Hermione Aging via Time turner

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 53555

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Mark D." <uncmark at y...> wrote:
> I've got a question about Hermione possibly aging at an increased 
> rate 3rd year from use of the time turner.
> 
> I haven't spent 'way too much' time doing speculative math, but 
> Hermione must have aged extra hours during PoA through her use of 
> the Time Turner, but how much?
> 
> ...edited...
> 
> Mark D.

bboy_mn:

First, I'm not sure what the real question is. Are you asking about
the effect of time travel, are you asking if Hermione might have
cheated a bit while having access to the time turner, or both ... or
something else altogether?

Getting into the question of aging throws us back into the complex
confusing paradoxical world of time travel, and it's many ponderable,
but mostly unresolvable mysteries.

One way to look at time travel-
Let's use the example of Harry and Hermione going back 3 hours in time
to save Sirius. One could say that the went forward 3 hours in time
(+3) then went back 3 hours in time (-3) then went forward living that
 3 hours again (+3), yeilding the formula (+3-3+3=3). 

But that brings us to the question, 'is the -3 hours really valid?'.
It looks good in the simple formula I outlined, but it implies that
they grew 3 hours younger when they traveled back. Which brings up the
larger question, if you are 20 years old and go back in time 19 years,
do you arrive in that new time as a 1 year old infant, or do you
appear as your 20 year old self? For purposes of movies and books, it
really spoils the story if you arrive in the past having decreased in
age. Pretty hard for a 1 year old infant effectively correct whatever
they went back to correct. 

This brings us to the 'Quantum Leap' (TV show) theory of time travel,
that you can only travel within the span of your lifetime. That is, if
you are 60 years old, then you have a 60 year window of time in which
you can travel. Made for a great TV show, but in the TV show, the guy
didn't show negative aging.

We could make some serious speculative science out of the possibility,
but it wouldn't make for very good stories and movies.

Now the alternate-
Let's look at this from a perspective of metabolism; the constant
running of the human engine. If Harry and Hermione did not de-age, or
experience negative biological time when they went back in time, then
they have 3 hours more experience than the calander and clock would
indicate. Their biological engines have 3 hours more wear and tear
than the accumulated linear time since their birth. 

That would imply that Herione did age at an accelerated rate while she
used the time tuner. If we assume an additional 4 hours per day, 5
days a week for 10 months, that's 33 days. At the end of the school
year, using these numbers, Hermione's biological engine had an
additional month of wear and tear.

Hermione 'cheats'-
Let's say Herione gets up at 8AM on Tuesday then at Midnight she goes
to bed and sleeps until 8AM Wednesday, then uses the time turner to go
back and study for the 8 hours between 11:59pm Tuesday night and 8AM
Wednesday morning then carries on with her day. The problem is she
won't go to bed again until Midnight Wednesday night which means she
will have been up/awake for 24 hours.

Let's say she does the opposite, stays up all night studying and then
goes back in time and sleeps until Wednesday morning. That fixes
Wednesday, she begins it with a full nights sleep, but it also means
that she has been awake from 8AM Monday until 8AM Tuesday when she
went back in time to get some sleep. I don't think her late night
studying would have been very effective after having been awake for 24
hours.

It's a losing proposition no matter how you look at it. She CAN cheat
but one way or another, it's herself that is being cheated.

Hermione's day-
Using my example of 4 extra hours per day, that means from a
biological engine perspective, Hermione's days are 28 hours long. To
understand this you have to follow Hermione through time in a linear
fashon and forget about two of her existing at the same time. Hermione
relative to herself doesn't experience parallel time, she experiences
linear time; one hour of Charms (9am-10am) followed by another hour of
Arithmacy (9am-10am). From her perspective and from the perspective of
wear and tear on her biological engine, those are 2 consecutive hours
in time. 

No wonder Hermione was a wreck.


Probably didn't answer your questions, but I had fun thinking about it.

bboy_mn