On The Paradox of Temporal Dislocation

Time travel, or as it should be called, temporal dislocation, is something that people have speculated and written about since time immemorial. There are references to "traveling" to the future embedded in ancient folk tales and myths, such as in the Hindu tale of Mahabharata, the story of the King Raivata Kakudmi, who travels to heaven to meet the creator Brahma and is shocked to learn that many ages have passed when he returns to Earth. There is also the well know Western story of Rip Van Wrinkle, who sleeps for a number of decades and wakes to a world completely different than the one he used to know. Less often mentioned is temporal dislocation into the past, mostly because to try to incorporate it into fiction without allowing a host of plot issues to crop up is difficult to say the least. However, both sides of the coin, forward temporal dislocation and reverse temporal dislocation, are equally important in defining what people like to popularly refer to as "time travel".

Before we can asses any temporal dislocation, first we must consider useful tools in trying to untie the paradoxical knots of time:

1. The first is superstring theory, aka, a higher-dimensional model. To try to cover the basics of this whole bucket of worms, I recommend watching this video here. The main thing to take from this video is that each higher dimension is a tesseract through the dimension below it. This is because if you where to fold and create a "wormhole" (aka, an Einstein-Rosen Bridge), you would be folding your dimension in the one above it. For the purpose of this argument, we will imagine that the 4th dimension (the one technically above our own) is time. We will be using the 4th dimension and the tesseract though it, the 5th.
2. The second tool is Everett's Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI), which, while contented amongst theoretical physicists, is useful to allow for reverse temporal dislocation. Summed up, it's an extended and refined "multiverse" theory (actually, it's closer to a multi-reality theory).
3. The third tool is the idea of Non-Elastic Time Travel. To try to seriously contemplate time travel you must do away with your wishy-washy, elastic timeline mumbo-jumbo. The idea that a timeline will adjust itself due to changes you have acted upon it from the past is simply absurd. This annoys me because it is so widely used as a panacea for fictional writers incorporating time travel into their works, and while I have no problem with it used there (as to try to explain "actual" temporal dislocation would be incredibly difficult to do), the popularization of the idea is faulty. Now, this presents a problem for traveling into the past, but we will attack this paradox with the two tools mentioned above in due course.
4. Fourth, time dilation. The idea being that the faster you go, the "slower" you experience time relative to those outside of your velocity. People traveling in a space ship at near-lightspeed would experience only minutes in the shuttle, while those not in the craft would experience hours. This could be used to solve the idea of how to cause temporal dislocation, but I will elaborate on these popular theories in due course.

With all our tools in place, let us begin. First, since it is easier to comprehend, let us consider "time travel into the future". By far the easier of the two types of time travel to understand, there are two basic types of forward time travel: 1) what I like to call 4th level travel and 2) 5th level travel. They are virtually the same in theory, but in practice the difference is tremendous. For the sake of the argument, lets just imagine that you "travel" to the future by accelerating to near-lightspeed. With 4th level travel, you would simply travel forward in time and come back to regular speed at a random iteration of the world you left. You only traveled along the 4th dimension, and let time take you where probability dictated. Now, with 5th level travel, you are actually tesseracting through time, and as such, can transcend the placement of probability and inject yourself into any possible timeline you chose. As long as the point you re-enter at is in the "future" from where you left and an actual possible iteration.

Now, for time travel into the past. Traditionally speaking, it is simply not possible. Let me repeat; not possible. Traveling the 4th dimension into the past cannot be done, full stop. However, that does not stop one from traveling through the 5th dimension and going back into the "past". Allow me to explain: one cannot travel down their own timeline and be in the past of their own timeline. It's not just impossible, it's inconceivable, because the instant you would enter your own timeline in the past, you would be changing something. Even by beginning to enter it, you would be altering some small factor, moving one molecule a millimeter, and changing everything irrevocably. Without our little cheating gizmo, namely timeline elasticity, this presents a major problem. The solution is, however, neat. You see, once you travel to the "past", and you alter something in the timeline, you are automatically not in that timeline anymore. You have gone off to a different branch, another reality where you traveled back in time all along. Now, because you never really reentered your timeline and stayed in the 4th  dimension, you where actually traveling in the 5th. Reality-jumping requires that you travel in the 5th dimension, and since reverse temporal dislocation is merely that, you cannot travel back into the "past" without traveling through the 5th dimension. This whole thing incorporates MWI Theory, and allows it to fit into the model appropriately.

Additionally, reverse temporal dislocation allows for a singular occurrence to take place; that of time loops. The scenario above dictates that of what I like to term as an Open Time-Loop. These aren't so much loops, but people just artificially jumping back into the past, like "regular" reverse time travel. The other side of this coin it that of Closed Time Loops. These are where there's an object, be it a physical object or a piece of information, stuck in a perpetual loop of going back in time, traveling froward normally, then going back in time to complete the cycle. Unlike Open Time-Loops, Closed Time-Loops are not actually in the 5th dimension. Because they do not jump realities, they are simply  loops in the 4th dimension. Closed Time-Loops would have to be committed to a single timeline, and cannot be broken. You could try and artificially break the loop, but all you'll succeed in doing is pushing yourself into a timeline where there was no Closed Time-Loop to begin with. This preserves the integrity of the Closed Time-Loop.

Of course, this isn't even discussing the possible way one could time travel. Well, thanks to Einstein's theory of relativity, forward temporal dislocation is fairly simple; accelerate to near light speed. Reverse temporal dislocation, on the other hand, is significantly more difficult and highly contentious. If we ignore the impossible task of achieving light speed while still interacting strongly with the Higgs Field to keep from transcending the whole "mass" issue, then it might be possible to travel back in time that way. However, as previously stated, current theory disallows this. There is the idea of using wormholes, but again, current theory works out that we'd only be able to use a classic 4th dimensional wormhole to travel back to the time when the wormhole was created, using a little of the Einstein's Theory of relativity mixed in. There are other theories, some even involving tachyons, but these are as tentative as the rest. The only real hope I see is higher dimensional wormholes, specifically those through the 5th. Unfortunately, I am unsure as to whether conventional science has anything to say on the possibly of 5th Dimensional Einstein-Rosen Bridges. Further enquiry is necessary.

Well, I suppose one can only hope that some phenomenon will be observed that will shed more light on the whole mess of "time travel". Perhaps a brilliant theoretical physicist will come along and help us out of these paradoxes we've run ourselves into. I am intensely curious to divine the answer to many of the questions regarding time dilation and time dislocation. And I'm sure the answers would be most... interesting.