Besides, the world is going to be sucked into a giant black hole as soon as the Large Hadron Collider fires up. I think we have until May 2008. Enjoy!

I choose not to live in that reality.

If it is the end of the world as we know it, I feel fine. Besides, the world is going to be sucked into a giant black hole as soon as the Large Hadron Collider fires up. I think we have until May 2008. Enjoy!

Years later, I came to the disappointing realization that the noise was probably the sound of the sump pump, which was in the basement right below my bedroom.

Another time, I awoke to the sound of what was clearly a bat flapping around wildly in the upper corner of my room. Still don’t have an explanation for that one.

Yeah, I’m fond of the new Dr Who; but haven’t been able to figure out how the Gallifreyan race (with 2 exceptions) ceases to exist across all of time as a result of the Time Wars…

Three exceptions, assuming you’re counting the Doctor and the Master as the two exceptions. But, there’s possibly a third, as briefly shown in the last few seconds of the “The Last of the Time Lords” episode.

Anyway, thanks for popping over!

And, to your point… you’re thinking in linear time. Remember, time can exist in parallel, or as a plane or three-dimensionally, depending on what way you want to look at it. The point is that the Time Wars really screwed things up. Remember, in the first season of the new series, it was mentioned that the Time War had a devastating effect on higher species. See, for us, we see linear time. If the timeline changes, we have no idea. JFK was assassinated, but in an original timeline, he and Jackie could have been killed, only Sam Beckett changed that, so as far as we would know, only JFK was killed. Yes, I’m changing series, but you get the idea?

Presumably, higher species would be aware of changes in the timeline, so, if we were them, we might remember JFK being killed as well as both JFK and Jackie being killed. We might also remember that nothing happened to either one of them. So, Johnson was president and also he wasn’t, and things diverged from there, and we remember all those things happening, because we are aware of fluctuations in the timeline, so imagine how screwed up we would be! We might remember relatives who died in wars that never happened, or did happen but then didn’t. Or people that were born or not born, depending on whether a parent returned from war or not.

I’m straying a bit, but the point is that all these different time lines, or time planes, exist. So, we might still be in the same universe, but a different time line/plane. Back to Doctor Who, it has usually been depicted that the TARDIS maintains a linear connection to Gallifrey. So, if the Doctor travels for ten years in the TARDIS, then returns to Gallifrey, ten years have gone by. The TARDIS can also jump across different timelines, as illustrated by three different depictions of the destruction of Atlantis. So, if Doctor #7 visits Earth in 1989, the Time Lords are still around, but if Doctor #10 visits Earth in the 1800’s, the Time Lords are gone–all because the TARDIS maintains a steady connection to Gallifrey, or the lack thereof.

How many of us have said: ” if I manage to get my hands on a time machine one day, then Future Me will be knocking on the front door in a few seconds…”??? then “Damn!”.

But, then we fail to reason that our future selves may have little interest in our past selves. If you come across a time machine in ten years, would you want to risk changing your future by visiting yourself in the past, possibly changing things to the point that you never discover the time machine? What if the time machine was secretly given to you by aliens as a test, and the first thing you do is go back in time and visit yourself to give your past self the winning lottery numbers? The aliens see you’re not fit for handling your own time machine, so they take it away from you and undo you visiting your past self.

On the other hand, how do you know that strange fellow watching you from the shadows wasn’t Future You?

In 999, there were people that were convinced the then-current Pope was the anti-Christ and that the world was coming to an end.

Never happened. (Except for those people jumping. That did happen.)

However, applying one of the theories you expressed, what if it did? Perhaps, we are only seeing the ramifications of this time line. A parallel dimension could have diverged from our own. Therefore, the end of our world (as we know it) could have stopped in the other dimension. Perhaps, that chaos is actually progressing, feeding, expanding within the other rip in time.

I’m not a scientist. I can only base my speculations on a limited amount of knowledge and imagination. Musing on such possibilities is entertaining.

I follow this 2012 thing on-and-off, and the general consensus according to my circle of concerns is that there will be a giant spiritual awakening. No, not a new channel on cable for televangelists, but a sort of merging of the scientific source and the mythological god. Science and religion are closely related, with the gray area being mythology. Presumably, this gray area will become another color, which will yield to another “new” area, which will probably be gray, but maybe not because this is all theoretical after all.

Fun post.

sad old geek alert:
Could 2012 be the day the Time Wars start?
Yeah, I’m fond of the new Dr Who; but haven’t been able to figure out how the Gallifreyan race (with 2 exceptions) ceases to exist across all of time as a result of the Time Wars….
end of sad old geek alert.

I presume you’re assuming above that if we invent time travel in 2012 then time travel prior to that time will either be impossible, courtesy of the physics of the thing, prohibitively expensive, or there are (or will be) some pretty damned efficient Time Police!

How many of us have said: ” if I manage to get my hands on a time machine one day, then Future Me will be knocking on the front door in a few seconds…”??? then “Damn!”.