Plans on ice

Does Who know Wenn?

Now the daft Dr Wenn thinks he’s seen time go backwards. He has some water. It freezes. Then it thaws. And later, it freezes again. Time must be going backwards.

So is my patience with Dr Wenn; and Lucy’s. She notes that there’s more to this than the reversing of physical effects. True. If Dr Wenn were to scratch his name in the ice, it’d disappear when the ice melted and wouldn’t return when the ice froze.

But perhaps if it was possible to reverse time, things wouldn’t necessarily happen in precisely the same way they originally did. If time has no aetiology, then forwards or backwards there should, perhaps, be no guarantee that what’d been done the first time should necessarily be undone because of quantum level uncertainty. Yes, I know I have no idea what I’m talking about, but surely time isn’t like some sort of recorder remembering where everything once was. For example, would time reverse the effects of gravity? If something has crumbled off a building when time was going forwards, would it then crumble on again if time was going backwards? What about the water cycle which is driven by the sun? Would rain really rise into the sky if time was reversed? Would evaporation really fall?

Here’s one last one. Would school boys be praised for unbreaking windows with their footballs? (And, therefore, be told off for not doing so?)

It’s an interesting matter to think about, although I’m probably doing little more than revealing my ignorance. Think of me like some of those early Greek natural philosophers with their dotty ideas about the natural world and its ways.

Tomorrow, time and travel, and getting your atomic clocks out of sync.