Theory: Time travel doesn't exist Proof: This week Scottish postal worker Angela Kelly won £35.4m on the Euro Millions lottery
Slightly more detailed proof: This week Scottish postal worker Angela Kelly won £35.4m on the Euro Millions lottery. This is Britain's largest ever single lottery win. To share her winnings, all anyone else had to do was pick the right seven numbers. But nobody did, only Angela. If time travel existed, somebody else would have whizzed back to last week and spent £1.50 on the same seven numbers, and then grabbed half of Angela's millions. Or maybe bumped Angela off and collected the whole £35.4m themselves. But they didn't. So time travel doesn't exist. QED.
Rather more convincing step-by-step proof: a) Angela Kelly won £35.4m in last Friday's Euro Millions lottery draw.1 b)All the details of her win, including the numbers on her ticket and where she bought it, have now been made public.2 c) These details will remain in the public domain in the future, and could be read by anyone who had invented time travel. d) Time travel is bound to be very expensive, and no time traveller could resist thirty-five million pounds.3 e) First, set the controls of your time machine for Sainsburys in East Kilbride, last Thursday.4 f) Wait for Angela Kelly to turn up (it'll be easy to spot her - her photo's been in all the papers).5 g) Distract her before she reaches the lottery terminal at customer services, so that she arrives and asks for a ticket at a slightly different time. She'll then receive seven different random Lucky Dip numbers, and will win nothing.6 h) The entire prize fund is now up for grabs. Fork out £1.50 and put your money on 23, 40, 42, 43, 49, 2 and 6.7 i) Wait until Friday evening, and smile when your numbers come up. j) Sigh when it turns out that 1000 other time travellers have had the same idea, and you've each won £35000.8 k) But this didn't actually happen, did it?9 l) Therefore time travel doesn't exist. QED.10
Nit-picking footnotes: 1 Awww, it couldn't have happened to a nicer person, could it? 2 That'll teach her to go public. If only she'd stayed anonymous, none of this lottery-napping would be possible. 3 Centuries of rampant inflation might one day reduce the value of £35m to mere small change, in which case Angela's prize fund isn't quite so irresistable. 4 A Scottish new town isn't the most glamorous of locations, admittedly, but your excursion back in time to watch frolicking dinosaurs can wait. 5 Keep your fingers crossed that you don't arouse suspicion by hanging around the checkouts all day waiting for Angela to turn up, and then get asked to leave by a security guard. 6 Actually Angela still has a 1 in 76 million chance of winning the jackpot, randomly, but that's not exactly likely is it? 7 If you're travelling back from the distant future it might be very difficult to acquire an old pound coin and an ancient 50p piece, but somebody on eBay should be able to flog them to you. 8 Or maybe that's the same time traveller going back to last Thursday 1000 times, just to win as many shares in the jackpot as possible. 9 Unless Angela is herself a time traveller. Unlikely I know, but not impossible. 10 OK, maybe there are a few holes in this argument. But if you do ever invent time travel, don't forget to pop back to last week and make your fortune.
