Sunday, June 29, 2008

Dr. Who?

Time travel presents scientists with the following conundrum: if you could go back in time, and kill your parents - wouldn't you cease to exist? And if so, then you can't go back in time to kill you parents, so...it's kind of confusing.

Somehow, I think the controversy about time travel will live beyond this article, which argues that quantum mechanical rules prevent the combination of time travel/changing the past. But not so fast!

Here is an exception big enough to drive a fuel-efficient Prius through:

"If we don't know your father is alive right now - if there is only a 90% chance that he is alive right now, then there is a chance that you can go back and kill him.

"But if you know he is alive, there is no chance you can kill him."

Professor Dan Greenberger, of the City University of New York, US, told the BBC News website.

2 comments:

Bart said...

What if you know he's dead because you already did kill him? What if you travel back in time only to discover that he wasn't your real Dad anyway? What if you have two Dads?

What if you kept your Dad in a box with a poisonous radioactive isotope in a capsule that has a 50/50 chance of being released and you hadn't yet looked into the box to see what happened?

Here's a topic for discussion, quantum mechanics are the veganism of the science world. :¬)

Charles said...

That's what I'm talkin' about! Still so many ways to skin Schrodinger's Cat.