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Let it be known that this is just another version of the grandfather paradox, but still worth reading.

There is an old man who lives in a respectively old house. The kitchen has one mouse hole in the wall, much like the classic mouse hole you might see in Tom and Jerry.

This hole in the wall however, has an interesting property - any object that enters it is shot back out of the hole one second in the past.

One day the old man fancies himself an orange to eat. As he prepares to peel the organge he drops it onto the floor, at which point the orange proceeds to roll toward the hole.

Then it rolls into the hole... or does it? Would it be intercepted by its future self? and if it is intercepted, then it never made it to the hole...hmmm

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The orange's past self would appear and collide with the present in an alternate dimension, if we follow the "Many Worlds" version of quantum physics. The first dimension would just have the orange roll in and nothing happen to it, and the second has a collsion. Otherwise the universe would just break.

Oh, and there's the possibility of the orange rolling in at an angle, and the "past shot" orange to entirely miss the present one.

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That's fair, but to hit the paradox more directly let us assume that the orange rolls directly perpendicular to the wall and that the hole is just big enough for one orange to pass through.

The orange would in fact be blocked by its future self, at which point they would collide and head in opposing directions sending the future orange back at the hole to repeat the process. As a result the old man's house would quickly fill with oranges and he would inevitably die.

Edited by Austin CG
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The man owns a company called Tropicana. Maybe you've heard of it.

;)

Also, one time he stuck his hand in the hole and punched himself in the face a la Tom and Jerry meets Wile E. Coyote.

Edited by Semper Rideo
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Another orange would come out of the hole, would roll towards the first orange, but then vanishes the moment they touch, slowing the first orange down. Since it is a bit slower now, it would take a bit more time for the future orange to come out (that is why it vanished) and the new future orange would do exactly the same thing (slow it down, vanish, then reappear) until the orange stops dead half way in the hole, at which point the future half orange would come out, knocking the other half away from the hole and basically now all that has happened is that the orange got chopped in half, and because half-oranges won't roll, no more oranges enter the hole.

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