The concept of time travel and its paradoxes, such as the possibility of meeting oneself in the past, has been a topic of fascination in science fiction. However, from a scientific and logical standpoint, the idea of interacting with one's past self and altering the course of events raises several logical challenges and paradoxes.
One of the most well-known paradoxes related to time travel is the grandfather paradox. It suggests that if you were to go back in time and prevent your own birth by, for example, causing harm to your grandfather before he conceives your parent, it would create a contradiction. If you were never born, how could you have traveled back in time in the first place to prevent your birth?
This paradox, along with others, highlights the potential logical inconsistencies that arise when contemplating changing the past. It implies that events in the past have already happened and cannot be altered, as any attempt to do so would create contradictions or paradoxes.
It is important to note that our current understanding of physics, as described by theories such as general relativity, does not support the possibility of changing the past or encountering oneself in the past. Time is generally viewed as a one-way process, with the past fixed and the future yet to unfold.
While time travel remains speculative, scientists and physicists continue to explore the topic, delving into theories like closed timelike curves and the Novikov self-consistency principle to better understand the nature of time and its potential complexities. Nonetheless, at present, the logical challenges and paradoxes associated with altering the past make the idea of meeting oneself and preventing time travel difficult to reconcile within our current understanding.