An unsavoury footnote

[ffutures]

Something that came to mind tonight while dotting some of the Ts and crossing some of the Is in the time travel thing...

Blame Don Sample for this one...



Every ship travelling back in time, regardless of its purpose, takes with it some interesting cargo; all of the bacteria and nutrients in its passengers' digestive systems, released into lavatories which are flushed overboard throughout its trip. It's possible that some of those flushed overboard while the ship is travelling through time survive in the sea at some point along its temporal route, it's certain that those released while it's stopped will do so. In the near past they probably don't have much effect; further back, especially in the earliest years of life on Earth, it's possible that they may have as drastic an effect as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs... or the hypothetical spores that originally created life on Earth.



Eee, it makes you think...

Comments

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Could this be what started life on Earth? If you allow closed causal loops in your time travel...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

No - the version of time travel I'm describing explicitly rules out closed causal loops. You can start a new time line, you can't change one that already exists. But you could certainly have a ship go back to look for the origins of life and move them back a few million years while doing so!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Sorry - I meant to say that the new world would have life beginning earlier.

[mr-wombat.livejournal.com]

I effect that such incredibly rich fertiliser would have on a volatile and developing ecosystem would be pretty serious too, I would have thought anyway.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Exactly!

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

That would explain those giant ferns! ;o)

[madbaz.livejournal.com]

Shades of Rincewind starting life on the disc by dropping an elderly egg sandwich into it's primordial ocean (In "Eric" as I recall).