Time travel has to be one of the most interesting science fiction subjects out there. We've all watched at least one movie or TV show with time travel in it which blew our minds away.

Just thinking about time travel is enough to transport you to a land of imagination of infinite possibilities. Just think. If you had the power to time travel freely to the future or the past, what could you not do? You could practically become invincible.

Sometimes I really think long and hard about what I would do if I had such powers (just as a thought experiment) and the answers are always so fun. But time travel can also get really confusing as some movies have clearly shown. If one messes too much with time, it can have serious repurcussions on reality itself.

This is one of the reasons why a lot of experts think that time travel to the past is impossible. It simply seems to go against the rules of nature that can spawn a myriad of paradoxes. The grandfather paradox is a good example. But what if, there was a way to avoid any paradoxes altogether?

Enter Alternate Timelines

I regularly watch DC's "The Flash" and the show has meddled with time quite a bit. You should know if you are a comic fan too like me. Anyways, the show does a great job of showcasing the consequences of messing with time and our hero makes alternate timelines thanks to his meddling.

Alternate timelines are also what solves a great deal of paradoxes of time travelling to the past. Let me explain with the help of the grandfather paradox. Say you travelled to the past and killed your grandfather. Then your father would never be born and neither would you.

But if you were never born, you never went back in time and killed your grandfather. If you didn't kill your grandfater, then your father was born and so were you and you did go to the past and killed him. See? It's a paradox.

But let's say you going to the past and changing anything there results in a new timeline right from that instance. The timeline would split into two. The original with no changes, and a second one which takes your change into account and thus changes the future events accordingly in a new timeline.

You would practically disappear from the original timeline (since you went back to time) and could still exist in a second timeline even though that timeline doesn't have your grandfather or your father. I know, it can get kind of confusing but it's possible. So, what do you think about all this? Let me know down below.