(In light of yesterday's post, this seemed like an appropriate story for today.)
One evening, coming back from the store, I was doing about 50 on a six-lane road when a dog ran out in front of my car. I could see it coming, but didn't have enough distance to avoid hitting it. According to all the laws of classical physics that govern motion and force, I was going to hit the dog.
Not wanting to hurt the poor animal, I threw up a barrier to the universe where I would hit the dog. That is to say, in the split second before I would have observed the impact, I eliminated that observation (hitting the dog) from the set of possible observations. The only other possible observation was not hitting the dog. And this observation would be incompatible with the forces (speed, monentum) and distances that were in play. (Incompatible observations ---> UNDONE.)
The laws of Smearland won out and I did not hit the dog. The dog vanished. It did not appear in front of my car, behind my car, or off to either side of my car. And believe me, I slowed down to look. Never shut my eyes. Couldn't have missed it if it had been miraculously able to move out of the way. It didn't go over my car or under my car, and I never felt an impact. I don't know where it ended up. And, believe me, I looked.
What happened to the dog?, you ask. I don't know. I don't make any claims to having teleported myself or the dog. I only suggest that I was able to shift the coordinates of my position in Smearland. Perhaps to another, parallel, universe where there was no dog to hit, if that is an analogy that helps you.
Postscript (3:06 PM) - By now you've torn that story apart looking for every possible 4-dimensional explanation. :) Maybe I have lousy depth perception and underestimated the distance between my car and the dog. Maybe the dog was never there and I saw something else that my brain registered as a dog. Maybe I was distracted just long enough to miss the dog as it ran off. Good! You should be skeptical! And, I have to say, I have wondered what any nearby traffic cameras might have caught on tape...
Fortunately, it is not necessary for you to believe the story in order to see the point. :)
