What Is Bootstrap Paradox?

We know that there are many paradoxes of time travel. Some are very interesting while some simply gray out the line between the humans and time travel. Today, let's discuss one of the famous time travel paradoxes " The Bootstrap Paradox " in today's post. 

Those who don't know the meaning of paradox, paradox is a a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.

The Bootstrap paradox is of course a theoretical paradox of time travel. It occurs when an object or piece of information sent back in time gets trapped within an infinite cause-effect loop in which the item no longer has a unique point of origin, and is said to be “uncaused” or “self-created”. The Bootstrap Paradox paradox works with Information, Object, or the Person or any of these in a cohesive manner.

The first law of thermodynamics says that the energy can neither be created nor be destroyed. But this time travel paradox allows you to create energy or mass which violates the laws of physics. 

Let's understand it by a example, In future if somebody made a time machine and if a time traveler went back in time and taught Einstein the theory of relativity, before returning to his own time. Einstein claims that it’s his own work, and over the following decades the theory is published countless times until a copy of it eventually ends up in the hands of the original time traveler who then takes it back to Einstein, bringing the question “where did the theory originate?”, this is Bootstrap Paradox, you will never know from where the 'original things' originated.

In normal life, let’s say your past is influencing your present, and the present is causing the future, and time is moving in a straight line. But in Bootstrap Paradox, your past will affect the present, the present will affect the future but your future will always affect  the past. So, we are stuck in a time loop.

Now, what can be the solution to this paradox? The possible explanation comes from the multiverse theory. Whenever you travel from the future to the past in time, you move to a different multiverse that looks exactly the same as yours but it’s just your perception.

In this way, you are not stuck in a time loop but this will create an infinite open-loop for the multiverse. And because of this, another question will arise. Are you the one who is going back in time and creating a multiverse or it’s simply there for us to explore? These questions could only be solved once time travel is practically possible.