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Just kidding about the title, btw. I was gonna put my favorite anelect down here, but then I remembered I convered that at the end of my last entry. So instead, you get my theory that I shall name... Hm... The Time Travel Law of Quantum Chance I suppose. Its not a full fledged theory, I'll have you know, its just... Bleh. Alright!

There are two main camps (that I can think of) in time travel theorists. One camp says you can't go back and change the past, because it has already happened. You couldn't, for instance, go back and kill Hitler before WW2, because that would change history. Its already happened, its impossible. I'll call this the destiny camp, because basically, everything you do in the past is destined to happen a certain way to conserve the past the way it already happened.

The other camp, which I'll call free will, says you can. History will change, sure. You are physically able to pick up a gun and pull the trigger, or to swing a bat, or whatever, so what stops you from axing Hitler off? Nothing!

Alright, those are the two basics camps I can think of. My camps kinda a bridge between the two, but leans more towards the latter. Its based around the Schrodinger's Cat experiment. For those out of the know, the Schrodinger's Cat experiment puts a cat, a gun, and a random factor that may or may not cause the gun to go off. (in his case there was a sensor and atomically unstable material. If the sensor was hit by a subatomic partical given off due to the materials decay, it would pull the gun's trigger). Now, from outside the box, an observer could not tell if the cat was dead or living, it was an unknown.

What Schrodinger determined with this experiment is that the wave function of the cat (a wave function is basically a mathematical way of expressing a physical object) had to take into account the idea that the cat was dead AND living at the same time. Only when you observe the cat does the function collapse and the cat goes from living+dead to one or the other.

Alright, now on to my idea. Assuming you could travel backwards in time, you can change events, but only events that are unknown to you. You could, for instance, go back in time to change the contents of a box you currently do not know the contents of, because the wave function isn't collapsed for you. You couldn't change the contents of a box you've already opened (or at least, they will change again before the time you open it in the future back to its original contents) because that is a known for you.

Now there are a few questions to put this half-theory through. What about the effects of other observers? Is this scientifically sound? And does it even matter? Unfortunately, none of these I have a solid answer for except the last one. Its a work in progress, I'll start thinking on em and try to come up with something solid
sweatdrop

I can answer the third question I listed though. Does it matter? No, probably not. It matches with what happens in most time travel movies I've seen (with back to the future being a big exception) but since a) those movies are fictional, a b)time travel as a reality doesn't exist, this theory (half-theory) is unlikely to ever see any real use, even if its sound. But phooey, I like thinking so its getting posted here.

Oh, and please, comment away, even if its to rip me a new one for screwing up wave-functions or something. surprised