[Revised entry by John Earman, Christian Wüthrich, and JB Manchak on May 22, 2024.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html]
Recent years have seen a growing consensus in the philosophical community that the grandfather paradox and similar logical puzzles do not preclude the possibility of time travel scenarios that utilize spacetimes containing closed timelike curves. At the same time, physicists, who for half a century acknowledged that the general theory of relativity is compatible with such spacetimes, have intensely studied the question whether the operation of a time machine would be admissible in the context of the same theory and of its…

Originally appeared on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Read More