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After watching the movie Interstellar, the theory of time relativity / paradox really mind-boggles me. If it is true that gravity controls everything even to the extent of time, then it might as well means that the past, present and future are all connected like a circle altogether but does not have a center.. say for example the scene where the book got knocked down by the ghost later revealed to be the father in a fifth dimension trying to send message to his daughter. Wouldn't this mean that he wouldn't be able to get to the fifth dimension if he didn't go in Lazarus mission the first place? Granted that past must happen first before future. But at the same time, the moment where the coordinates were given to him by his 'future self', wouldn't that mean the future must have happened first before the past or present in order to trigger him to go or even know about the revived Lazarus mission? Meaning that every action that was about to be done or finished is already fixed. If this is true, then time as we know it does not stretches like a straight line that keeps going on forever, but instead stays at the same spot while at the same time keeps on moving.. Is that even possible? Can somebody please give me an explanation on this? (The movie I used is just as a reference, my real question is about time itself. )

Qmechanic
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You've mostly only stumbled upon one fact with your list of paradoxes: a lot of the things presented in the movie Interstellar are not parts of a physical theory. This includes:

  • "The bulk", whatever that's supposed to mean, and especially
  • Arms reaching through "the bulk" (???)
  • True back-in-time communication/time travel,
  • "Tessaracts" (the word "tessaract" has a real mathematical meaning but that isn't really used in the movie) inside a black hole

Things that ARE real in the movie are:

  • time dilation at high speeds and close to black holes (relative to a far away stationary [with respect to the black hole] observer)
  • weird optical phenomena, where light really is moving in a straight line but curves relative to an observer at infinity,
  • centrifugal force in that cool spaceship scene (I know, it's not relativity, but it's cool and it's physics, okay?)

The time dilation and the optical phenomena DO involve a four-dimensional thing called spacetime, which IS befitting of cool science fiction, but as modern physics understands, it does not give rise to zany time travel scenarios within our universe.

  • Thanks for the answer NeuroFuzzy. So do you mean that the scene where his future interact with the past by sending a message to his past self is impossible to happen in reality in the first place? – user77483 Apr 12 '15 at 04:30
  • @user77483 - No one will say impossible, but a mere miniscule theoretical possibility. (Just that it is not prohibited.) You might be interested in John's answer here. – 299792458 Apr 12 '15 at 04:53
  • Still welcoming a few more answers though so i could have more reads hehe. – user77483 Apr 12 '15 at 04:58