New Model Solves Grandfather Paradox

goldfishy writes "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. Researchers speculate that time travel can occur within a kind of feedback loop where backwards movement is possible, but only in a way that is 'complementary' to the present. In theory, you could go back in time and meet your infant father but you could not kill him." From the article: "Quantum behaviour is governed by probabilities. Before something has actually been observed, there are a number of possibilities regarding its state. But once its state has been measured those possibilities shrink to one - uncertainty is eliminated."

You insensitive clod!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am my own grandfather!

Futurama - Roswell that Ends Well

[havaloc]

Farnsworth: Oh, a lesson in not change history from Mr. I'm my own Grandpa!

Verifying the Theory

[Nova Express]

I would be most interested in how they'll set up the experiment to verify the theory...

"OK, McFly, here's the gun. If you can kill your own father and thus erase yourself from existence, we'll know the theory was wrong."

Re:Unless of course...

[bravehamster]

By doing the nasty in the pasty.

Re:That's great!

[cryptoz]

No sane history teacher would force his/her students to watch people post to /.

Re:That's great!

[njcoder]

"Imagine the possibilities of history classes of the future... maybe there are already a lot of ghosts watching us right now... the future students studying history!!"

Great. It's not like I wasn't uncomfortable enough having sex in front of the just the dog. I have to worry about porn technology from the future.

Re:sounds exactly like the move "the time machine"

[Flunitrazepam]

not to mention the best-selling novilization of the movie that followed shortly there after!

Re:No no no!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not clear at all. If I went back in time and killed the baby George W Bush, it's like he would disappear in the middle of a speech. Rather the entire course of history branching from that moment would be changed, so that in the "present" no one would ever know GW had existed.

Who?

Re:H'uh?

[daft_one]

"Anyone else having difficulty imagining a scenario where it would be "impossible" to kill somebody?"

*cough* Bin Laden *cough*

First American Pie, now this...

[xstonedogx]

Well, I, for one, will never enjoy a pasty [ex.ac.uk] ever again.

Re:No no no!

[crow]

You mean like when my friend went back in time and killed President Barnes when he was in first grade?

Re:You insensitive clod!

[Fjornir]

Many, many years ago when I was 23
I was married to a Wider who was purty as can be
This Wider had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red
My father fell in love with her and soon they two were wed

This made my dad my son-in-law and changed my very life
For my daughter was my mother cause she was my father's wife
To complicate the matter even though it brought me joy
I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy

I'm my own grampa,
I'm my own grampa
It sounds funny I know
But it really is so
I'm my own grampa

My little baby then became a brother-in-law to dad
And so became my uncle though it made me very sad
For if he was my uncle then that also made him brother
Of the Wider's grown up daughter who of course was my step-mother

My father's wife then had a son who kept them on the run
And he became my granchild for he was my daughters son
My wife is now my mother's mother and it makes me blue
Because although she is my wife she's my grandmother too

I'm my own grampa,
I'm my own grampa
It sounds funny I know
But it really is so
I'm my own grampa

Oh if my wife is my grandmother then I'm her grandchild
And every time I think of it, it nearly drives me wild
For now I have become strangest case you ever saw
As husband of my own grandmother I'm my own grampa

I'm my own grampa,
I'm my own grampa
It sounds funny I know
But it really is so
I'm my own grampa

Re:Verifying the Theory

[imr]

"OK, McFly, here's the gun. If you can kill your own father and thus erase yourself from existence, we'll know the theory was wrong."
-"Hey! I'm not that stupid! I wouldnt do that!"
-"Chicken!"

Re:One sperm in a million

[imr]

Hmm, how long have you been fantazing about bumping into your Mom so that a different sperm would impregnate her?

Re:One sperm in a million

[H0NGK0NGPH00EY]

I really could have gone without hearing the phrase "impregnate your mom" this evening.

Re:Novikov?

[nokilli]

As was covered quite competently in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure [imdb.com], perhaps still the best treatment of time travel ever given by Hollywood.

Re:You insensitive clod!

[LiquidCoooled]

And I thought compiler dependencies were tough!

Re:You insensitive clod!

[CapnGrunge]

Is that you, Fry Farnsworth?

Re:You insensitive clod!

[cpt kangarooski]

What, is it Mitochondrial Eve already? I love that holiday. It's so damn festive!

Re:You insensitive clod!

[pipingguy]

Try replying to a reply to your original post with the exact same wording.

Re:No no no!

[dj245]

The problem with this, of course, is that it only affects *that* timeline and any future forks created from that point onwards; it doesn't change the fact that back here, in our timeline, W became the president and launched another Gulf War.

I am sick of this democrat-republican warring permeating every aspect of society. Can't we become suspicious at other countries and invade them together, as Americans?

Uva Jed

[Doc Ruby]

This story is a dup. The original will be published next week.

Re:Futurama - Roswell that Ends Well

[Angry Toad]

One of my favourites, at the end of much messing about with causality, is:

"Oh screw history, let's get the hell out of here!"

Re:You insensitive clod!

[h4rdc0d3]

Slightly off-topic, but I remember renting the movie "The Stupids" with Tom Arnold shortly after it came out on VHS a while back. It was a pretty dumb movie, but I'm glad I watched it until the end. His redition of this song was hilarious. Anyone know where I could find an mp3 of it?

Re:That's great!

[madmancarman]

You are quite correct, in fact, this is the only way people make money in the stock market.

The fact that this was modded "Informative" can only be explained by time-travelers coming back in time to clue us in on how screwed the stock market is about to be.

Re:What about...

[HyperChicken]

That sounds like a wager.

Re:Time Travel is IMPOSSIBLE.

[Lorkki]

Hereforth, I propose that all mass in our universe is comprised of elaborate boolean operations on chicken. After all, it is a well-known truth that chicken tastes like everything, and it also helps explain why so much of DNA is the same throughout species.

Unfortunately, I don't have a concise mathematical model to support this hypothesis yet, but I'm sure there's someone resourceful out there who can take care of all that hand-waving stuff.

Re:You insensitive clod!

[Cerberus911]

My head just exploded.

Re:You insensitive clod!

[NanoGator]

"Well I'll be a monkey's uncle!"

Even with standards this low, this generation of Slashdotters still threatens to be the last.

No chance...

[Mister Impressive]

... so there's no chance of stopping Lucas from making Episodes I-III?

There is a much better answer to this

[alricsca]

I get tired of people being so limited in their thinking. A quantum wave function does not need to collapse. It can vibrate between all possible futures. When we observe it, it is our interaction with it at whatever point it is in its vibration that changes what universe we are in. The wave appears to collapse as we have now changed our own location in the multiverse relative to the quantum wave we were observing. Notice that we ourselves can act like quantum waves and that we like the wave we were observing are vibrating between possible realities. We simply made an observation or in other words we engaged in action that caused a quantum level interaction that pushed us away from another quantum waves location givings us the appearance of its collapse into one certain reality. As to what happens when you kill your grandfather in the past. In the universe you leave you would appear to vanish forever having engaged in a action that moved that reality away from you. In the past you do kill the man whose particles participate in the multiversal wave that your Grandfather participates in. The result is that you have now moved yourself into a universe in which the matter making up your dad's structure is dead. You still exist because you came from the future at a point in a another universe in which he still exists in the living form of your to sire you. So, ironically, the answer is that you cannot kill your actual father but you can go back and kill a version of your father and in so doing remove yourself forever from the universe in which your father exists. :-)

Re:You insensitive clod!

[ross.w]

He could be from Tasmania?

Surely...

[Gordonjcp]

... being one's own father is not going to be nearly as messy as being one's own mother?