🚀 go-pugleaf

HPOROPUDAS@TNCLUS.TELE.NOKIA.FI writes:

 Suppose we could build a "device" by which we could travel in time.  Now we
 have for example a fossil of a little mammoth in a Russian museum.  This 
 fossil was found frozen in ice in Siberia's tundra (in Russia) some years ago.
 If I remember right this fossil was estimated to be about 39000 years old.
 Now what would you think would happen to this fossil if we could get this
 little mammoth as a living being from the time about 39000 years ago to our
 present time with the aid of our "device" mentioned above?  H-M said that this
 fossil would burn away from all times between its capture time to the present
 time, if we would bring it as a living being from a time about 39000 years
 ago to the present time.

It seems to me (and granted I am far from being an expert on the theories of
time travel) that nothing would happen at least from the perspective of those
who are observing from one timeline.  If I went to the museum and saw the
mammoth and decided to go back for it, I would leave the timeline that I was
currently in which included the mammoth fossil.  If I then "stole" the mammoth
from the year 37000 BC (or whenever), it would never have died in that year
and no fossil record would have been preserved.  No fossil could later have
been unearthed and as a result, I could never have gone back for the express
purpose of "stealing" the mammoth.  But if I could never have gone back to
kidnap his wooliness then he must have died and become fossilized.  What a
vicious headache this is giving me....

It sounds like those questions where one is asked if you could go back and
kill Adolph Hitler even if it would mean your own death, would you do it?
This has always sounded logically impossible to me.  If in 1992 I was sent
back to 1930 (or some such year) to hunt down a man named Hitler and I
was successful, but I was killed, then none of the atrocities of WWII would
have happened (in theory).  However, when 1992 rolled around I would never
be asked to go back and kill Hitler because he would never have committed
those crimes.  So if I WASN'T sent back, then no one would have killed him
and he WOULD have committed the crimes.  Aaaugh.....no wonder I majored in
engineering ...the answers were in the back of the book.

Spooner