Time Travel Paradox and the Leela/other women thread

Just saw "Roswell that ends well" episode for the first time on CN last nite. What a hoot. Zoidberg was pretty funny. Great to be surprised by a new (for me at least) episode.

In this episode, the writers poke fun at the so-called time-travel paradox, which argues that time travel is impossible because one can inadvertently do something in the past that negates the existence of the time traveler (ie, killing one's granfather before he had children). They get around this by having Fry sleep with grandmother, thus he really was his own grandpa. Sounds good... except... There is a type of DNA which resides in a part of all cells called the mitochondria. This is passed down to offspring only through the mother. So, Fry and his mother both have the same mitochondrial DNA. Which is the same mitochondrial DNA as his grandmother. So therefore... The only way Fry can be his own grandpa is if he sired both his mother AND father by his grandmother, and Fry and is the result of brother/sister mating (who presumably are twins). Ewwww. This does explain Fry's mental slowness...

Having said this, One can understand Leela's reluctance to getting together with Fry. With her own eye, she has seen he is an inbred who is not above sleeping with his grandmother. Unless Leela is from West Virginia, I don't see this being attractive to her...

-jww

PS - I have heard that Dolly the cloned sheep was really not a copy of her mother, because one sheep's nuclear DNA was placed in an egg of another sheep (ie., different mitochondrial DNA).

in article [email], J. Wellington Wimpy at [email] wrote on 3/21/03 10:09 AM:

Pardon my confusion, but I don't get it. How does this mitochondrial DNA require Fry to have sired his own father and mother, and for them to have bumped uglies to create Fry?

"petben" wrote in message news:BAA09B34.B6E0%[email]...

No it isn't. She was his paternal grandmother, so her mitochondrial DNA never got to Fry.

No, Fry can be his own grandpa by impregnating his own grandma. Mitochodrial DNA has nothing to do with it.

It doesn't.

petben wrote in message news:...

Crap, genetics are hard enough without going back in time and complicating things this way. You are right, now that I think of it Fry's mother and father do not necessarily have to be brother and sister, but they do have to be closely related. Let's first pretend nothing in this story happened to Fry. His mitochondrial DNA would have followed the line: mother's mother�>mother�>Fry. He gets none from his father, or his father's mother. BUT, we are told he had sex with his father's mother, and conceived his father. If then his father marries some other woman and conceives Fry, the grandson Fry would be genetically different from the grandpa Fry, that is, the mitochondrial DNA would be from a different bloodline. But this can't be, since grandpa Fry and grandson Fry must be genetically identical, by definition in the story. So how can the mitochondrial DNA of Fry's father's mother end up in Fry? His mother must be a maternal relative of his father's mother: either his grandma's daughter (his father's sister), her sister (his father's aunt), a daughter of her sister (his father's 1st cousin), or grandma herself. It all still qualifies as inbreeding. Maybe Fry is descended from the British Royal family.

-jww

"J. Wellington Wimpy" wrote in message news:[email]...

I don't recall the episode stating that Enos was his paternal grandfather. I assumed that he had slept with his maternal grandmother. Enos was never referred to as Fry during the episode, IIRC. I don't think his last name was mentioned at all (unless his last name was Enos.)

Also, wouldn't Fry's paternal grandfather be named Yancy, like his older brother?

That's what I kept saying throughout this episode. Perhaps Fry told Mildred that his name was Yancy, but that would still leave a few questions to be answered...

"J. Wellington Wimpy" wrote in message news:[email]...

news:...

DNA

have

Why would his father marry some other woman? His father/son will still marry his mother and give him his mitochondiral DNA.

It doesn't. His mother's mother's mitochorndial DNA is, just like everyone else.

If it already happened, how'd he know that that yokel dude was his grampa?

"Sgt. Shib the Barking Clam" wrote in message news:EDPea.18587$[email]...

Because he knew his name and where he was stationed at the time.

Okay, time to break out the whip and explain the Back to the Future theory of time travel. There are an infinite number of universes (contrary to I Dated a Robot, the professor should have had the people in the cowboy universe go to the OTHER side of THEIR universe -- they would have seen a third, and so on :)

But I digress. When you go backwards in time, you immediately fork() off the universe into another one, which becomes different from that point on.

_____________________________________ <-- 1
    \________________________________ <-- 5
   ^      ^      ^
   |__ 2  |__ 3  |__ 4

1) The crew goes back to 2) The Past(TM) where 3) Fry kills his grandfather and knocks up his grandmother, 4) the crew goes to town on the air base, and then 5) returns to The Present(TM), which is actually in another universe. So this is why Fry didn't disappear or any other nonsense when his grandfather died. Assuming he did get his grandmother pregnant, she would give birth to somebody completely different from Fry's father. So yeah, Fry would never have existed in the SECOND universe, but remember the Fry we see is from the FIRST universe.

Of course, destroying Roswell at the end would probably have changed events significantly, so the universe they returned to should have been much different, after ~1050 years of diverging.

But let us also remember, this is just a cartoon. Get over it :)

On a side note, I love the reference to Star Trek TNG (Time's Arrow), where a very similar thing happens to Data's head as Bender's.

fo0bar

I was begining to wonder when someone would point out that this discussion was about cartoon DNA.

"fo0bar" wrote in message news:[email]...

grampa?

"fo0bar" wrote in message news:[email]...

grampa?

so the cowboy fry is an imbreed

wise words

Well, one thing though... there's no indication that Fry necessarily impregnates Mildred. He has sex with her, but you don't know for sure. So how about this...

Fry doesn't impregnate Mildred. Enis has a brother Yancy whom Mildred meets after reporting the news to the family that Enis is dead. Yancy and Mildred "hook up", badda-bing-badda-boom they conceive Fry's father...

That scenario certainly would wrap everything up nicely with no loose ends.

"Jason Saslow" wrote in message news:[email]...

impregnates Mildred. He has sex with her, but you don't know for sure. So how about this...

meets after reporting the news to the family that Enis is dead. Yancy and Mildred "hook up", badda-bing-badda-boom they conceive Fry's father...

ends.

yeah, but that takes the fun out of it

fo0bar wrote in message news:...

Actually, since Fry killed him, we know he really wasn't. That the woman he slept with is his fraternal grandmother was implied in the scene where Fry bends over and yells at the yokel's crotch, "I'll save you, Dad!". Pretty funny, I thought.

I make no apologies. We're talking about a cancelled show. What else should we discuss? The subject "Fox Sux" gets dull after a while.

-jww

In article , "Sgt. Shib the Barking Clam" writes:

That's easy. His grandmother lied. Here's a tougher one: How come the UFO nuts don't know that a real live talking alien was discovered, and that a space ship shot up the place to rescue him; and how did they miss a talking robot head for 1,000 years?

On Sat, 22 Mar 2003 21:39:35 +0000 (UTC), [email] (Leon Kowalski) wrote:

Because all the photos look like the Loch Ness Monster?

BTW, I presume the other photo (of Truman) was a photo of some UFO sighting. Any one have any more information on it?

"Alan Hamilton" wrote in message:

Yup, that picture would be of the infamous "Flying Triangles" that were the source of many UFO sightings in the early and mid 1990s. Europe (Britain and Belgium especially) reported many sightings of black triangles with those quite distinctive light patterns.

The 2nd episode of the X-Files featured flying triangle-type UFOs.

http://www.ufoworld.co.uk/triangle.htm

Most people now seem to think that these were some sort of black operations stealth project. Apparently called the TR-3B "Black Manta".

http://www.anomalous-images.com/text/triangle.html

Anyway, it's all much loved by conspiracy theorists and the wacko crowd.

This is explained in the Season 42 episode "The Moon is a Harsh Presidency" where Al Gore sends the Planet Express crew back in time in order to save Bill Clinton from rampaging hogs of doom.

Leons Petrazickis import java.lang.disclaimer;

"Petrazickis" wrote in message news:npRea.5276$[email]...

He's right you know.