More Time Travel

Use a time machine to go back thirty seconds and stop yourself from using the time machine. Bam! Single-generation Grandfather Paradox!

Story 1: Energy/Mass conservation violation destroys the universe. Boring.

Story 2: Energy/Mass conservation destroys the machine and everything around it. News reports your death in the explosion, and everything goes on unchanged.

Story 3: Both 'you's are destroyed, but the machine's fine. Everything goes on unchanged. (Technicians looking at mangled remains: "John said he was going to see what happens if he went back and prevented himself from going back." "Yeah. Let's be sure not to do that.")

Story 4 (and MY answer to the paradox): Just before you enter the time machine, another you steps out and stops you. "Why'd you stop me?" "I wanted to see what would happen." "But that's what I was going to do!" "Well, here we are. Now what?" (The very act of going back in time creates a new timeline that includes the traveler's appearance. The traveler vanishes from the original timeline, never to return. A similar traveler from another timeline may or may not appear in the original one, but only if he doesn't interfere with the original traveler's plans, or it's another divergent timeline.)

Story 5: The original you vanishes the instant the traveling you arrives. Still a new timeline.
"That's odd. I was going to enter the machine, but now I'm here, coming out of it." (Conservation of mass/energy destroys the original you the instant the traveling you arrives.)

Note: If there is only one reality/timeline/universe, time travel is impossible due to violation of conservation of mass/energy.

Similarly, even with multiple timelines, a traveler must arrive at the same one leaves, to preserve the mass/energy total.

Travel into the past adds matter to the past. How is that affected by Energy/Mass Conservation? Establishing the field that projects the matter into the past requires energy equal to the mass? Once established, the field is stable, and shutting it off returns the traveler? Or is it a one-way trip until an equal amount of energy is expended to remove the matter from the past?

Nature sems to violate Consrvation all the time on the quantum scale, for short periods. Perhaps the time travel field allows temporary violation on a macro scale? Field must be collapsed in a controlled fashion. Uncontrolled collapse releases all the energy at once -- the traveler is yanked back to the present, and is now at ground zero of the release. This is considered a Bad Thing.

The traveler experiences the travel while the field is being established? And again while it's collapsing.

The Billiards Paradox

I just read an interesting restatement of the Grandfather Paradox:

Imagine a pool table with a wormhole on it. The wormhole loops through time and space such that if you shoot a billiard ball into one end, it comes out the other end a second or so BEFORE it enters. So you'd see it emerge before it enters, and for a second or two, there are two of the same ball on the table. (We're ignoring whether this violates conservation of mass/energy.)

Now imagine aiming the ball at the wormhole so that when it comes out of the wormhole, it hits the version of itself rolling towards the wormhole, and deflects that one so it never enters the wormhole! Which means it doesn't come out of the wormhole, so it isn't deflected, so it does enter the wormhole, and it does deflect itself...and so on.


Yes, that's the kind of thing I find interesting.

Lesser Known Knights of the Round Table

Lesser known knights of the round table:

The one who drank too much: Sir Ohsis

The one who ate only meat: Sir Loin

The one who was always trying to please everyone: Sir Vial

The one who was always talking: Sir Rocco

The one with chronic dry skin: Sir Haira

The sweet one: Sir Up

The one with more than he needed: Sir Plus

The one who always wanted more: Sir Charge

The one who was always to stand in for others: Sir Rogate

The really strange-looking one: Sir Real

The one who watches everyone: Sir Veillance

The one who was afraid of actually fighting anyone: Sir Render

The mellow, laid-back one: Sir Furdude

And the sullen, angy one: Sir Lee

Grrrr

There are few things worse than having to wipe piss off a toilet seat before you can sit down.

One of them is realizing you didn't look closely enough before you sat down.

Guys are pigs.

And yes, I'm a guy. What's your point?

Reading

I've been an avid reader all my life. I don't even remember learning to read, I learned so young (my parents taught me to read before I even started school). I don't remember reading the "See Spot Run" type of books at all.

The first books I remember reading were the Lensman books by E.E.Smith, followed by "anything I could reach standing on the floor" (Mom kept the child-rearing books on the top shelf). Reading has always been my primary form of entertainment, almost exclusively science fiction.

And I read a lot. My reading speed on entertainment material is about 600wpm and I would have guessed that I read an average of 20-30 books a year. But this year, I've been tracking my reading on Goodreads. And I'm currently at 110 books this year! That's 15 books a month! And that doesn't even count short stories, or the nine that I gave up on and didn't finish!

I never had a grasp before on just how much I read. Wow.

Reading in the tub

I like to sweat out a cold by soaking in a VERY hot bath for an hour or more at the first symptoms. I find that knocks it down to one or two days, tops.

And, of course, I like to read while I'm in there. Probably not a surprise to anyone who knows me. I've done it for many, many years, and only dropped a book into the water once.

But I do my reading on electronic devices these days, and dropping one of those in the water even once is not acceptable.

So I was thrilled to discover that my tablet works just fine sealed inside a zipper freezer bag. Now I don't have to find a hardcopy in my collection to read the next time a cold virus tickles my throat.

marco, no polo

The kids in the complex were playing "Marco, Polo!" in the pool this afternoon.

At one point, I heard, "Marco!...Marco!...MARCO!...Where the hell is everyone?"

Seems the rest had quietly left the pool and were hiding behind the bushes.


Now that's funny!

It's ALIVE!

CLEAR!

CLUNK!

We have a pulse! I think...yes...okay, back off, it's stirring. Let's see if it survives any longer this time.

So, after two years, I feel like posting to this thing again. No promises how often I'll post, but we'll see.