Time-Turners

There has been a lot of conversation at NYUAD lately about Time-Turners.

(For those of you who don’t know what that is, first, go read all of the Harry Potter books. Not the movies- though if you look at them as inspired by the books, they are decent- but the books. Read them. Then come back and read this.)

Simply, a Time-Turner is a small hourglass shaped object that, when flipped over, takes the wearer back in time. Hermione used it in the series, (3^rd book), in order to take a million classes. Which, when you think about, isn't far from the goal of all NYUAD students. 

I first heard people talking about the idea here actually in relation to me. Long story short, two of my classes have trips on the same weekend, and, obviously, I cannot attend both. It has all been sorted out, and I can complete both classes, but my teacher was saying how she wished I could be in two places at once, and Cleo mentioned the idea of a Time-Turner. 

I then heard it in passing in the DTC garden, and now there was a comment about it because some exams conflict.

But hearing these references makes me think about the logistics of time travel. In the Harry Potter example, it supposes alternate universes woven together.

Are we ready for some brain-twisting?

So say Hermione has Divination and Potions at the same time. (If you are super lost, then go read the books. If you still refuse to read the books, substitute other classes like Math and English).

She goes to Potions, and then turns the hourglass, and then goes to Divination. But what we learn at the middle/end of the book is that you can’t run into yourself, because that would complicate things and mess you up for life (I mean really. The idea of dopplegangers is intimidating enough. But adding an actual flesh-incarnate replication of yourself that you interact with? Freaky.)

But then when do the two selves merge? How are there two people at once? The Hermione in Divination is the same one who went to Potions, but then what about the one in Potions? She would also go back to Divination. And that wouldn’t end it. There would be so many repetitions of that moment of time, but then how do all the selves get merged back together? Because if they didn’t, there would be an infinite number of worlds running at the same time, but still a consciousness that they are there. (Or maybe there really are an infinite number of parallel universes that cross. Hence dopplegangers.)

Now that I am writing this I am (mis?)remembering that the Time-Turner would run out of time- the original person needing to be in a place at a certain time. Is that the merge? And does only one of the selves have the Turner? If that is the case, there are still multiple people running around without a merge.

How would that merge work though? Because, presumably, both of you would be in the same place at the same time.

Unless the other person just disappears when the time runs out. So then the original person has gone to 2 classes, and the person who repeats the first fizzles out into the unknown.

That has moral implications though, and is also a weird concept- you are splitting/cloning/duplicating yourself, and then that duplicate is disposed of once they have served their purpose. Which is true of a lot of things in life, but yourself?

I’m really not sure. But congratulations if you got through all of this!  And now, I am off to read Brecht.

<3