Octavia Butler is the most amazing writer. Her work is fantastic. Read Fledgling and the Lilith’s Brood trilogy!
I enjoyed the interview with Dr. Mallett quite a bit. I, too, had heard that story on This American Life several years ago. It was great to hear more about the experiments he’s currently doing. If you were trapped in a time loop, what would the transition point be like–where you stopped moving from past to future and began moving back into past?
I firmly trust that humanity will one day figure out how to actually travel faster than light or bend space-time so that we can move from point A to point B almost instantly without transversing the entire distance in between them.
Despite that trust in an FTL future, I reject the notion that humans will ever be able to travel back and forth through time at will.
Is that totally weird? Just a quirk of my scientific convictions, I suppose.
With Q anything is possible.
Ditto.
And no disrespect meant, but does anyone else think Dr. Mallett is some kind of string theory alt reality version of Bruce Wayne?
Hah! I think even he’d get a kick out of that.
Best. Mental image. Ever.
Time travel done ala Groundhog’s Day meets Quantum Leap, from the Director of Moon…
Loved Moon, and this looks pretty frakin’ okay too.
Bruce sits alone, contemplating his future. Suddenly, a string falls.
“A string! I shall become a string!”
So in a related topic, my wife and i were in the car and Brad Paisley’s “Letter To Me” came on the radio. (in case you don’t know, it’s a country song positing that the singer would write a letter and send it to himself when he was seventeen telling him about his life)
I turned it down and said, “you know I don’t like this song”. ShutUpWife asked why. I said “It’s irresponsible time travel message for one”
That’s where she sighs and asks what I mean. Knowing full well my answer will be redonkulous.
“Well, it’s messing with causality, if you change anything in the past, you change future events. Like when he says “At the corner of Thompson and 8th, always stop completely, don’t just tap your brakes” he could have avoided some major accident or ran over a bike rider or something by not stopping all the way one time”
“Whatever” was the response i got.
She then turned it back up, but this nerd had more to say.
“Unless of course, he’s working off the theory that everytime you change something in the past you create a new reality and the changes to the timeline you make only apply to that new dimension.”
:: eye roll :: from ShutUpWife.
“In which case, the changes he makes wouldn’t even affect his version of events and all he’s doing in cluttering up reality by creating all these new dimension for fun, clearly.”
“It’s just a song” and more “you’re insane, sir” type stares.
“You know, you could have married someone boring and normal.” I said.
There are a lot of great time travelers out there, but I think one my favorites is Ashley J. Williams. I think it’s easy to forget about him in the time travel discussion since he traveled through against his will, via magic instead of science, and its not really the focus of his movie.
But he certainly showed the primitive screwheads what a chainsaw and boomstick can do against an Army of Darkness
I just wanted to turn you guys onto one of the most popular time travel conspiracies here in the us to make recent times. True or not, that is up to you.
It is very popular because the science advances and when they were occurring. Things like miniature black holes and other things. I haven’t really followed this for a while, but I do think there is something too it.
http://johntitor.com/ Then again, if it was true, then it would be a cool read, non the less.
And here is a link to Peter Wellers video about it
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/521706ecf7/robocop-speaks-to-detroit
Interview with Dr. Mallett was definitely one of the best segments ever. Not long enough–I could have listened to him for three hours.
How amazing is it to hear a doctor of theoretical physics extol the virtues of Timecop?
Poll for favorite podcast 259 quote now open: