Paradoxical Cat

Time Travel Cat ...

... Almost Cause Paradox.

Thoughts follow below the fold.

Original 27 February comment:
I should add some physics content here, but it is too late at night.

Finally got my Round Tuit on 11 March

The real question is, which time travel paradox are you worried about? The cat is clearly unconcerned because there is no paradox if the time travel event is a part of history as it took place the "first" time. The model for that is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban, where Harry would not have been alive to save himself if he had not gone back in time to save himself. That circle closed perfectly. He even had the advantage of knowing that he could actually do it.

There are too many different Star Trek variants of the grandfather paradox to explore here, but see below.

When I went to IMDB to pull up the Harry Potter link, I noticed a trailer on their front page. A trailer for Star Trek, that was uploaded on 23 January giving a Christmas 2008 release date rather than the less optimistic May 2009 date on the IMDB page. It would appear to be an entirely new invention, the seqprequel, since it is a prequel to the original TV series but a sequel to the Enterprise TV series and caught in the center of the time loop of Star Trek: First Contact. That used an entire movie to establish the same result as Hermione and Harry did when they had to go back in time because that is what history required.

They are breaking new ground, bringing a young Kirk and Spock to the screen while all of us who saw the original series (made when they were both a spry 35 years old) are still around. The "young" actor playing Kirk is 28 and the one playing Spock is 31. I suppose the premise is that Shatner and Nimoy were playing people who were quite a bit more experienced than their age at the time would indicate. It may work. The casting for Captain Pike (someone, at 52, who is old enough to have seen the pilot!) looks pretty good.

It will remain to be seen which working title will apply: Will it be typical of the odd numbered films (it is Star Trek XI), or the even ones (they used "Star Trek: Zero" as another working title). Yes, I know that zero is not an even number, even though it can be divided by two.