport from then to 2015. The result was that Biff would become a wealthy man eventually kill George.

Sure that seems great for a movie plot, but let's look at it logically. Say Biff does go back to 1955. Here is where things get tricky. If he did hand himself the almanac and he became wealthy, then he would never find himself in a situation to go back and hand himself the almanac. If he was already wealthy, he wouldn't have a reason to change his future. At least for reasons of finances. Maybe he would still go back, but it would most likely be for a different reason.

It's like if one were to go back in time and save someone from certain death. If that person lives, then you never had that reason to go back. Therefore, you traveling back in time never happened and the person ends up dead anyway.

Another thing to think about is out perception of time itself. Scientists believe that time is integrated with space. We use clocks to measure the movement of objects or particles from one point to another and we call that time. Some people believe that time is only relative to one's perspective. Meaning that of you stare at a clock, time for you will pass much slower than it would for someone who hardly takes a glance.

I one had a conversation about time with someone on social media and that person asked, "If time isn't real, then how do we age?" It was a great question. I replied, "Time doesn't cause aging. It is the release of free radicals that damage DNA, thus altering the cells that get reproduced."

I'm no doctor, nor scientist, but I did pay that much attention in Biology class.

Let's say for the sake of argument that time is linear and we could travel back and forth through it. That would still pose a contradiction. How could we travel backward in time of time within us is still moving forward.

I believe to, some extent, time travel is possible, but only for observation purposes. I think of we were able to change anything in the past, we would only create a new timeline or plain of existence.

I don't pretend to be an expert on this subject, although time travel plays a major part of the plot for my Thadius Might book series. I love to think about things like this, and would love some feedback. Do you think time travel is possible?