Max: Let's Do The Time Warp Again
BBC: New model 'permits time travel'
"If you went back in time and met your teenage parents, you could not split them up and prevent your birth - even if you wanted to, a new quantum model has stated."
The odd thing is, I have been saying this for a while.
"If you went back in time and met your teenage parents, you could not split them up and prevent your birth - even if you wanted to, a new quantum model has stated."
The odd thing is, I have been saying this for a while.
posted by Max Dobberstein at 6/17/2005 11:34:00 AM
8 Comments:
I hate it when "theory" based scientists talk to reporters. The two do not speak the same language and MUCH gets lost in translation.
From what I just read, all of the below are possible:
*I could hire a killer, who never met my father, to go back in time and kill my father.
*I could go back in time and kill my great-great-grandfather. Never met the man.
*Since neither are alive today, I could go back and kill John Wilkes Booth and save Abe Lincoln.
*A deluded enough person could travel back to yesterday and kill themself.
*Since there is some question about their lives and deaths, I could go kill Hitler, Christ or Eve.
Put that in you TARDIS and smoke it!
If any of the above is true in this "new model" - then there are still plenty of questions to be answered!
Yeah. I usually assume things like that are a mistranslation. I think they were talking about quantum probability and the reporter's brain shutdown. JWB killed Lincoln, so there is 0% quantum probability that he was killed before he killed Lincoln, therefore it is impossible for you to go back and do it. There is a near 100% quantum probability that Hitler died of a gunshot wound in a bunker in the final days of WWII, so you have something of a chance of going back to that time and place and shooting him.
I'm surprized at you, Max! Taking history at face value. The winners write history, not the journalists. There are infinite possibilities on the two moments you mention. The probabilities are MUCH lower than you suggest - especially with Hitler.
But, back to the original point, you hit the nail on the head. This reporter made the science sound like science fiction. But, then again, most people wouldn't have read the actual science ...
I know I was taking history at its face value there. As for journalism, I know of few reporters who don't pretend to know what they are talking about when all they are doing is (at best) quoting (or misquoting) someone else.
As for quantum mechanics, it makes my brain hurt in a good way.
No one will know how time travel works until someone builds a machine and people go do it. I volunteer! I have to die someday - it might as well be for something cool!
You're not allowed to die unless you have a $1,000,000 life insurance policy with me as beneficiary.
If someone figures out time travel and allows me to Quantum Leap, I'll be sure to take out a policy right before I leave.
That's all I ask.
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