Time Travel Conundrums (standard:science fiction, 862 words)
Author: Saxon Violence	Added: Dec 07 2012	Views/Reads: 5070/1978	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A brief discussion of Time Travel, Chaos Theory and Paradox

Time Travel Examined 

I want to examine the ramifications of Time Travel in light of what I
understand about Chaos Theory and Catastrophe Theory. 

First of all, you can simply decide that Time Travel is impossible. If
so, then that pretty much ends our conversation. 

Secondly, you can believe that Time itself has some sort of “Gyroscopic
Stability” that returns it very close to the “Destined Timeline”, 
though you may be able to make minor changes. 

{In my analysis, I use the term “Destined” to mean what had already
transpired before the “First Time Traveler” muddied the water.} 

I'm going to concentrate on the weather and conception—though everything
else is also thrown off its “Destined Path”. 

A meteorologist constructed a virtual map of North America. He plotted
one million points and assigned each point a temperature, barometric 
pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction. 

Then he set up weather patterns and sent the simulation through tens of
millions of iterations. 

He was astonished to find that if you altered one point on the million
point map—any point—just one degree or one barometric point higher or 
lower and let the exact same starting position evolve... 

In a week or ten days, the weather would be completely different. 

Even larger and more elaborate simulations confirmed that you couldn't
move a grain of sand without altering the weather. 

Now let's say, for the sake of argument, that the yearly and even the
monthly rainfall stayed the same. 

However one stormy, very raining day will be sunny in the new simulation
and the rainstorm become a drizzly day three days earlier and a modest 
rainfall in a week (On a day that was originally partly cloudy, but 
with no precipitation). 

Now if you're reading this, then that means that you were conceived in
the “Destined Timeline”. 

Let's earmark the Sperm that became half of your genome. What are the
odds of this particular Sperm winning the “Genetic Lottery”? The odds 
are astronomically against that Sperm before the race. 

What about after the race? No problem, one of them had to win—and it
just happened to be “you”. 

But if I go back in time and do something that causes either of your
parents to move one millimeter off their “Destined Trajectory”, it's a 
whole new Sperm Race. The odds against you winning this new race 
are—once again—Astronomical. 

#1} When there is a sunny day where it was originally rainy, your
parents may not even have sex that day. 

#2} Even if they do, your mother may not conceive. 

#3} If she conceives, it may be a Girl instead of a Boy or Twins. At the
very least, the baby born won't be identical to you. 

If I go back in time and stop long enough to spit on the sidewalk, throw
a grain of sand into the Sahara Desert or drop a soft-drink bottle into 
the Mariana Trench... 

Within a short time—no more than a month or two—the change will have
worked its way into the weather patterns all over the Earth. Everyone 
conceived from that point on, will be a person who was not born in the 
original timeline... 

And except for perhaps one-in-ten-million, none of the people who should


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