We’ve all seen those viral posts about celebrities who definitely came from the past, or went back there to pose as somebody we now recognise from our history textbooks. And we usually scoff at these absurd claims, and declare ‘It’s Photoshop!’ Or something like that. Sometimes we blame the Illuminati. Sometimes we blame aliens. Whatever the cause and effect, we definitely have time-traveling celebrities walking among us.
No, wait, we don’t. I guess the human brain is trained to witness a seemingly impossible, or magical phenomenon and become enraptured. That is the premise of illusionists, after all. We see something incredible, and we want to believe that it is not a trick of the light, sleight of hand or founded in misdirection. We know there is a logical solution to the problem in front of us, and we pretend to search for it, but really we don’t want to arrive at it. As soon as we know the inner workings of anything that amazes us, we are no longer amazed. And we all love being amazed, right? The paper bag trick, for example, whereby a magician throws a goddam invisible coin in the air, which zooms round the room, before catching it in a paper bag and, lo and behold, it is visible again. We hear it land in the bag. How is that done? Here’s a video of Eric Morecombe doing it.
If I click my fingers, the bizarre becomes banal. If you don’t want to know my theory on how celebrities can time-travel, well… spoiler alert. I’m hoping you, dear reader, have seen (or read, the book is better) The Prestige. If not, to summarise, Christian Bale plays two characters who perform a transportation trick (that is, where a person disappears, before reappearing elsewhere) by the sheer fact that they look the same. They are twins. Now I am not suggesting that we all have a twin somewhere in the past, because that would make us some multiple of hundreds of years old. But some of us kind of do.
Time for science! We know that there are finite combinations of DNA. It is a very, very, big, ginormous, colossal number, but it is finite nonetheless. So theoretically it is possible for another human being to look the exact same as you do. Granted, it would be a very rare occurrence; I am pretty sure there are more possible combinations of DNA than the total number of human beings to ever have walked on this planet. But even so, the chance exists that once upon a time a person with your exact features and physique was cured by Jesus himself. This article right here explains all the scientific and mathematical parts of my theory if you wish to better understand what I am driving at.
So, here is a set of images of time-traveling celebrities. I put it to you that this is codswallop; these are just genetic illusions. That said, I’m not sure why that Sphinx looks like MJ; more on that one next time.
Click.
scripturient 