Kerrie Murphy | May 27, 2008
"IF I could turn back time, if I could find a way, I'd take back those words that hurt you and you'd stay," sang noted scientific expert Cher in 1987.
Now, you may suspect that the only reason Defrag brought up Cher is that the mere mention of that song is enough to get it stuck in your head for hours and we wanted to ruin your day.
Let Defrag assure this is not the case. If that was our aim, we would have gone with Starship's We Built This City, which Blender magazine named the Most Awesomely Bad Song Ever.
Admittedly, If I Could Turn Back Time has the one-two punch of being an annoyingly catchy song and having a video that features the brain-searing image of the singer wearing an unfortunate costume - although both the terms costume and worn apply in only their most generous sense here.
No, the reason we bring it up is that Defrag has it stuck in our head and we're a firm believer in sharing the load.
You see, Cher-stuck-in-the-headness is an unfortunate side effect of the important task that Defrag is currently engaged in, which is reading about time travel.
According to The Boston Globe, Ronald Mallett, a physicist at the University of Connecticut, is researching the possibility of time travel and is designing a table-top experiment using a ring of high-powered laser beams.
This sounds like the makings of a totally awesome hi-tech successor to air hockey, but that is probably because Defrag is not a highly trained scientist.
A highly trained scientist would hear talk of circles of laser beams and say "of course, a time machine" when most of us are just reminded of Frankie Goes to Hollywood videos.
Since it seems that all you need is a few laser pointers and a table and you too can go back to 1987 and tell Cher to put on some damn pants, now is a good time to contemplate whether time travel is actually a good idea. Sure, it means you could buy some shares in Google and be richer than is polite, but there's a downside.
Some opponents point to "the grandfather paradox", where the time traveller kills their grandfather and thus is never born.
It occurs to Defrag that most of us manage to get through our normal lives without killing anyone, and travelling backwards or forwards in time is not likely to change that.
On the off chance you are the type of person who would go to the all the trouble of travelling back in time with the express purpose of killing someone, the world would be a better place if you never existed anyway.
But what really troubles Defrag is how exhausting it would be.
Think about it, time travelling is like putting your own life on pause, going off and living another life, and then coming back and resuming your first life.
It's hard enough doing that in online games like Second Life. Living two physical lives sounds like too much work, and would leave too little time for online games.
TOP 10
This week:
Cancer biologist Patrick Lee was surprised to find I am Legend's cancer-fighting virus was similar to his own theories. Here are the top 10 signs your research resembles science fiction.
10. Every time you explain what it is, thunder crashes and lightning strikes dramatically.
9. You don't have to worry about minor details such as whether the alien mothership's computer is actually compatible with a Mac.
8. The first people to contact you after the publication of your research is Time Warner, asking to buy the movie rights.
7. Every time you cook something new you feel Sigourney Weaver has been there before you in the Alien movies.
6. You're close to a breakthrough. If only you could work out how to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.
5. Every time you come up with a new theory you swear you can hear Captain Picard say: "Make it so".
4. Your colleagues look like they are straight out of the Star Wars cantina.
3. Your time machine technician, The Doctor, keeps taking you "accidentally" to the Voyager because Seven of Nine has expressed interest in his sonic screwdriver.
2. Your lab assistant takes off her glasses, shakes out her hair and your life changes forever.
1. Any part of your research uses a flux capacitor.
Contributors: Don Knowles, Anthony Long, Iain Kennedy, Brian Greaney, Keith Cundale, Gavin Pay, Diane Hesse, Andrew Taylor and Peter Vasey.
Next week:
Chris Dunn and Pam Jensen, who are believed to be one of the first couples to meet on the internet, have celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. Send us your suggestions for the top 10 most appropriate ways for an internet couple to mark the occasion.