#Sex With An Alpha Centarian From The Future/Past?…Better Not

Via Memeorandum

Here’s an interesting article from Popular Science about having sex with a partner who is a time traveler. Here’s the article with obligatory Rule 5 at the bottom;

When time travel finally becomes possible, we might want to think twice about getting it on. According to a new study on tiny shrimp (Artemia franciscana), sex with partners from a different time could kill you.

Researchers at the Center for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE) in Montpellier, France, collected preserved brine shrimp eggs from various generations, and then reanimated them with water. Nicolas Rode and colleagues mated pairs of brine shrimp that had been reanimated from eggs preserved since 1985, 1996 and 2007, a period representing roughly 160 generations. They found that females that mated with males from the past or future died off sooner than those that mated with their own generation. The longer the time-shift, the earlier they died: The 22-year time difference shortened female lifetimes by 12 percent; the effect was 3 percent for the 11-year time-shift.

Interestingly, this didn’t affect the females’ reproductive success. Those that lived shorter lives produced the same average number of offspring, they just did it at a faster pace. “Females’ life histories are complex and are constantly adjusted,” explains study co-author Thomas Lenormand. These adjustments reflect the trade-offs between survival and reproduction in nature.

Brine shrimp are part of an interesting class of animal whose eggs can survive decades of drought in a form of dormancy known as cryptobiosis. Once the eggs are reintroduced to water—either in nature or in the lab—they hatch. The species therefore makes an ideal subject for a time-traveling experiment like this one.

Now if I wasn’t already married, I might take a chance if the time traveler looked like this. 😉

Update; Proof Positive has some choice words;

This research was done in France? If they want to experiment with sex, how about “dinner and a movie”?

…females that mated with males from the past or future died off sooner than those that mated with their own generation.

Sounds like the punchline to an old joke. Zebadiah was 96 and about to marry a 16 year old girl. “Aren’t you worried about that kind of exertion might bring about death?” asked his friends.

“Nah,” said Zebadiah. “If she dies, she dies.”