Can you be your own great(x times) granfather?

Question

I'm writing a story about a person who travels into the past who ends up accidentally sleeping with his own ancestor leading to the birth of a child. this child it is determined is not only his son, but also his great great (however many times) grandfather.

My question is, Is it possible, assuming one could travel back in time, to become your own ancestor, and would there be any negative effect on who you were because of it?

Answer 1

Interesting story . It's possible to be your own great grandfather, if you believe in reincarnation. Don't lose heart even if people tells you that the story has already been written, just go ahead and write. Who knows your story might turn out to be the best among the lot. Good luck

Answer 2

Ah well you're stepping into the field of paradox and so forth here, but other people have done it before, and theoretically if one assumes time travel is possible then I suppose. Theoretical physics is not my field.

As to Biologically (which is my field) well it would be interesting to examine the different chromosomes of the parents. There would be some chromosomal similarities and I suppose the children down the line would each be a little more likely to have the genetic characterisitics of that ancestor. However if they are far enough apart generationally you should still get enough genetic variation to avoid problems. Think of it this way you get half of your DNA from one parent and half from the other, so you would be approximately (there is no garantee the DNA you get from your mother is exactly half your grandfather and half your grandmother) 1/4 the same as each grandparent and 1/8 the same as each of your great-grandparents and so on.

But hey this is fiction don't worry about it to much.

Answer 3

In short, nothing would change because it had already happened, in order for him to exist. It would in this case become a paradox if he decided not to travel back. His great grandfather would then either be someone else or nobody; so he would be a different person or cease to exist. In which case, he could not affect the timeline in which he fathers the child and so he exists again.

The basic question is whether paradoxes are possible. It could be that this creates alternate futures (e.g. Back to the Future), changes the future (the recent Planet of the Apes film) or simply heals (resolves) itself so such changes don't happen.

Perhaps it's like a piano string, the alternates cause a resonance which slowly reduce until the basic state is restored. After all nature always seeks the easiest path....

Answer 4

There's no real reason for you to suffer any ill effects - inbred recession is a condition common where close relatives interbreed for/across several generations - by being your own great x grandfather you are inbreeding with a distant relative and you are doing it only once, and you are doing it after you were born, so I don't think you would suffer for this. As for is it possible, who knows what effects time travel would have on the universe, but I've never met anyone from the future and maybe would've if time travel became possible in the future; so sadly we might never find out ....

Answer 5

First of all you have the paradox and of course you are saying your life is pre-planned, as in order for you to exist it needs to have pre-planned for you to be travel back. As for genetic mutations, that have been mentioned, it would depend on how far back you travel. It's unlikly it would have any adverse genetic affects as if you are only going as far back as great grandfather you still have about 4/5 other genetic families added so if anything you would awaken evolution spark as you would a be a newer version of a person, and that would cause another problem. I'm going to stop here as I don't think there will be enought space for the entire answer.

That is only the start of the debate, first of all you need to decide if time travel is possible. In order to do that you need to define what time is. But thats for another day.

The basic answer is; anything is possible in theory and when it comes to that kind of question it can get very confusing when trying to decide the answer.

Answer 6

If you went into the past and sleeped with your ancestor, then chances are that you might then change appearance as would have altered the timeline.

Interesting question -what would happen if you got stuck in the past. As this would mean that you were never there in the future as was stuck in the past -so technically couldnt have existed.

Answer 7

In one theory of time, yes. Supposedly, time is an ever-continuing set of events. So, if Joe were to travel back in time, sleep with his great-reat-grandmother, she had his baby, and eventually he was born, they how did Joe come to be in the first place?

In this theory, Joe going back in time has already happened, and our Joe, the one the book is following, is the result of that love affair. Then that Joe goes back into the pasts, fall in love with his grandmother, and it all happens again.

Now, no one knows if this is how time really works, but this would be how it works, in theory.

Answer 8

I suppose the antire ancestral line would be clones of each other, as you'd have an infinite loop, meaning an infinite number of times where the ancestral line becomes genetically closer to the character of your story, if you see what I mean.

Answer 9

Better watch it. This story has been done several times over. You do not have a new idea here.

Answer 10

This story has already been written a few times.