Of time travel and whacking your grandpappy...

There's this time travel paradox that basically asks what happens if you were to hop into your time machine, jump back fifty years and leave your grandad's carcass in a ditch. The chicken or the egg argument - if your grandpop's dead, you couldn't be born to travel back in time to kill him, so he's alive to begat your parent who begats you so you can go back in time and leave your grandad in a ditch...

Anyway, interesting little geek article over at the BBC about how some researchers speculate that the laws of quantum mechanics, particularly the idea of quantum probabilities, offers a solution. I don't like this theory because, if true, it messes with Back to the Future, taking any suspense out of it (i.e., under the rules of this theory, there was no question that his folks would get back together in the end). And anything that messes with my Marty McFly can suck a nut!