Science, for Any Occasion

I caught a little bit of The Time Traveler's Wife on HBO yesterday afternoon after checking into a hotel. I didn't think anything of it at the time.

I got up this morning and went for a run. It was unremarkable, other than the fact that it was 8 degrees here in Princeton, NJ. I spent 15 minutes in excruciating pain as my fingers regained feeling. (This isn't the first time I've had similar issues with my digits. My mother thinks I may have Raynaud's phenomenon - I think it was just really stupid to run in that kind of cold.)

I grabbed lunch with a fellow G:TB staffer and then hit the Princeton Record Exchange for some bargain music shopping (Mark and Zman will be happy to know that I picked up Beats, Rhymes and Life - with holographic cover - and Murs for President).

I haven't been able to feel the fingertips of my left index finger and thumb since my ill-advised exercise session. Figured it was a side effect of the extreme temperatures. And then I read this article at Wired.com and had my entire mind blown.

According to some really smart scientists (or very, very accomplished practical jokers), something called quantum entanglement provides the theoretical framework for time travel, but only for a limited number of particles. The proof of this theorem involves observation of indivual particles appearing as if out of nowhere and measurable changes in the temperature of a given space.

Friends, do you understand what this means? My moronic decision to run this morning may have consequences far beyond our understanding. If I read the Wired article correctly (and seriously, it would be hard to believe that I didn't), the tips of my fingers have traveled through time. At this very moment (or that very moment, or any number of moments), my thumb and index finger are communing with Aristotle, or manning a turret gun over Germany, or playing in Wyld Stallyns.

Or napping. Which is by far the more likely scenario.