Novikov self-consistency principle

<p>The Novikov self-consistency principle, also known as the Novikov self-consistency conjecture and <a href="/facts/Larry_Niven/yNRlamWe">Larry Niven</a>'s law of conservation of history, is a <a href="/facts/Principle/qcshmdg3">principle</a> developed by Russian physicist <a href="/facts/Igor_Dmitriyevich_Novikov/shHzr8Th">Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov</a> in the mid-1980s. Novikov intended it to solve the problem of <a href="/facts/Temporal_paradox/sxJVFjta">paradoxes in time travel</a>, which is theoretically permitted in certain solutions of <a href="/facts/General_relativity/jVsoIg8X">general relativity</a> that contain what are known as <a href="/facts/Closed_timelike_curve/QV7WvxHo">closed timelike curves</a>. The principle asserts that if an event exists that would cause a paradox or any "change" to the past whatsoever, then the <a href="/facts/Probability/fgYvMhwb">probability</a> of that event is zero. It would thus be impossible to create <a href="/facts/Time_paradox/sxJVFjta">time paradoxes</a>.
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Novikov self-consistency principle open-in-new

Novikov self-consistency principle