The Butterfly Effect

Welcome to the next post in the series about the end of the world – this time concentrating on another silly thing that people believe. This one involves time travel.

Time travel is a concept that fascinates me and has done ever since I was a young boy reading yet another H.G.Wells novel – “The Time Machine”.

I have read several novels and watched a lot of movies that involve time travel and, of course, my favourite science fiction series is Dr Who, where the main protagonist has a machine that can travel back and forth through the ages.

Sadly, as much as I love the concept, there are usually gaping holes in the stories and plot lines. I can forgive most of them but sometimes struggle. Even the simplest ideas can be burdened with anomaly, paradox and contradiction.

I have written down three ideas for time travel novels and each one would be difficult to write, If I were to suddenly become a brilliant novelist overnight I would still struggle with the convoluted plot in each one of the three and would be constantly on the lookout for the inevitable gaping plot holes that would almost certainly occur frequently throughout the storyline.

One day I will have a go but it will be a scary undertaking.

So what has time travel got to do with the end of the world?

If you have ever seen a movie called “The Butterfly Effect” you will know what I am talking about. There are people living on the same planet as you and I who actually believe that the world could end because of the Butterfly Effect.

If you don’t know what I am talking about, let me explain. The Butterfly Effect basically relies on the existence of time travel as a real technology and phenomenon.

Imagine if time travel were possible. If I were to travel back in time and I accidentally stepped on a butterfly, killing it instantly, the effects of that one careless act could theoretically cause a massive chain reaction building up over the intervening years that would ultimately cause a chaotic event that could wipe out humanity and/or the entire planet.

It’s difficult to imagine the death of a butterfly causing such a catastrophe but if you think about it in bigger terms the possibilities are endless, particularly if a human being’s life was accidentally taken instead.

The reason most people dismiss the Butterfly Effect is that it really does rely on the existence of time travel. As much as I love science and the concept of time travel I know that this is impossible. If time travel were possible, surely history would be full of time travelling tourists heading back in time to witness history as it happened. If I could get my hands on the means to travel through time I would almost certainly head forwards in time to see what was going on in the coming centuries rather than going over old ground.

And what would happen if, say, a time traveller with a conscience decided to go back and kill Hitler for example?

The chances are that the resulting turbulence on the time line could prove fatal for the traveller. If World War II never happened, his grand-parents may not have actually met and he would immediately cease to exist as he extinguished Hitler’s life. Or the death of Hitler may end up resulting in the death of a brilliant scientist who ultimately produces the cure for a terrible contagion that wipes out humanity before he has found  the cure.

Brain-bending stuff, eh?

And what if the time traveller had met a younger version of himself? Surely he would have remembered such a momentous occasion in his past life. And would meeting a past version of yourself cause the entire timeline to explode in a paradoxical explosion like the ending of the movie Timecop?

These days,  time travel paradoxes are explained by alternative realities, so that if you were to go back in time and change history, then history as we know it would be preserved while the alternative history caused by you stepping on a butterfly would in fact just be an alternative reality that we would never experience. This was explained in Back to the Future Part II and it blew a lot of people's minds.

Thinking about this makes my brain hurt!

Anyway, enough of this nonsense – and that is what the Butterfly Effect is. The world will not end because of time travel because time travel is impossible.

Even Stephen Hawking agreed with me. He famously held a cocktail party for time travellers from the future, the theory being that in future if time travel becomes possible then any future traveller would accept the invitation, step back in time and attend the party.

Nobody turned up.

If I am wrong and there is a budding Dr Who out there, please feel free to come and visit me any time – assuming this blog stands the test of time and future time travellers are able to read it.

It would make a great story if it happens.

I'll write a post about it.

A Journey Through Time And Space

I was watching a repeat of Dr Who the other day and I suddenly had a thought:

What I would do if the famous Timelord materialized in my house, popped out of his TARDIS and said:

“Dave, I will take on ten trips anywhere you want and anywhen. Where do you want to go?”

For those readers who do not know, travellers in the TARDIS have the ability to communicate with those whom they visit because it has a translation circuit that allows them to understand aliens etc.

I would need that.

Here’s where I would ask the Doctor to take me:

The Mesazoic Era

The first place I would visit is Earth in the period between 230 and 65 million years ago, known as the Mesazoic Era. As a kid I was fascinated by dinosaurs and I would want to see those legendary and enormous “terrible lizards” that roamed the planet. Top of the list would be Tyrannosaurus Rex, followed by the other popular creatures – any massive creature in fact. I would also push my luck and ask the Doctor to show me what really wiped them all out.

Jerusalem, between 30 AD and 33 AD

I was baptised a Roman Catholic and was indoctrinated, effectively from birth, via a Catholic school and church until, at around the age of fifteen when I started to rebel. As I’ve grown older, I’ve always been intrigued about the man called Jesus whose teachings I had to learn during that time. My first port of call therefore would be to Jerusalem and the surrounding area in an attempt to find the man himself and work out for myself whether he was just a prophet or whether he was indeed the Son of God.

Rome, 117 AD

I visited Rome in 2012 to celebrate my fiftieth birthday. I have always been fascinated by ancient Roman life and the entire mythos surrounding the Roman Empire, which reached its greatest extent in 117 AD. I learned Latin at school and I often wondered why it was compulsory. I guess it helped me to understand other languages but since it’s been dead for countless years (apart from in the minds of scientists) and it might be nice to hear the language spoken – assuming the Romans actually conversed in Latin that is. I would love just to spend a day wondering around the city, embracing the culture – and trying to avoid being arrested and throw to the lions.

I’d also be a little cheeky and ask him to pop back to 79AD Pompeii, just before Mount Vesuvius erupted. Having walked through the streets of the city a few years ago, I would love to see how the two compare.

England, 1543

Of all the kings and queens of England, the one that fascinates me most is the tyrannical Henry VIII, arguably the most infamous king in our history. He died in 1548 as an enormous bloated caricature of the man depicted in paintings. In 1543, he had just married his last wife, Catherine Parr, and she persuaded him to resolve his issues with his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, both of whom are almost as infamous as their own father.

I figure that at this stage in his life, he would be most willing to chat to me about his life and what drove him to do the things he did. And it would also give me the opportunity to chat to the two future queens too.

A bunker in Berlin, April 1945

I’m a bit perturbed because although I hate the vitriolic preaching of extremists of any kind, I have a deep and disturbing fascination with them. I do not like them at all – in fact I would go as far as to say I hate them – but I am deeply fascinated by the way their mind works and, in the case of somebody like Adolf Hitler, how he managed to use his charisma to build an army of extremist fanatics, invade most of Europe and start a world war.

I would like to witness his last weeks before the end to see if I could get an insight into his despicable human being. More importantly, I’d like to find out whether he really did die or whether he was, as some conspiracy theorists suggest, managed to escape to Brazil or even to the moon (yes there really are some people who believe that).

A grassy knoll and a warehouse in Dallas, November 1963

I don’t really care about American politics but the apparent mystery surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy has intrigued me, particularly since reading a fictional account of the assassination written by Stephen King, called 11/22/63 (why do American’s show the date the wrong way round?). I would therefore like to just double check who was responsible for the death of JFK. Was it Lee Harvey Oswald or was it an unknown assailant on a grassy knoll? Or maybe even a spaceman or time traveller?

Roswell, July 1948

Travelling in the TARDIS with the Doctor would be proof enough that aliens do exist. However, the one episode in history that has spawned numerous conspiracy theories about extraterrestrials was the crash of an object in Roswell, New Mexico. I would just like to see for myself what actually crashed there and what the RAAF actually did with the wreckage and its occupants. Mind you, in truth I would be travelling around in a spaceship with an alien, so that’s a bit of a paradox in itself.

Space (generally ...)

I would ask the Doctor to take me on a voyage around the universe, starting with a slow orbit of Earth itself, a quick tour of all the astronomical bodies in our own solar system before embarking on a journey to any other planets, galactic highlights he saw fit to show me. I would draw the line at stopping on any planet, spaceship or other location likely to plunge me into a life or death situation that only the Doctor could resolve.

Future Technology

One of the main things that irks me about my life is the fact that it is far too short. We only have a limited amount of time alive and, being a massive technophile, I want to see how humanity progresses and the sophisticated gadgetry and technology that we as a species invent and the future. In my own lifetime, the pace of technology has raced ahead incredibly quickly and I imagine that over the next 500 years or so, it will explode – though having used that word, I hope that we don’t invent anything else that can destroy ourselves.

A Library in the Future, say in the year 5000

This would be my final visit and I would implore the Doctor to leave me here for about two years so that I could read up on history and see what happened between now and then. I would be particularly interested to see how future generations thought of those of us (i.e. you and me) and how they interpreted historical events that happened around our time.

I’d also see if I could find any traces of myself and this blog (though thinking about it, that might be a bad idea).

I would then steal a suitable history book and use it in 2015 for my own nefarious and selfish purposes.

I’m sure that the Doctor would stop me from doing that though.

And finally …

To be perfectly honest, I would really like Dr Who to teach me how to use the TARDIS myself and allow me to fly around and appear wherever I wanted to. I think it would be a perilous journey if he were to be the person to decide where we travel to, simply because he seems to be a magnet for destruction, alien invasions and galactic events that threaten our very survival.

He’s a bit of a Jonah to be fair.

The one final thing I would try to do, which would of course be very dangerous, would be to pop back to my own timeline and visit my younger self with a winning lottery ticket. Actually, that would cause a paradox and cause time to collapse in on itself and destroy the entire universe, something the Doctor is keen to avoid. With that in mind I would simply pop forward to next weekend and note down the winning lottery numbers.

I don’t think that would break the universe, do you?

Anyway, enough of that and over to you dear reader.

Where would you go, given the opportunity to travel anywhere in space or time?

The Time Traveller

I love weird stuff.

Most of all, I love laughing at incredible (so-called) footage produced by people that proves with no doubt that the weird stuff we are looking at or watching is in fact proof of crazy conspiracy theories, the existence of aliens, ghosts and monsters, time travel or that our leaders are in fact some form of malevolent shape-shifting creatures that evolved from sentient reptiles who secretly rule the earth and shape the destiny of true humanity.

The internet is full of crazy videos, photographs and verification that the ideas conceived in the minds of highly imaginative yet slightly eccentric people are in fact absolutely true.

While there may be some footage that is difficult to explain (mainly because experts are struggling to prove that the photo or video isn’t in fact fake), I do occasionally love to surf YouTube, blogs and other sites that offer irrefutable substantiation that we are indeed in the dark about the true nature of such mysteries.

I have a very active imagination and I absolutely love science fiction and paranormal eeriness and while I mock the existence of things like yetis, ghosts, monsters in lakes, grey aliens, ghosts, demons and intelligent shape-shifting lizards in reality, I simply love reading about them and the people who believe them. If nothing else it gives me ideas for the future novels I will write.

I am currently reading a Stephen King novel about a man who travels back in time with a view to stopping Lee Harvey Oswald from killing JFK. The idea of the novel fascinates me on several fronts.

First, it involves time travel and potential paradoxes. Second, the assassination of JFK is one the most debated conspiracies of our time and finally, the novel is a riveting thriller.

And, best of all it has prompted me to scour the internet for “proof” of time travel.

I have found some gems, dear reader, that I want to share with you.

(1) John Titor was (or should I say “will be”) a time traveller from the year 2036, who appeared in 2000 and claimed, via internet bulletin boards, that there would be a civil war in America in the year 2004 and that in 2015, Russia would unleash nuclear holocaust on the European Union, China and America, with (as you may predict) America ultimately triumphing but Europe and China perishing. Do you remember the American Civil war of 2004, dear reader? I must have slept through that.

(2) In December 2008 in China, a tomb was opened containing a coffin that had supposedly lain undisturbed for over 400 years. The archaeologists scraped dirt and debris from the sarcophagus and were astounded to discover a tiny Swiss watch, even etched with the name “Swiss”, which was also covered in the same dirt as the coffin. The time on the watch was frozen at 10:06.

(3) A Swede called Håkan Nordkvist  claims to have discovered a time portal under his kitchen sink, while mending a water leak, and found himself in the year 2042 where he met himself at the age of 72. By lucky chance he had a mobile phone and videoed the meeting:

A time portal under a kitchen sink. Well I believe that - don't you?

(4) Andrew Basiago, a Seattle lawyer claims to have been part of a secret US project called Pegasus in the late 1960’s that allowed him, as a child, to travel in time. He claims that there is a photo of him at the Gettysburg address and that he was in the Ford Theatre on the night that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Bizarrely he also claims that he and President Obama were enrolled in a program in the early 1980’s that allowed young Americans to teleport to the surface of Mars. I'm surprised Mr Obama didn't use that in his presidential campaign. I would vote for any man who claimed to have set foot on Mars - wouldn't you?

(5) Eugene Helton claims to have repeatedly travelled back in time and has photographs to prove it. He offers proof that he travelled back in the form of photographs of himself taken by other people.  He also claims to be Blade, i.e. half man half vampire, which makes me think he just found photos of people who look vaguely like him from the past.

Now, is it just me or are people just basically stupid? First of all, I regard the above cases as utterly ridiculous and the claimants to be either totally delusional or out to make themselves famous and rich in the most bizarre way possible.

And what about the people who actually believe them? How can people be so utterly gullible and stupid?

If there really were time portals or time machines then surely these would either remain secret or the authorities would demand tangible proof of their existence rather than the demented ramblings of charlatans or attention seeking weirdos.

Don’t get me wrong; I would dearly love to meet a real life Doctor Who, and I would love to step back in time or see how mankind has evolved in 200 years’ time. But such desires are simply the product of collective science fiction authors – and even my own imagination.

I am very happy to enjoy stories like H.G. Well’s The Time Machine, Dean Koontz’s Lightning and even romantic stuff like Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife.

I will happily watch Dr Who, Back to the Future, The Terminator series and Star Trek movies that involve time travel such as Star Trek: First Contact.

However, I draw the line at believing it is possible by listening to unverified claims by (how can I put this nicely) disillusioned people who attempt to exploit gullible people with ridiculous claims.

Incredibly there are notable people who have scoured the internet actually looking for proof of time travel. I look at stores that amuse me and make me chuckle in disbelief. Yet I have found stories reporting that physicists have been searching the internet for evidence that time travellers exist, searching for predictions that have supposedly come true. Even Professor Stephen Hawking succumbed by throwing a party for time travellers, holding it before he actually sent out the invitations.

Guess what?

Nobody turned up.

Maybe that was a publicity stunt or maybe the great man dearly wanted to believe that time travel is possible.

Well, Professor Hawking, I have a revelation for you. I will share it with you dear reader.

I think you need to sit down.

TIME TRAVEL EXISTS – AND I HAVE PROOF.

We are ALL time travellers, dear reader, every single one of us.

We move forward through time at the rate of one second per second - therefore we ALL travel through time every second of our existence.

Ergo - time travel is all around us and we we can all do it.

Sadly we are constrained by the fact that we cannot travel any faster forwards in time and we certainly cannot travel backwards and anybody who claims that he has travelled into the future or the past is in fact talking nonsense - that is, unless he appears in a big blue box and calls himself the Doctor.

If I Had Five Wishes ...

I often wish that I could add something to my life to make it even more enjoyable than it is at the moment and I started thinking about what I would wish for if a genie popped out of my teapot and offered to grant me a few wishes.

To be honest, there are simply too many to be able to write down all my wishes in a single blog post so I will simply list, what I like to think of, as my geek wishes, i.e. wishes that are straight out of the mind of the creators of my favourite science fiction movies and shows.

Here are five for you to ponder.

1. Observational Time Travel

I would love the ability to be able to observe past events first hand without actually being there. As I’ve got older I’ve become more fascinated with history and, in particular, significant events that shaped the world in which we live.

For example, I would love to be able to pop back to the court of King Henry VIII to watch the tyrannical King in action.

How about popping across the pond to see who really shot John F. Kennedy?

Or visiting Jerusalem to listen to what Jesus had to say, first hand?

Or maybe wander around Hitler’s bunker at the end of the Second World War to observe his demise?

Sadly, my German is nowhere near good enough to understand the ranting and raving of Adolf Hitler as his world crumbles around him. I would need a second wish.

2. Universal Translator

Whenever Dr Who lands on a distant planet, the TARDIS translates the speech of the indigenous aliens. Similarly whenever the Starship Enterprise makes contact with an alien species, the Universal Translator makes sure that both parties totally understand each other before all hell breaks loose.

My next wish would be to have the ability to understand not only all human languages on earth but also to be able to make sense of any attempts by animals to communicate with me or other creatures.

Can you imagine being able to talk to your cat? I’m sure, in my case, my three cats would say:

Jasper: FEED ME NOOOWWWW!!!

Poppy: Leave me alone; I’m terrified.

Liquorice: What can I attack next?

To be honest my desire to have a built in Universal Translator stems from my love of travel. Although English is fairly widely spoken, and I have a smattering of French and German with a hint of Spanish, my inability to communicate with the local people is deeply frustrating. I certainly make an effort but Chinese people would like to hear me say more than just:

“Waiter! The bill please!” 

Japanese and Russian people want more entertaining conversation than:

 “Hello! Beer! Thanks! Goodbye!” 

I still love to travel though. And I would love to make it easier – which leads me nicely onto my third wish.

3. Teleportation

Many science fiction shows introduce the concept of teleportation. Star Trek has its transporter and other shows have similar devices to get a person or object from A to B in the blink of an eye.

Regular readers will know that although I love to travel, I hate travelling, i.e. sitting on board a metal sausage for twelve hours in a space that can barely accommodate a child let alone an adult male like myself.  As well as the discomfort, the time difference, the length of time it takes and the ignominy of having to be nice to immigration officers and customs officials is another source of irritation.

If I had the ability to teleport instantaneously anywhere in the world, I could pop to a restaurant in Hong Kong and then pop back to feed the cats.

I could materialise into an electronics shop in Tokyo , buy the latest must have gadget and still be home for tea.

I could look outside at the good old British summer, turn my back on the torrential rain and pop along to a glorious beach in Barbados.

I could beam into any major concert or sporting event worldwide and watch it for free and even get up close and personal with the stars of the show during the after show party.

I’d have to make sure that I had some sort of navigation system to make sure that I don't materialise in the middle of a ladies changing or, worse, where a cruise ship had been ten minutes earlier, or even worse, in Piers Morgan's house.

I imagine that I might get a little bored with travelling the planet and wish to spread my wings a bit further afield.

How about a fourth wish?

4. Observational Space Travel

Although I really do want to keep my feet firmly on planet Earth, I would love to be able to observe other planets, again without having to actually travel there. Imagine you could project yourself to the centre of the huge hurricane raging on the planet Jupiter?

How about perching yourself on the summit of Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano on Mars?

Or following in the footsteps of Neil Armstrong and seeing Earth from the moon?

Why stop there? There are billions upon billions of stars and potentially several billion gazillions of planets out there, far too many to see in a human lifetime.

And that’s a problem. Here’s where wish number five comes in.

5. Immortality

With the progress of technology in the past 50 or so years, I envisage huge leaps and bounds in the next few hundred years and am deeply annoyed that I won’t be around to witness it first-hand. Immortality combined with the other wishes above would mean that for the remainder of my existence I would be able to enjoy bearing witness to the development and evolution of the human race.

Like most of the human beings I want to live forever so my final geek wish is immortality and the ability to grant or revoke that gift from any other human being. I would need this latter part to ensure that friends and family were immortal too (unless they annoyed me in which case I would take away their privilege).

Of course, there are downsides to being immortal and I’m sure that you can suggest many. For example, one day the world will end or become hostile to humanity; for example if pollution and global warming make the Earth uninhabitable, a giant asteroid collides with the planet or the huge volcano under Yellowstone national park finally erupts.

The Yellowstone Caldera, which erupted so spectacularly in the movie 2012, is absolutely huge (measuring 34 miles by 45 miles). The last eruption was 64,000 years ago – apparently we are due another.

That’s scary and being immortal when that happens might be an unpleasant experience, watching the world disintegrate around me.

Nevertheless I would go for it because I think it is a risk worth taking.

I guess ultimately I want to end up being Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation. For those of you who don’t watch Star Trek, Q is an omnipotent being with a mischievous streak.

Sounds like that might be fun.

There will be more wishes in a future post, perhaps a lot less selfish, a little more realistic, more global and a little more serious.

In the meantime, over to you, dear reader. What would be your geek wishes?