If you have ever sat down and thought about time travel for even half a second, you have grappled with the Grandfather Paradox. Of the many mind-boggling questions raised by the specter of time travel, it is probably the most common. What happens if you go back in time and kill your grandfather?

There are plenty of ways to resolve this paradox. You can go the (confusing, and inconsistent) Back to the Future route, where disrupting the flow of events that led to your birth makes you disappear, slowly for some reason. Or you can subscribe to the multiverse theory, where ever step back just splits the stream into alternate timelines with alternate futures.

But MinutePhysics has another theory, one inspired by the quantum quirks of subatomic particles that let them exist in different states at the same time. What if, when you go back and kill your grandfather, two conflicting timelines play out simultaneously. It makes more sense than you'd suspect. At least I think.

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Of course even with this thought exercise, there is no evidence to suggest that time travel is possible and in fact plenty of evidence to suggest that it is not. But if you were looking for a way to exercise your brain on slow Friday at the office, look no further.

Source: MinutePhysics

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