80’s Flashback – Back to the Future

One of the greatest movie franchises of all time, Back to the Future starred a childhood hero of mine, Michael J. Fox and an insane but brilliant Christopher Loyd as Doc Brown.  The series as I’m sure you know focuses on time travel and hijinks encountered by going back or forward in time and changing their events.

I’m at the bar today in honor of St. Patrick and I’m talking to my friend.  We got to talking about Back to the Future a little bit and then time-travel.

The majority of the discussion was my argument that going back in time to change an event (say that fat chick you banged in sophomore year) is not possible. I cited the Grandfather Paradox where, if time travel were possible, a grandson could go back in time to kill his grandfather before they were born. Effectively making it so that the grandson was never born. However, if the grandson was never born, how could he kill his grandfather? And thus the Paradox… much like the chicken and the egg.

If you went back in time to stop yourself from banging that fat chick in Sophomore year you would never have had the reason to go back in time to stop yourself from banging that fat chick. See what I’m saying? So this is why I deem Time Travel (or at least backward time travel) to be theoretically impossible.

My buddy comes up with this alternate reality scenario that when you go back in time you are actually in a separate reality coexisting with one’s own (a parallel universe).  That’s like going back in time would actually place you in a separate reality  than the one you actually existed in.  And in this scenario would be able to change the future without worrying about the Grandfather Paradox. Since you are a visitor from the original reality, you would theoretically be able to kill your grandfather in the separate reality without repercussion. Your grandfather in the original reality still fathered your dad and thus your dad had fathered you even though your Grandfather in the alternate reality is dead.

I know, I know this may have been a little over your heads to contemplate right now but think about it.

If anything we proved that debating time-travel when you are 6 car bombs and a couple of beers deep is a great idea.  It’s how St. Patrick would have wanted it.