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I Once Went Back in Time and Told Myself
Never to Time Travel...
...Now I’m Stuck Here!
Those of you who’ve known me for a while know of my many exploits in time
travel. I’ve personally created more temporal-time-rifts and paradoxes then I
care to admit. While most people are unaware of them, many others see
evidence of their existence but are not sure what they are seeing. (For
instance the existence of Mac, Windows, and Unix as parallel operating systems.
Yeah, that was me.)
So anyhow I was thinking of some ponderables when I came up with this
conundrum:
You are driving along in your Delorian time machine at 12:00:02 AM, at 88
miles per hour. You set your flux capacitor to go back in time to 12:00:00
AM, exactly two seconds into the past. And you set it to keep sending you
back to midnight every two seconds.
Now if you remember from the movie,
Back to the Future, when the car traveled in time, it went to the same
exact spot but only at another point in time. So in my situation above, after
your first “leap” the time would once again be midnight, and in your rear view
mirror you should see yourself from two seconds ago, about to go back in time.
And two seconds later, you and the car behind you will both go back in time to
midnight again. Now, you’ll be further up the road, he’ll be where you were
two seconds ago, and the two of you will see your original self from midnight
about to make the “first” leap.
In this scenario you could conceivably have an uninterrupted line of Delorian
time machines from one end of the country to the other for two seconds from
midnight to 12:00:02, after which they will all disappear.
The thing is if you were the first one (in time?) to come up with the idea,
you would always be at the beginning of the line, seeing an endless line of
Delorians growing behind you until you reached your destination. If you were
the last one (in time) to come up with the idea you would see no Delorians
behind you, and an endless line of them ahead of you, diminishing until you
reached your destination.
And of course anyone watching from the sidelines - at the stroke of midnight
would see an endless line of Delorians from one end of the country to the
other, which would last for two seconds. Then at 12:00:02, every one of them
would disappear.
Now as always, I could have this wrong. Maybe nothing would happen. To tell
you the truth, I'm a little afraid to try it. But feel free to share your
insight in the old guestbook.
Billo
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