Originally Posted by
sonny1
Here’s something to think about re time travel.
Let’s say you’re born February 10, 1970 and on August 10, 2011, you use an instantaneous time machine to travel ahead to, say, February 10, 2050.
How old are you when you get there?
1. 41 years and 6 months
2. 80 years
This is not a trick question, btw. I put it to my 11 year old son, and he replied, answer 1, because no matter when you are, by virtue of using a time machine you’ve skipped the whole ikky aging thing and your body is still only 40 years and 6 months old, not 80.
Let’s go the other way. Let’s say you’re born July 8 (no, this is not in reference to Daniel because as Jen said in her post above, that whole question of his birth date was so iffy, it was dismissed in a 20 second coversation as irrelevant very early, this is just an example).
Okay, so you’re born July 08, 1965, and on February 08 2007, you travel back in time to July 08, 1947.
How old are you when you get there?
1. minus 18 years and it’s your non-birthday because you haven’t yet been born (which breaks the converse of the Grandfather paradox)
2. 41 years and 6 months
Answer: 2. No matter what date it is, you’re still only 41 years and 6 months, so no cake and candles for you, but as my son said, if you’d left to go back in time on July 08, not February 08, then it would still be your birthday until the 24 hours on your biological clock is over.
I admit, my son got to thinking about all of that, and decided that he was prepared to toss physics to the four winds and go back and forth in time 364 years to every January 25 (his birthday), day after day, just so he could have 364 consecutive birthdays (cake+presents), and he’d arrive back in the present, having aged only a year, on his 12th birthday—how cool would that be?
Kids, ya gotta love ‘em.
Of course, then there are the twins, one of whom stays on Earth while the other goes hooting around the solar system for a year in a ship travelling close to the speed of light. He, of course, ages only a year, but then he arrives back on Earth to find his twin brother has aged 50 years.
See Einstein for a remarkably succinct explanation.
Bottom line is that time travel has more conundrums than you can poke a stick at. Some readers don’t want to wrap their brains around that, some can’t, some just plain don’t like it, and yet others love its story telling opportunities. Everyone’s wet-wired differently.
As to the placing a gun on the wall and not using it, if we attempted to address every stray end the Stargate universe has out there, every book would be delivered on a flatbed truck and the story we chose to tell would have been killed by irrelevant minutia. July 7 and 8 are keynote dates in Roswell’s history. The story that Jen and I wrote is titled Roswell. That’s the gun.
Boy, wait’ll you guys see what Jen and I did in the short story for Titan’s Stargate magazine <vbg>.
Re: Ask the Authors (Fandemonium)
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I know I asked if you had summaries for the plots and you gave an answer but what I meant was can you give a short summary of the plot(s)? But, I guess, since you're not giving out any spoilers, that's out of the question, right? 
Re: Ask the Authors (Fandemonium)
For some reason I'm really curious about this...i know they're two different types of scientist, but will Daniel be interecting with Rodney at all? Is Rodney even on the Atlantis team to earth? Don't know why, but Daniel and Rodney talking or interecting on any level seems like it would be great/hilarious/etcetc.
