Things I Find Incredibly Awesome(and theres no reason other people shouldn't find them awesome too) [part 3/3]

So I had a killer Wikipedia page for about 10 seconds.

(click the pic to see it full size)

Apparently, existing isn’t grounds enough for an entry.

Anywho, this is the third installment of my three part series, and what better a way to close this one out than...

TIME TRAVEL

How incredible would it be to one day be able to visit the past, to really observe it first hand. Now I’m not talking about traveling through time all willy-nilly, putting your parents back together at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, killing your alternative-dimensional selves for super-strength, or stepping on a single butterfly, thus altering the future.

Well, actually, yeah I am. Those are probably some of the coolest prospects of time travel. The meat and potatoes, the bread and butter, however, would be for scientific/historical observational study.

Some smart guy (Stephen something) argues that the absence of tourists from the future suggests that time travel isn’t, nor ever will be, possible. I would like to refute S. Hawking’s argument with one of my own. (Yes, I am just so cocky as to do that)

Many views of how time travel works argue that you can only travel as far back as the time the machine was created. Since it hasn’t been invented yet, no one is traveling back here. It is possible, that on the day the machine is invented, 999,999,999,999,999…… people instantly show up from various points in the future, visiting the historic day in which time travel first became a reality. Alternatively, if this wasn’t the case, there are still other possibilities.

Let us assume, dear friends, that a society advanced enough possess the capabilities of time travel is also far beyond the level of civilization we currently have. (Picture shopping the day after Thanksgiving to be a good representative sample of our current civility) Anyway, I would imagine such an advanced culture would have regulations on when and where you could travel, armed with an advance knowledge that influencing the past could be über disruptive to the progress of the future.

If our culture got wind of a gateway to the future, we would most certainly become “future-dependant.” Future dependency is a serious issue; our natural progression in science and technology, art, music, literature, all would halt, as we would just pump in technology from the future. But this, in turn, would create a paradox, because we must naturally develop time travel technology, or else it wouldn’t exist. The Rapture would most certainly ensue.

If you traveled back in time and killed your own grandfather, prior to him boning granny, neither your parent nor you would ever be born. So then, who traveled to the past and sadistically murder grandpa?

Don’t sweat about it, it’s supposed to make no sense. It’s a paradox.


Dealing with the inherent paradoxes of time travel makes it more interesting to think about. I’m going to recommend further reading on the Grandfather Paradox and the Predestination Paradox. If you have the time, read up, they present some very interesting theories on how paradoxes of traveling to the past wouldn’t result in the end of the world. (They’re certainly more credible than that entry on Kevin Walsh) But for now, lets assume if we were caught in a paradox, the Rapture cometh.


I have a few different ideas of how the futurinos (as I’ve aptly named them) could interact the past, with little to no destructive disturbance:

- Send in realistic looking data collectors. A society capable of time travel should also be capable of insanely realistic-looking birds. These cyborg birds could also have cameras and sensors so microscopic that we can’t even detect them with our primitive technology. You want a safe investment? Nanotechnology.

-What if we have evolved so much that we can transform into whatever we want? For instance, I could become the cutest golden retriever you’ve ever seen, and then show up in the past at a shelter to be adopted and fawned over for the rest of my life. Sweet deal, wouldn’t you agree?

-Maybe the future is conducting experiments with the past that aren’t detrimental to humanity’s progress toward the future. What if planting dinosaur bones or staging Kennedy’s assassination were mere experiments to observe their impact on the human race? These experiments, of course, would have to be greatly calculated as to not disrupt society’s progress, but then again, this is the advanced futurinos were dealing with.


So yeah, I’ve bested Stephen Hawking yet again. Sue me.
I’ll be waiting for you, in the future.





…Oh shit, that was supposed to be my clever sign off, but I haven’t even discussed traveling to the future.

Well, need I even go into it? You can just “Phillip J. Fry” yourself into the future. You know, just “Walt Disney” yourself into the 38th century.
The real money is in bending time backwards to the past. Once you have that, you can just “Encino Man” yourself forward, then bend yourself back to the moment of freezing through some complex physics I’d rather not get in to right now.



Satisfied? Good.
Kevin “Carbonite” Walsh