Joseph Polchinski
Joseph Polchinski (born on May 16, 1954 in White Plains, New York) is a physicist working on string theory. Polchinski is the author of the two volume textbook, String Theory, published in 1998. Among his contributions to theoretical physics, D-branes are the best known. In 2008 he won the Dirac Medal for his work in superstring theory.
In 1990, commenting on the Novikov self-consistency principle (in relation to sending objects or people through a traversable wormhole into the past, and the time paradoxes that could result), Polchinski raised a potentially paradoxical situation involving a billiard ball sent through a wormhole which sends it back in time. In this scenario, the ball is fired into a wormhole at an angle such that, if it continues along that path, it will exit the wormhole in the past at just the right angle to collide with its earlier self, thereby knocking it off course and preventing it from entering the wormhole in the first place. Physicist Kip Thorne deemed this problem \"Polchinski\'s paradox\". Later students of the whimsical problem came up with solutions which managed to avoid any inconsistencies, by having the ball emerge from the future at a different angle than the one used to generate the paradox, and deliver its younger self a glancing blow instead of knocking it completely away from the wormhole, a blow which changes its trajectory in just the right way so that it will travel back in time with the angle required to deliver its younger self this glancing blow.
