I have a time machine. I go back in time to Salt Lake City, Utah in July of 1987. A hotel in the area is hosting a big awards ceremony for a major national insurance company's annual chart toppers banquet. A husband and wife are at this event trying to enjoy their time on this vacation. More so than the event itself, the couple are looking forward to an open bar and a hotel room to themselves for some intimate alone time.
Unfortunately for the planners of this event, the local weather patterns didn't get the memo on the event and have really turned on the faucet on the rain clouds. Buckets and buckets of rain are coming down. Me, having never been to Salt Lake City before, I have to figure out where I'm going. I am from the technologically advanced, far off time of 2009 where we have iPhones and GPS systems so the prospect at hand of using a map to find this hotel is something I'm not used to.
In the confusion of the map reading, the inclement weather, and general excitement of adventuring through time, on a curvy road, I accidentally lose control of my rented 1985 Chrysler LeBaron and get into a head on collision with a taxi carrying our previously mentioned husband and wife while they are en route to the banquet.
Due to my carelessness at the wheel, I have just killed my own parents before I was conceived.
Here is where we run into an issue known as the Grandfather Paradox. Under this philosophy, we assume time to be a straight, unalterable line. Now, if I jump back in time before my timeline existed and screw something up in the delicate balance of events that led to my conception, I have erased my timeline before it was even created. Another way of putting it is if I kill my parents before I'm born, I could never have gone back in time and killed my parents. Logical paradox. Get it?
So, now what happens to me? Wouldn't I just cease to exist?
This is why the government keeps their time travel machines a secret.
ReplyDeleteThat's right. As popularized in a very good Time Travel movie, Deja Vu starring Denzel Washington.
ReplyDeleteI believe you would cease to exist in that branch of time. There's still a branch where you went back in time and ceased to exist at the moment you traveled back in time.
ReplyDeleteAnother question though: Would your existance just STOP or would it fade like for Marty McFly in Back to the Future? I don't believe this to be accurate. I think there has to be a "point of no return." If you cross this point, there's no changing the specific event you're attempting to change/prevent. Thus, you can't exist past this point because the events are inevitable thus resulting in your inexistance as it were.
Check out "Physics of The Impossible" by Michio Kaku and when you finish reading that, check out "The Illustrated A Brief History of Time The Universe in A Nutshell" by Stephen Hawking.
ReplyDelete