I have steered around the time travel issue because it gets a bit complicated to explain to layman but Bill S is quite correct this sort of thing would almost certainly be precluded by QM theory.
QM theory has become quite explicit about the grandfather paradox in recent years and says it can't happen which is what this is an attempt to invoke.
Why because when something is observed or known it is locked into this reality. If you want a background to this at a layman level read (
http://www.science20.com/alpha_meme/are_you_real_quantum_mechanics-90221)
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Though perhaps counterintuitive, consciousness cannot be easily sidelined from scientific examination. Doctors have found a person’s state of mind can have significant effects on their body’s ability to heal itself.
While that anecdotal observation has not provided enough solid evidence to cause every doctor to prescribe meditation as a form of medicine, quantum physicists have found definitively that at the sub-atomic level, the act of observation actually affects the reality being observed. This fact became known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: one cannot observe a phenomenon without changing or affecting it.
Some physicists have wondered whether the universe in some strange sense might be brought into being by the participation of those consciousnesses that have chosen to participate. The term ‘participator’ then has become an incontrovertible new concept given by quantum mechanics. It strikes down the idea of passive observation, given by classical theory, and shows that the vital act is the act of participation. In this way, there can no longer be a scientist who stands safely behind a thick glass wall and watches what happens in an isolated manner from the observed experiment without influencing the outcome simply by observing it.
Quantum mechanics insists such isolation cannot occur.
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli described that from within one’s inner center our psyche seems to move outward, experiencing, influencing, and even creating the physical world through the act of participation.
Thus physicists have found themselves, through the study of quantum mechanics, to be in the unanticipated field of the study of the structure of consciousness.
Christian de Quincey likened this phenomenon to being in the odd position of having to confront daily the indisputable fact of one’s own consciousness, and yet having no way of being able to explain it.
What is consciousness and where does it come from? That is a philosophical question that dates back thousands of years. We can conclude consciousness is not composed of matter. But we have only assumed thus far that matter does not possess consciousness.
We must still ask, ‘From whence then does consciousness originate?’
Greek philosopher Descartes was famous for his ability to doubt any given theory or philosophy. He could doubt what people said. He could doubt the validity of what his eyes showed him of the world. He could doubt himself; his own thoughts and feelings. He could even doubt that he was present in a physical body. But the one thing that he could not doubt was the fact that he was doubting. This revealed his one and only certainty: he was thinking. Descartes thus concluded if he was thinking, he had to be a conscious, experiencing being. As he put it in Latin, Cogito, ergo sum: I think, therefore I am.
This was and is the paradox of consciousness. Its existence is quite undeniable, and yet it remains totally inexplicable.
For the materialist meta-paradigm, consciousness is a monumental anomaly.
Religious people may claim God is the creator and the source of all creation. But physicists might say the same of consciousness.
Philosophically, the implications of quantum mechanics are mind blowing. Not only does quantum mechanics insist that we influence our reality, but also, at least to some degree, we actually create our reality.
Because quantum mechanics tells us that we can know either the momentum of a particle or its position, but not both, we are forced to choose which of these two properties we will want to determine.
Metaphysically, this is very close to saying that we will create those specific properties because we have chosen to measure them. In other words, it is possible that we can create something at a specific position, like a particle, for example, simply because we were intent on determining some thing existed at that position.
Returning to the discussion of conscious’ interpretation of the physical world, it can even be argued that our entire physical world – everything we can see, hear, taste, smell, and touch; as well as our private, inner world – every thought, feeling, fantasy, intimation, hope, and fear – is a form that consciousness has taken on for our benefit. Thus, consciousness becomes both the source and creator of everything we know.
Consider the concept of correlation. Things are not correlated in nature; they simply are. Correlation then is a concept that humans use to describe connections between objects or events that we perceive.
For example, there is no concept or word, ‘correlation,’ except as is created by people. This is because only people use words and concepts, and ‘correlation’ is a concept. Likewise, particles are also correlations. If people weren’t here to construct concepts, none would exist.
In other words, without people, or more specifically without experiencing consciousness, there wouldn’t be any particles!
This train of thought could be likened to the idea of multiple possible outcomes, or wave functions, of a photon and all realities connected to it – the detector/measuring system, the “observing”/participating technician, etc.
When one intends to follow and measure the path of an electron, the possible outcome of the wave function is unknown until a perception is made and mathematically, the wave function collapses. The scientist thus realizes where the electron hit the detector plate once he determined he wanted to make a measurement, but in the absence of that intention, the electron could have seemingly struck anywhere or indeed, nowhere. The wave function collapsed because a perception was made as intended by consciousness. Looking
outward from the photon to the detector to the technician to the supervisor, we could continue until we include the entire universe. But who is looking at the universe, or alternately, how is the universe being actualized?
To find the answer to this question, we must come full circle. All indications are that we are actualizing our universe. Since we are part of the universe, the universe must be self-actualizing. This train of thought compares closely with many aspects of Buddhism. This idea could well become one of the more important contributions of quantum physics to future models of consciousness.
Geoffrey Chew noted one important aspect of quantum theory, known as the hadron bootstrap conjecture, is the logical conclusion that the existence of consciousness, along with all other aspects of nature, is necessary for self-consistency of the whole.
In other words, consciousness (i.e. the light) creates matter, and without which nothing could exist. Consciousness can thus also transform matter and make matter what it wills.
Quantum Field Theory:
With this last statement, it should come as no surprise that some quantum physicists would take the next step and consider the idea that physical reality is essentially non-substantial, but rather a momentary manifestation generated by some underlying energy or influence. This idea is the basis of a branch of quantum physics, known as quantum field theory. Theories, of course, are unproven ideas that tend to have some measure of support, whether mathematically or experimentally, but may not have been definitively proven or accepted by the scientific community at large. Quantum field theory contends underlying and interacting fields, similar to an electro-magnetic field, permeate all of reality, and the fields’ interactions seem particle-like because fields interact both instantaneously and in very minute points of space.
This idea originated from the realization that photons are also electromagnetic waves. Since those waves are also vibrating fields, quantum physicists concluded the photons must be manifestations of electromagnetic fields. Hence they coined the idea of a ‘quantum field,’ or a field that can take on the form of particles, i.e. ‘quanta.’ This was an entirely new concept that has since been extended to describe all subatomic particles and their interactions with one another, where each type of particle corresponded with a different field. Within these quantum field theories, the classical contrasts between solid particles and the space surrounding them is overcome. A quantum field is seen as the fundamental physical entity on which physical reality is formed; a continuous medium that is present everywhere throughout space. Particles, then, become merely local condensations of the quantum field; concentrations of energy that can come and go, losing their individual character and dissolving into the underlying field in an instant.
As noted, there is significant evidence for field theory including a realization that Isaac Newton’s concept of the void of space was false. Quantum physicists determined particles were constantly being spontaneously created and annihilated in vacuums without any nucleons or other interacting particles having originally been present.
According to field theory, such should be expected to occur forever, without end, because the fields permeate all of reality – regardless of the presence of matter or a seeming void.
Another laboratory observation provides a similar oddity for field theory to consider. When an electron passes through a photographic plate, a visible ‘track’ seemingly marks its track through space. This track, under close examination, is actually a series of dots. Each dot is actually a grain of silver formed by the electron’s interaction with atoms in the photographic plate.
When the track is closely examined under a microscope, it may look something like this:
...o...................o......o..o
o.....o.o.o.....o..o......o
.............o
Because the scientist expected to see the track of the movement of an electron through the photographic plate, the scientist may assume the bubbles correspond with one and the same electron. However, this assumption would be a mistake.
Quantum physics tells us the same thing Buddhists have been saying for more than two millennia:
Connections between the dots are a product of our imaginations and are not really there. In rigorous terms, proving the moving object to be a singular particle with an independent existence is an un-provable assumption.
Quantum field theory might suggest instead that each of the bubbles was an independent manifestation of interacting fields that just happened to correspond with an anticipated track of a sub-atomic particle that had been expected by an observer, the scientist, to occur at a certain place and time.
Field theory provides a further basis for at least two other mind-blowing developments in quantum mechanics:
super-luminal connections and Bell’s theorem.
Super-luminal connections:
Super-luminal connections, known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect, have been hypothesized and mathematically proven through the realization that two sub-atomic particles may be instantaneously connected such that their rotational spin on an axis will always match their pair.
Consider if the particles were placed into two separate boxes, and then an outside influence such as an electromagnetic field were applied to one box to change the spin of that box’s particle. The particle in the other box has been experimentally proven to change immediately in response to the stimulus applied to the paired particle, despite their physical separation.
Now take that idea a step further and remove one box to an impossibly far distance. When the experiment is repeated, the instantaneous response of the particle at the farther box still occurs and thus proves that a connection between two particles has occurred faster than the speed of light.
Light has a specific speed, taking a certain amount of time to move between two fixed points, but the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect is instantaneous, regardless of distance.
This discovery in quantum physics implies telepathy or other super-luminal connections that provide for the instantaneous transfer of information may not only exist, but are indeed a part of everyday life.
Bell’s theorem proves that for quantum theory to work, it requires connections that appear to resemble telepathic communications.
The concept of Oneness:
The pioneers of quantum physics observed a strange ‘connectedness’ among quantum phenomena during their experiments in the early twentieth century.
Then in 1964, J. S. Bell, a physicist at the Switzerland-based European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) zeroed in on this strange connectedness, creating a new mathematical proof, known as Bell’s theorem. Bell’s theorem proved that if the statistical predictions of quantum theory were correct, then some of our commonsense ideas about the world were profoundly mistaken: at a deep and fundamental level, the ‘separate parts’ of the universe were connected in an intimate and immediate way.
Bell’s theorem states there is no such thing as ‘separate parts.’ In other words, everything in the universe is connected in an intimate and immediate way that was previously claimed only by mystics and other scientifically-objectionable persons.
Bell’s work found that either the statistical predictions of quantum theory or the principle of local causes (i.e. cause and effect) was false. It did not say which one was false, but only that both of them could not be true. Physicists Stapp, Clauser, and Friedman, confirmed that the statistical predictions of quantum theory were indeed correct. The startling conclusion was inescapable:
The principle of local causes must be false!
However, if the principle of local causes was false, and hence, the world was not the way it appeared to be, then one must wonder what is the ‘true nature’ of our world?
Physicist David Bohm concluded when there was no separate parts in our world, i.e. locality failed, and so the idea that events were autonomous happenings must be an illusion.
Instead, parts must be seen to have immediate, unbreakable connections, in which their dynamic relationships depend on the state of the system as a whole. Thus, one is led to a new notion of unbroken wholeness throughout the entire universe.
This denies the classical idea of the world being analyzable by its ‘separate,’ independently existent parts.
Bell’s theorem may be the most important single work in the history of physics, and has direct applicability to the connection between the hard science of quantum physics and the philosophical science of spirituality.
When one achieves the enlightened state, a common description of the spiritual experience is that of an all-pervading Unity. The concept of separation between entities no longer applies: We are all One and everything is but a manifestation of that Unity.
The Source of that manifestation seems beyond description and is at the heart of the experience itself.
The Source is simply That Which Is, or perhaps more accurately, All That Is. Everything is thus a manifestation of All That Is.
