I was re-listening to the podcast of Chapter 20 (Bayes’s Theorem) when I was struck by an idea. It builds on another idea I heard in this same forum. The original idea was that Quirrel had Horcruxed the Pioneer plaque and that, due to the nature of magic, his Horcrux passing beyond a distance of 6 light hours would lead to his death due to a limitation on magic’s ability to affect things more than 6 hours into the past—which would be needed for faster than light communications.
Having now re-listened to that chapter, I’ve picked up some new clues. Harry had made the suggestion that it might be possible to add an entire human mind’s worth of information to the Pioneer plaque by creating a portrait or arranging for a terminally ill person’s ghost to be attached to it before launch. Quirrel of course denied that he had done anything like that through a bit of misdirection. This leads many to speculate that he had Horcruxed the probe, downloading a copy of himself into it for posterity.
I had the idea that perhaps he downloaded himself into the probe and then started to operate his body by remote control. When his body goes limp, it’s because he’s not at the ‘controls’ at that moment. Once the probe passes beyond 6 light hours, it will become impossible for him to continue to tele-operate his body any longer and he will be trapped on the probe for the rest of its flight time. I believe he is revealing an important clue in the following paragraph:
“Sometimes,” Professor Quirrell said in a voice so quiet it almost wasn’t there, “when this flawed world seems unusually hateful, I wonder whether there might be some other place, far away, where I should have been. I cannot seem to imagine what that place might be, and if I can’t even imagine it then how can I believe it exists? And yet the universe is so very, very wide, and perhaps it might exist anyway? But the stars are so very, very far away. It would take a long, long time to get there, even if I knew the way. And I wonder what I would dream about, if I slept for a long, long time...”
Is he contemplating the eons that await him while the probe moves on to ‘some other place’? Does he plan to put his mind on hold, to sleep, for most of that flight time?
Good point about the light hours thing. It sort of kills the hypothesis.
I agree with drethelin that the 6 hour mark doesn’t have to correspond with Quirrel’s last day of school. However, in the last story arc, Quirrel talks like his time limit is only a short time away, perhaps only a month. Of course, he could be talking about his inevitable firing from the defense professor position.
In what sense does it not pan out? Why would Quirrel’s last day of class need to align with the last day he will be able to maintain his body on earth?
There’s just no reason for it, story-wise. If EY had wanted the distance to Pioneer 11 to relate to Quirrell’s zombie-ness in this way, he would have written the story so that the hard time-travel limit was 4.84 hours, so that it would coincide with the last day of classes. That makes a good story.
But the dates don’t line up, and so there’s no reason to believe that this is anything other than a fun theory.
That doesn’t make any sense. Eliezer quite often tries to point out that things don’t go down the way they do in stories, and it would be a ridiculously unlikely coincidence that whatever the time travel limit was, that happened to be the exact distance in light hours from earth to Pioneer on a certain date in the future. If the plaque is horcruxed, it happened WAY before Harry was even born, so it’s not like Quirrel could’ve even arranged it to coincide with the end of Harry’s first year at Hogwarts intentionally for drama.
I think you’re disbelieving it for the wrong reasons. The biggest problem and one which Mugasofer mentions in his comment is that there’s no set up system or reason for Quirrel to be remote controlling his body. Horcruxes don’t really work like that in Canon, and it also doesn’t match what we see: eg Quirrel doesn’t take hours to respond to every single thing. It’s possible zombie-mode is some sort of “cloud uploading” process by which he sends memories to his Horcruxes but it doesn’t really seem like that would be affected by this sort of thing.
I think it’s more likely that Pioneer is just a badass way to make a Horcrux and that zombie-mode is a consequence of something else, probably his mind-control battle with Quirrel or whoever Quirrel used to be.
Hmm. It’s certainly not impossible, but there seem to be two main problems with it—not unanswerable problems by any means, but problems nonetheless.
If Quirrelmort is spending his zombie periods at the voyager plaque, what on earth is he doing during that time? Watching the stars? But he said he can only rarely cast the spell that shows him the stars (seems like an odd thing to lie about.)
This clashes massively with the horcruxes from canon. Sure, there could be differences, but … if horcruxes act as “remote controls” you have one horcrux, presumably, which seems like a rather drastic change (and IIRC Q implied having multiple horcruxes somewhere, didn’t he?)
In canon, horcruxes were intelligent and capable of using magic, but also acted to prevent your soul from leaving this plane. If there turns out to be an afterlife, which EY hasn’t ruled out AFAIK, then possibly different minds with the same ID confuse whatever mechanism is responsible; thus Q has given over a copy of his mind to an eternity of space, which is an interesting notion.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest that Quirrel went away to the plaque when he was in zombie mode, nor to suggest that it had become a Horcrux. Instead, what I am suggesting is that Quirrel is always in the plaque and is operating his body by remote control. If it takes some effort to do so, he might let the body go slack when he doesn’t need to be doing anything.
As for the horcrux, this could always be a different, but perhaps related, spell.
I was re-listening to the podcast of Chapter 20 (Bayes’s Theorem) when I was struck by an idea. It builds on another idea I heard in this same forum. The original idea was that Quirrel had Horcruxed the Pioneer plaque and that, due to the nature of magic, his Horcrux passing beyond a distance of 6 light hours would lead to his death due to a limitation on magic’s ability to affect things more than 6 hours into the past—which would be needed for faster than light communications.
Having now re-listened to that chapter, I’ve picked up some new clues. Harry had made the suggestion that it might be possible to add an entire human mind’s worth of information to the Pioneer plaque by creating a portrait or arranging for a terminally ill person’s ghost to be attached to it before launch. Quirrel of course denied that he had done anything like that through a bit of misdirection. This leads many to speculate that he had Horcruxed the probe, downloading a copy of himself into it for posterity.
I had the idea that perhaps he downloaded himself into the probe and then started to operate his body by remote control. When his body goes limp, it’s because he’s not at the ‘controls’ at that moment. Once the probe passes beyond 6 light hours, it will become impossible for him to continue to tele-operate his body any longer and he will be trapped on the probe for the rest of its flight time. I believe he is revealing an important clue in the following paragraph:
Is he contemplating the eons that await him while the probe moves on to ‘some other place’? Does he plan to put his mind on hold, to sleep, for most of that flight time?
Very clever idea! But it doesn’t pan out, sadly. I just checked on Wolfram-Alpha. The distance from the earth to Pioneer 11 on the Ides of May, 1992, Quirrell’s presumed last day of class, is actually 4.84 light hours, not 6.
Some experimenting on W-A shows that Pioneer 11 passes 6 light hours around August 25, 1995.
Good point about the light hours thing. It sort of kills the hypothesis.
I agree with drethelin that the 6 hour mark doesn’t have to correspond with Quirrel’s last day of school. However, in the last story arc, Quirrel talks like his time limit is only a short time away, perhaps only a month. Of course, he could be talking about his inevitable firing from the defense professor position.
In what sense does it not pan out? Why would Quirrel’s last day of class need to align with the last day he will be able to maintain his body on earth?
There’s just no reason for it, story-wise. If EY had wanted the distance to Pioneer 11 to relate to Quirrell’s zombie-ness in this way, he would have written the story so that the hard time-travel limit was 4.84 hours, so that it would coincide with the last day of classes. That makes a good story.
But the dates don’t line up, and so there’s no reason to believe that this is anything other than a fun theory.
That doesn’t make any sense. Eliezer quite often tries to point out that things don’t go down the way they do in stories, and it would be a ridiculously unlikely coincidence that whatever the time travel limit was, that happened to be the exact distance in light hours from earth to Pioneer on a certain date in the future. If the plaque is horcruxed, it happened WAY before Harry was even born, so it’s not like Quirrel could’ve even arranged it to coincide with the end of Harry’s first year at Hogwarts intentionally for drama.
Are you saying you believe this theory? (What’s the evidence?) Or merely that I’m disbelieving it too quickly?
I think you’re disbelieving it for the wrong reasons. The biggest problem and one which Mugasofer mentions in his comment is that there’s no set up system or reason for Quirrel to be remote controlling his body. Horcruxes don’t really work like that in Canon, and it also doesn’t match what we see: eg Quirrel doesn’t take hours to respond to every single thing. It’s possible zombie-mode is some sort of “cloud uploading” process by which he sends memories to his Horcruxes but it doesn’t really seem like that would be affected by this sort of thing.
I think it’s more likely that Pioneer is just a badass way to make a Horcrux and that zombie-mode is a consequence of something else, probably his mind-control battle with Quirrel or whoever Quirrel used to be.
Hmm. It’s certainly not impossible, but there seem to be two main problems with it—not unanswerable problems by any means, but problems nonetheless.
If Quirrelmort is spending his zombie periods at the voyager plaque, what on earth is he doing during that time? Watching the stars? But he said he can only rarely cast the spell that shows him the stars (seems like an odd thing to lie about.)
This clashes massively with the horcruxes from canon. Sure, there could be differences, but … if horcruxes act as “remote controls” you have one horcrux, presumably, which seems like a rather drastic change (and IIRC Q implied having multiple horcruxes somewhere, didn’t he?)
In canon, horcruxes were intelligent and capable of using magic, but also acted to prevent your soul from leaving this plane. If there turns out to be an afterlife, which EY hasn’t ruled out AFAIK, then possibly different minds with the same ID confuse whatever mechanism is responsible; thus Q has given over a copy of his mind to an eternity of space, which is an interesting notion.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest that Quirrel went away to the plaque when he was in zombie mode, nor to suggest that it had become a Horcrux. Instead, what I am suggesting is that Quirrel is always in the plaque and is operating his body by remote control. If it takes some effort to do so, he might let the body go slack when he doesn’t need to be doing anything.
As for the horcrux, this could always be a different, but perhaps related, spell.
Oh, right. I just assumed you meant horcruxes.
Vg’f na vagrerfgvat gubhtug, ohg Ryvrmre unf fgngrq gung gur Cyndhr jnf fhcbfrq gb or n Ubepehk.