According to the Grandfather Paradox, we will not be able to go back in time and kill our own grandfather because then we wouldn't exist so we wouldn't be here to go back and kill him. I always thought that the theory had a fault because if you went back to a time after your father was born, you could quite safely kill him because you would still be born so if you do develop a time machine and the urge to bump off your Grandad, just wait until a few days after your fathers been born.
Not that i am constructing a flux capacitor and hold any deep seated resentment for past birthdays presents from Grandpa George, but time travel is one of those tantalising ideas.
What if we could go back and talk to ourselves, what would we say?
This all came into my head when i took delivery of my new mobile phone this weekend. Of course i needed a new number and to my reckoning it must be my 5th or 6th new number since i first owned a mobile phone. So what happens to the old numbers and this is where my imagination takes over.
What if i dialled one of my old numbers and what if through some quirk of time space being warped, i answered, me from 2012 calling my Nokia 3210 in 1999. After the initial shock and if the 1999 Lucy didn't just call me a weirdo and hang up on my 2012 self, what would the 43 year old version say to the 30 year old me?
But what if i did tell myself the winning lottery numbers or something which would change my future, i probably wouldn't be sat at home that day dialling myself in 1999 from a new phone to give myself the lottery numbers in the first place so it just couldn't happen and i wouldn't win the lottery. That means i would then be at home that day with my new mobile phone and...
Blimey, complicated stuff this time travel lark, i'm not surprised nobody has worked it out yet!
7 comments:
"just wait until a few days after your fathers been born."
That still might not work though, because your father's mother's life would in all likelihood have taken an entirely different turn after the untimely death of her husband... maybe she'd move towns and your father would never meet your mum?
I often reflect that 'I' wouldn't be here ('I' being the specific person created by the people who I call Mum and Dad) if it wasn't for Hitler & WW2. My Dad's family moved out to the home counties while the East End was being bombed, and Mum's family moved to the same place from Sunderland while that city was taking a hit. Without both of those events, it's incredibly likely they'd never have met.
Great post, Lucy. Very mind-bending! :)
american's are war mongering, egotistical, capitalist murderers!
q
PS - i time warped back to when david g still commented here... it was hard to do because you never knew what he was going to say right?
Very true Cheezy, our existence depends on a very long, and fragile, line of events that led the right people being in a certain time and place at the exact right time to meet. Scary thought so yes, the grandfather paradox could scupper that also if you killed him after your father was born.
That Isn't be true q, everybody knows Obama is a Communist.
Q: Your comment brought a nostalgic tear to my eye... How I miss such logical debate. It was like Socrates in the Agora, wasn't it?
Lucy: I thought he was a Kenyan socialist Muslim, and Vladimir Putin's mole. You can get the 'good oil' on Barack HUSSEIN!!! Obama here. It's fantastic.
Thanks Cheezy, that website is brilliantly mad. I have just been watching '20 reasons why Obama is a Socialist'. Looks like he has been rumbled. The Russians had better withdraw him quick.
Lucy Lucy Lucy,
Please remember that if you travel back into time and kill your grandfather, you create a multiverse branch, an entirely new universe if you will, that has split off from our present timeline. The only difference the rest of us will see is you being gone forever from our timeline, and you now existing in the new timeline. I thought everyone knew this, sheesh. In this scenario, very little of the future will be changed, so I hope you take this opportunity to become an industrious little capitalist and make Trillions on your knowledge of future events. Just remember, ALWAYS bet against the Chicago Cubs. I'll miss you though, so if you wouldn't mind looking up my alternate universe self, and passing on a few extra bucks, as well as an admonishing not to eat the Shrimp at Despacara in 2011, it would be much appreciated.
sounds like somebody's read their schrodinger's cat litter-ature...
q
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