Figuring out the Quantum Plot Holes in "Why of Fry": My theory

[Reply #80 on:]

erh... with the same genes as his father, wouldn't that make his father to lack the delta brainwave?

[Reply #81 on:]

Probable.

[Reply #82 on:]

Umm no, we're not "still having this bitch fest at each other".  That stopped around 6 posts ago when Totalnerduk didn't find anything to disagree with in my last post, and said some razmatazz about the waters of Decapod 10 and all spelling being "relastive" (as if that wasn't the most hypocritcal thing I've ever seen).

Though if you manage to get that pay-per-view thing off the ground, you'd better cut me in for 50% of the take.  I think I may have managed to start it up again.

To zyphr:

Well, I doubt it for two reasons.  One, Nibbler specifically says that Fry is the only person lacking the delta brain wave.  Two, Fry's father isn't Fry, Fry's father's father is Fry. 

That sounds confusing, but I'm trying to say that Fry's genes were passed to his father, but so were his grandmothers.  What I find interesting, is that Fry's father's genes, now a combination of Fry, and Fry's grandmother, when combined with Fry's mother, somehow yielded Fry's exact genetic structure. 

What truly isn't clear, is why this would cause him to not have the delta brain wave, because he would have to not have it while "fathering" his father.  So he didn't really change anything by being his own grandfather, because if he had changed anything, then he wouldn't be Fry anymore would he?

[Reply #83 on:]

Professor: And if there's anything you're supposed to do, for the love of god, don't not do it!

[Reply #84 on:]

Well, after getting the gist of the topic, one would think, if Fry's bloodline on his father's side lacks the delta brain wave, then all of Fry's father's ancestors lacked the wave too. But why did the nibblonians choose to freeze Fry and not one of his ancestors? The answer is simple: the cryogenics labs didn't exist until Fry's time. The Nibblonians probably have the technology to freeze anyone else, but it looks too disruptive and suspicious to do it with their own technology. Therefore, freezing Fry by "accidentally" kicking him into the cryo-chamber looks more natural since the technology already exists on earth.

[Reply #85 on:]

@Chris: The Nibblonian said that the lack of Delta brainwave was because of the past nastification, so it's unlikely to be a family thing. Nice point about the timing of the freezing though.

Maybe the lack of deltabrainwave was just the universe's way of dealing with the paradox.

[Reply #86 on:]

Hi, I'm new here at PEEL and I just wanted to give my two cents on how the whole Quantum Time thing happened. See, at the beginning of the series Fry DID have a Delta Wave and did have his Grandfather's genes. Prof. Farnsworth would share genes with Yancy who was Fry's brother. When they went back in time and killed off Fry's grandfather than he wouldn't have lost his Delta Wave and grandfather's genetics until he traveled back into the 31st century. This is so because one of the lesser known theories of time travel is that when you dramatically alter the past (like becoming your own grandfather) an alternate dimension is created just for the change you've made. When they traveled back to the future the changes must have occured just as they arrived. This means that up until the incident at Roswell he still had everything. When he impreginated his grandmother he still had Enos's genes meaning that his descendants still had Enos's genes just...less of them. Now remember this is just in one dimension. In the original dimension everything is the way it was before the Roswell incident. Changes can be seen in Farnsworth after this episode. Okay, maybe it's just me but doesn't he seem to become slightly livelier. (It's dolomite baby!) Okay, it's just me and he's just senile. All this talk about Quantum theories, paradoxes, and other dimensions is giving me a headache.   

[Reply #87 on:]

Welcome to PEEL. 

[Reply #88 on:]

Thanks, it's great to be here.

[Reply #89 on:]

Hey OC_James, welcome to PEEL. 

That "lesser known theory of time" you're describing is called the Multiple Universes Theory, and is in fact not very rare at all.  Also, I think you're misinterpreting it a bit.  It's true that Fry going back in time and sleeping with his grandmother would cause a new universe (P.S. It's universe, not dimension.  A dimension is something like length, width, height, time and so on.  Ninja Turtles lied to us.  I know..shameful of them. :P) to be created because of the differences this caused, but so would just about everything Fry does.

First of all, I'd like to clear up one thing, which I think may be part of where you're coming from.  A pretty standard assumption made by most people, is that they are living in "standard time".  That is, that they are the present, and that whatever happened beforehand is the past, and anything ahead is the future.  This is akin to saying that one refernce point is better, or different in the laws of physics than another, and if we want Relativity, Quantum Physics, and all the new ideas things like String Theory are cooking up to be true (and we do :P), then there can be no such thing as "standard time".  As a result, the idea that people from standard time can go back and change themselves is inherantly flawed, because if they WERE able to do that, then they would already be changed, because the changes occured in the past.

However, according to the multiple universes theory, each quantum choice, where a particle has choice A and Choice B (or any number of choices..that's not important) of which way to move, or which direction to spiral, or of which products to form from a nucleur reation and so on, what really happens, is that every choice is made, and a seperate universe is made for each one of those choices.  So, if we have someone who is not living in a "standard time" of some sort, then it IS theoretically possible for something like time travel into the "past" to occur.  Basically, it happens like you described it, but a little differently.

When you say "When they traveled back to the future the changes must have occured just as they arrived." you're not quite right.  Something happening in the past, doesn't "wait" to have an effect in the future.  If we followed Fry's grandmother around after the P.E. crew left instead of Fry, we'd see her have Yancy, who would later be married to Fry's mother, who would later concieve Fry (and then later another Yancy who would have a child named after Fry :P).  When examined from this perspective, it's easy to see that even before going to the future, the Fry in the new universe would have always been his own grandfather.  Incidentally, the universe that the Fry that travelled back in time FROM would be boned, as in it, Fry's grandfather really would have been Enus.

As always, for those who don't have any cyanide pills handy, or are just plain intersted in all things scientific, I'll include another related topic:

What would happen if I were to travel back to the Stone age, do an Irish Jig without anyone seeing me, and then immediatly go back to the future?  The methods used aren't important, just the theoretical effects.  Well, according to Chaos theory, when I returned to the future, absolutely nothing would be the same, and in fact, I could be returning to a world plagued by nucleur winter, or maybe without any life at all. 

The reason you ask?  Well, I may not have affected any cavemen, or killed anyone, or anything like that, but what I DID do, is make all the air molecules around me move differently than if I hadn't been there.  Over the next few million years, this will cause MASSIVE changes to the weather patterns worldwide.  You may ask, well why does that mean anything?  So we have a storm one day instead of a sunny day?  Well, what if you got married on that sunny day?  Not anymore!  So we can see, that any sort of time travel into the past could in fact be far more catastrophic than we at first imagine it to be.  Now, this is a theory, and some people say that rather than those minor alterations in the air patterns caused by me going back in time making huge changes, that time is like a river, and it just runs over these changes.  They also have a sound theory, but I personnaly prefer the chaos theory.  Mainly because it *is* counter-intuitive, and throughout history, it is the surprises that have been most important in science.

[Reply #90 on:]

And that's GOTTA be my longest one yet.  I should be keeping these for essays. :P

Yes, I know, I could've edited it, but I didn't want to, so 

[Reply #91 on:]

But at least you used paragraphs.

And just remember, when you're (that's a general "you," just FYI) tempted to explain Futurama using parallel universes:

Fry: Are there an inifinite number of parallel universes?
Professor: Oh, no, just the one.

[Reply #92 on:]

In other words, the Brain Spawn were sent to the Cowboy Universe. Poor Lone Ranger. Poor Tonto.

[Reply #93 on:]

I'll make sure to remember in case I come across the "genereal" me so I can tell him.  :P

I don't really believe there are multiple universes, I was just momentarily agreeing with that so I could discuss the topic with OC_James.  He *may* not have wanted to get that detailed..but oh well.  I actually agree with something TNerd said, that multiple universes only exist "in potentia" until the quantum choice is made, and then all the others simply do not ever exist.

[Reply #94 on:]

Stupid fingers hitting two keys at once.

 

Originally posted by Chalic:
that multiple universes only exist "in potentia" until the quantum choice is made, and then all the others simply do not ever exist.

Ah, the Chrono Cross theory.

But really, for a take on time travel and its effects re: parallel universes, go play Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross.

[Reply #95 on:]

 

Quote by Arnold J. Rimmer:
It will be happened; it shall be going to be happening; it will be was an event that could will have been taken place in the future!

There, that's all settled.  Now let's get back to dicussing whether Amy or LEELA's the cutest.

[Reply #96 on:]

 

Originally posted by Chalic:
I actually agree with something TNerd said, that multiple universes only exist "in potentia" until the quantum choice is made, and then all the others simply do not ever exist.

Edit: Hmmm. I made a really long post in reply to this, explaining why that means that Fry had always been missing a Delta Wave, and stuff... but it's not there.

Now I'm annoyed. I used chaos theory, fractals, a damn good bit of quantum juggling around with schrodingers cat, and even a little fo that all time favourite, arrogance.

It was great, but now it's gone so I'll attempt a reconstruction. Stand by.

[Reply #97 on:]

 

Originally posted by Teral:
In other words, the Brain Spawn were sent to the Cowboy Universe. Poor Lone Ranger. Poor Tonto.

You're thinking of the paralell universe, not the alternate universe where the brain spawn were sent. Think of it as like a little blister on the skin of the universe.

Or a wart. They're fun.   

Reconstruction of my incredible post: (lots shorter now due to laziness).

The universe will not accept changes being made to events in the past, as they disrup the past. That could never happen. Anything you do in the past to try and change the future will simply contribute towards the future that you are trying to alter.

Therefore anything you do in the past, you were meant to do. Chalic waving his arms around on Stonehenge, and farting heavenwards would not disrupt our weather patterns. The movement of the air molecules would become our weather patterns.

Therefore anything you do which fits the pattern of the whole (fractal bit here) will be absorbed smoothly into the past. Anything else will be at violent discord with the universe, and will not affect the past - rather it will have always been a part of the past. The chaos theory her ecomes into its own.

Suppose you saw the first butterfly whilst farting on Stonehenge. You want to end all existance, remember? So you swat at it. Chaos demands that it is possible for the universe to recover it's pattern over time even if this were not meant to be a part of the past. The butterfly would, instead of flapping it's wings and causing a hurricane foty thousand years hence, die. The hurricane might then be caused by your farts.

It's a crap example, but my old one is gone, and I'm too distraught by the loss to try and reconstruct it.

Anyway, thanks to chaos theory, and fractals (thank you Ian Malcolm!   ) we are able to determine that JustChris and OC_ames are slightly off with their ideas, but Chalic actually has a really good point. Except with the bit about Standard Time.

Time is NOT a constant. Sorry if I confused some people by missing out one vital word earlier. I was too lazy to read the actual posting I'd done before. This post is pure coonjecture in many places, and as a result, Mr. Chalic, there MAY be slightly confusing areas. I ususally look into these things a little more thoroughly, but I got lazy.

Time is the one thing that can't be a constant to allow existance. Yeah, that reads right now. Static time would be a bit of a blockage to life.

Fry was never the descendant of Enos.

I forget how I got schrodingers cat in there the first time.

Nevermind, most of what I wanted to sya has been dredged back up.

Oh yeah, one final point: Chaos is vatal to the universe. Therefore, if Internet messageboard arguments like this dry up, life as we know it could cease to be!   

By the way, Nixorbo, I've no idea what a Chrono Cross is, but it sounds like a fake swiss watch.

[Reply #98 on:]

There some more info on about The Why Of Fry herefrom OAOB.

[Reply #99 on:]

I remember when Bill and Ted wanted to change events they'd just remember to do it later...

like the distraction with the tape recorder and finding Ted's dad's keys.

I really dont see the problem here- This is my non complex easy way to under stand it-

Firstly come to terms with this-

1) Fry has always lacked the delta brain wave because future fry is his grandfather
2)When fry travels back in time to 1947 he has sex with his grandmother, getting her pregnant with his father
3) his father grows up, marries fry's mum, has sex with her, she gives birth to Fry
4) Fry grows up, meanwhile Nibblonians learn he is delta brainwave challenged.
5)Fry gets frozen
6)Fry saves earth from brains
7)Fry travels back in time, has sex with his grandmother...


Secondly-
How can Fry exist in the past to change the Scooty Puff Jnr?


The Fry that travels back in time to 31/12/99 only exists long enough to change events after that he doesnt. So the second he travels back in time, the point in time he came from no longer exists, once Fry is frozen and he changes the Scooty Puff he is erased from existence, then and only then.


Just try to understand it one way, if not just dont bother, u'll probably only get a headache or something

[Reply #100 on:]

"Fact: Time is not constant." by totalnerduk.

"Time is a constant. Even allowing for the above example, time has to be a constant." also by totalnerduk.

Are you suffering from multiple personality disorder??  The quote "There is no such thing as standard time." comes from my TEXTBOOK.  It is *vital* to relativity that no one reference point is superior or different in the laws of physics than another. 

"Chaos demands that it is possible for the universe to recover it's pattern over time even if this were not meant to be a part of the past."

Really?  What Chaos theory are you talking about man?  Because the one I've taken a course on, says just about the opposite.

"Therefore anything you do which fits the pattern of the whole (fractal bit here) will be absorbed smoothly into the past."

I would also love to hear your explanation of how this fits in with fractals.

Next, I would also *love* to hear how you managed to work Schroedinger's cat into this discussion. 

Schroedinger's cat (for the other readers of this poll, and quite possibly TNerd) is an example of the problem quantum mechanics has with meshing with the world of the macroscopic.  It features a cat inside a box.  Also in the box is a radioactive isotope, a hammar, and a vial of poisonous gas.  The Radioactive isotope has a percentage chance to decay in any given second, but until we actually measure the decay, it actually exists both as non-decayed and decayed.  Once the isotope decays however, it causes the hammer to fall and break the poison vial, killing the cat.  The problem is, before we open the box, the isotope exists both in the non-decayed and decayed state.  We must therefore assume that the cat exists in the not-dead and dead states at the same time, which is non-sensical.  A cat, like any other macroscopic lifeform, is either alive or dead.  How you claim to have related this to time travel and Cosmology, I'd definetly like to know.

Finally, how old are you?  Because if I had to guess, I'd say you were a pretty bright 17 year old who hasn't figured out just how to handle things yet, with an ego problem.

EDIT. To Grim:  That would have been an excellent post had you not included the last line.  I've never understood how it could be cool to just "accept" that you can't understand something.  I mean, surely not everyone should have to learn about temporal mechanics, but if you're going to discuss them, you don't need to put the "I'm still cool" disclaimer at the end of it.  That's like typing "IMHO" at the beginning of every sentence.

Anyway, it was still a "good" post, and I'm not really trying to knock on you, just griping about one of my gripes. :P

[Reply #101 on:]

say wa?

I'm just saying to people dont bother getting hung up on it, its only a cartoon.

[Reply #102 on:]

"say wa?"

I prefer "What 'cho talkin' 'bout Fry?" :P

I was just saying that you shouldn't feel the need to tell people not to get hung up on it, especially considering you are discussing it yourself.

[Reply #103 on:]

Sorry chalic, I'm going to edit out the inconsistancies. I mean the other one... the opposite of a constant.

I know about schrodingers cat, I *did* manage to get it in there, and the fractal bit... that's the smallest event fitting the patter of the whole stream of events. It's all about things being fundamentally the same down to the very smallest level.

Chaos theory teaches that there is an inherant order in all things, and therefore there must be a series of patterns that emerge to life, the universe, and everything... This means that there is a pattern, and leads back into the fractal stuff.

Mathmatics may be BS but its all interrelated.

I'm 21.

Anything else?

[Reply #104 on:]

21 huh?  Okay, I'll believe you for now.  I must admit, you're being more rational and cordial now, though you still manage to slip in the jabs when you can. (the "my opinion of you has done a complete 360!" made me laugh)

On Chaos theory however, I must say:  "WTF are you TALKING about man??"  Chaos theory is about trying to explain physics's inability to answer certain questions, and then after examining those statements, making a few assumptions from them.  An example would be an eddy in a stream.  Sure, we have equations that describe how water moves and interacts with itself and how it's kinetic energy is affected by gravity and just about everything about it is covered by an equation somewhere, but can you use an equation to predict how the eddy will move at any given moment?  Chaos Theorists say no, because there is an inherant amount of chaos in certain things.  The example I used about going back in time is based upon this example from my textbook:  "What if in the Future, the weather channel was able to account for every single thing that would affect the world's weather, except for the fluttering of one butterfly's wings?"  The answer was, that within a few years, the weather channel wouldn't know anymore about the weather than Dark Age astroners would.  The butterfly's wings would eventually cause enough of a change, that the model would fall apart.

Now, I did change this, by putting it back in time, but your reason for claiming that what I said isn't true seems to be based on your "You can't change the past" theory, which is just that, YOUR theory.  I don't have any problem with you having one, but you keep telling me that I'm *wrong* which is just not true. :P

Lastly, yeah, mathmatics is all bullshit, but Mathematics...now that holds some water.

Edit:  You know, I just noticed your "1337" thing in all of your posts, and I have just one thing to say to you.  "J00 Ph@9!  J00 R 50 |\|07 1337, 17 |\/|4|<35 |\/|3 |_4|_|9|-|!!"

LOL...

[Reply #105 on:]

you know what is really sad, at LAN parties I attend, talking aloud like that is standard practice...

[Reply #106 on:]

Wow...that is bad.

<Slowly disassociates himself from Grim>

[Reply #107 on:]

Heheheheh. The "1337" is just a joke. 1 |-|@73 1337 5p33|<3r5

[Reply #108 on:]

5+o|2 1+ '/0|_| 2! 1+'z /\/\4|<1|\| '/0|_| |00|< 5+|_&#0124; &#0124;21d!

[Reply #109 on:]

Imagine that in Nibblers voice, if you can!

[Reply #110 on:]

<-----is way too tired to try to figure out Kristi's post. 

At least Nerduk's was short.  Anyway, have you yielded to my scientific might and superior thread flaming ability Tnerd?  For the first time, you haven't posted any response to my last post.

[Reply #111 on:]

 

Originally posted by Kristi:
5+o|2 1+ '/0|_| 2! 1+'z /\/\4|<1|\| '/0|_| |00|< 5+|_| |21d!

It's SO obvious. She's telling how mathematical jokes aren't fair to those of us without degrees in advanced quantum neutrino physics.

   

I pride myself on being intelligent, but I'm not THAT smart.

[Reply #112 on:]

 

Originally posted by Chalic:
What would happen if I were to travel back to the Stone age, do an Irish Jig without anyone seeing me, and then immediatly go back to the future?  The methods used aren't important, just the theoretical effects.  Well, according to Chaos theory, when I returned to the future, absolutely nothing would be the same, and in fact, I could be returning to a world plagued by nucleur winter, or maybe without any life at all. 

Or to a world indistinguishable from the one you left.

You've completely misunderstood chaos theory.

In a linear system, any small change that you make is preserved as a small change forever.

In a "traditional" non-linear system, small changes in initial conditions can cause large changes in the resulting system. In other words, the effect of you flapping your arms 5,000 years ago is pretty much bound to cause a dramatic effect, in some way that would look pretty much random to anyone observing the system.

What chaos theory tells us is that there are hidden regularities in many non-linear systems, including just about everything in nature.

For example, the weather is not actually regular. You don't get the same clouds appearing over Manhattan every May 1st, dumping the same amount of rain. The smallest change--even a butterly flapping its wings in Tibet--would throw that off.

And yet, somehow, the total amount of rain you get in Manhattan over the course of May is almost the same almost every year. Even if you do dramatic things like dumping greenhouse gasses into the air and disturbing the Atlantic salt flow, it usually has no effect.

The best illustration I can think of is Langton's Ant. I don't have a URL handy, but google for it and it should be easy to find.

Langton's Ant is a very simple cellular automaton with very simple rules. Set up the initial conditions however you want, and get it started, and the same thing will always happen:

First, for a few hundred turns, you'll see simple patterns, which depend in a pretty-much linear way on the initial setup.

Then all hell breaks loose, the ant runs around in what appears to be a random way, which depend in an obviously non-linear way on the initial setup.

But after about 10000 turns, the ant always ends up building a perfectly regular "highway," in the same way every time.

You can perturb the system along the way in any way you want--change some of the squares, move the ant, etc. The short-term effect is completely unpredictable beyond a handful of turns, but the long-term effect is always the ant returning to the highway in around 10000 turns.

And this is the way all chaotic systems work.

Well, not quite. Langton's Ant is special in that it only has one stable state, so it's always going to come back to the same one. Most real-world systems aren't like this. For example, we know that the Earth's climate has at least three possible states (the current state, the Ice Age state, and the Snowball Earth state). In each, most changes in the Sun's radiation and other factors affect the system in small, almost-linear ways, but any change can throw the system into a different state.

Generally, the more complicated a system is, the more robustly it resists perturbations--in particular, the more quickly it returns to a metastable state--but the easier it is to throw it into a different state.

Larger changes have a larger chance of changing the state, and changes that push the system closer to another strange attractor sometimes (but not always) have a larger chance of switching to that attractor's state, but even a tiny change can do it--and even a massive change may not.

So, that's the first level of chaos theory.

And what it tells us is that the chances are that you flapping your arms would not make any change in the worldwide weather patterns; rather, it would be absorbed into the system like all of the trillions of other changes. But it's always possible that you could have made even more dramatic changes--triggered an ice age, or even thrown the earth out of its orbit.

However, we don't know if human history is strangely attracted or not (in Asimovian terms, whether psychohistory makes any sense, or whether everyone is a Mule). Even the linear change of pushing back every thundershower by one second from now until the end of time might mean that Genghis Khan's parents never met.

By the way, many quantum physicists today believe that it is impossible to use any conceivable means of time travel, so this is irrelevant. If you take a path that includes a "loop" in space-time (any travel back into your own past light-cone will do), then other particles can take that path. Each particle that goes through that path can catch up and go through the same path again, so now there are two of them. But if there are two, there are four--and therefore eight, and 16, and 32, and so on. In fact, if one particle travels through the loop, and infinite number do, which essentially "chokes off" and closes any such loop as soon as it appears. (This can be explained much better if you know a little physics, but I'm keeping it simple.)

However, that only works for quantum means toward time travel, not relativistic means, so maybe it's still possible. (And maybe they're wrong.)

[Reply #113 on:]

I always thought the traditional representation of chaos theory went like this:

Say you want to create a simulation of something, for example, a model to predict the weather. Now suppose that this model is perfect except for 1 single detail; as stated, the butterfly flapping it's wings somewhere in South America. Over time, this model would become less and less accurate, for failing to take that particular item into account. It wouldn't make much of a difference for predicting the next day's weather, or even the next week's, but when you start moving into longer periods of time then the changes become apparent. Thus, chaos theory states that creating a 100% accurate simulation of any real-world model is impossible due to the inter-connectedness of all things, thus meaning that the only true model of reality is reality itself.

Anyway, back on the subject of time-travel, the way I think of it is this:

The instant you travel backwards in time, you leave your home reality behind. Forever. Period. Because as soon as you reach the past, your very presence there alters the future (even if no one sees you). Thus, a new reality is formed, at this point, virtually indistinguishable from the original (depending on how far back in time you go, this will become progressively less true). This reality is hypothetical at the moment, and remains so until you travel forward in time, at which point the new reality is extrapolated from the time you left. Thus, your memory remains intact (and you are the only evidence your original reality ever existed), and any items brought from the original reality (for example, photographs, or audio recordings) remain unaltered, as they are no longer connected to a reality.

Being a CS student, I tend to think of it like this: If you have a file, and copy it with 100% accuracy (i.e. no bit errors), you will end up with a perfect copy of the file. Now suppose you delete the original. The new copy remains untouched, and for all intents and purposes the original file never existed. Things will now happen to this file which did not happen to the original.

[Reply #114 on:]

*sigh*

5+o|2 1+ '/0|_| 2! 1+'z /\/\4|<1|\| '/0|_| |00|< 5+|_| |21d! = Stop it you 2! It'z making you look stupid!

[Reply #115 on:]

Read the sig...

[Reply #116 on:]

I like this thread, but Kristi's right. Lately it's become a brain match between two guys who aren't even talking about the show anymore. You know the the thing about theories? They can be proven wrong. So quit arguing! I've learned more than I cared to know about this subject. I got a headache just thinking about how RTEW was possible. 

Consider this as well: The creators of this show aren't graduates of Quantum Phyics or Time theories. They're just people who like science fiction. Science fiction includes time travel. I'm willing to bet that half the stuff on this thread didn't even occur to Matt. I also saw 12 Monkeys just recently. What time travel? He goes through a tunnel, that's it. Nothing more is explained. Cool movie though. So in conclusion, it's just a cartoon and according to cartoon rule # 1, there are no rules.

[Reply #117 on:]

 

Originally posted by Allen:
Consider this as well: The creators of this show aren't graduates of Quantum Phyics or Time theories....

Actually, they are (or at least a fair few are). I believe DXC has a degree in Applied Computer Science, and I'm pretty sure some of the writers have degrees in the fields of Physics and Maths.

I believe it's been said that the Futurama staff are the most over-educated bunch in entertainment  .

[Reply #118 on:]

Well, it's Mr. Technical!  Actually this whole thread is in my opinion. I'm certainly glad the script isn't written in binary Anyway that little point doesn't detract from my original post. I still doubt this stuff was thought of, but someone may prove me wrong.

[Reply #119 on:]

OKAY!  Finally, I have some people to respond to!

Wow, payn, that's a pretty well thought out post.  In truth, I haven't studied Chaos Theory for that long, and perhaps you are right.  However, I have a Masters in Physics currently, so I'm assuming that either you were saying "This can be explained much better if you know a little physics, but I'm keeping it simple." to everyone else, or you didn't read back in the thread where I said that.  (understandable.)

Where do you get your information by the way?  Are you a graduate of some sort?  Do you just study Chaos Theory in your spare time?  Are you David Cohen or Ken Keeler here in disguise?

What Cyberknight described as the basic model of chaos theory is actually the exact model I quoted in my previous post (someone's not even reading my posts anymore eh?  Oh wait..then you won't see this either...oh well) as the one I was familiar with. 

Concerning my time travel example however, it's important to note that I only stated this as a hypothetical situation, as I am quite aware that most current theoretical models don't support time travel.  I *am* avidly reading about a new developing theory regarding wormholes, considering the new consensus regarding cosmology is that yes, in fact this "Dark Energy" (I hate it when they try to make something sound cool.) does exist, and because of that, if we were to devise a way to utilize Dark energy on a smallar scale, with more of an effect, we would be doing the one thing that quantum physicists were saying was impossible.  It could keep the wormhole open long enough to fly though.  Interesting stuff, I plan on looking into it with much more detail after I finish working on my thesis.

"You know the the thing about theories? They can be proven wrong."

(I just realized that I wrote this entire paragraph thinking that you had said "can't" instead of can, and I refuse to change it, as I happen to like the joke in it.  I'll write a different response to the "can" version below it :P)

Can't:
Certainly they can, that's why they are called "Theories" until they are called "laws".  A more relavent problem is the inability to conclusively prove that a theory is *right*, thus why for example "The Theory of Special Relativity" is not called the "Law of suchnsuch".  Also it's not called that because it would be have to be called "The Law of Special Relativity", but I digress.  The main thing I wanted to point out here, is that my last post was mostly concerned on calling TNerd's bluff concerning his inability to choose whether he thought Einstein was a pretty smart guy, or whether he himself is an abject moron...<ahem!>, I mean or whether he disagreed with Einstein.

Can:
What is your point Allen?  If all scientists were to follow your suggestion and just not discuss thing scientific because they could be proven wrong, where would that get us?  Nixorbania, that's
where, and let me tell you, it's not a pretty sight.  (Anyone playing the nationstates game will know what I mean :P)

"Stop it you 2! It'z making you look stupid!"

Sorry it's bothering you Kristi, perhaps you should go start another thread where scientifically minded people aren't allowed to post, you know, with hookers, and blackjack.

That's enough for now.  When my posts get too long, people stop reading them.