Forever Young

In our minds' eyes President Kennedy will always be a vigorous young man with a head of reddish-brown hair, even though he would be 90 by now, had he lived. Buddy Holly will always be a skinny kid with curly hair and big glasses. Marilyn Monroe will always be a luscious blonde.

These images are frozen forever in the publc mind because there was no time for them to be replaced by the visages of age. Many physicists today believe in the existence of "parallel universes" in which things turn out differently than in ours. (1) In some of these parallel universes, all the ill-fated people on the list below would be alive today. Imagine how they would look and sound at the ages they would have attained.

Name..............................................2007 Age (2)

John F Kennedy.......................................90
Ernie Kovacs.............................................88
Hank Williams..........................................85
Malcolm X..................................................82
Marilyn Monroe & Robert F Kennedy....81
Martin Luther King....................................79
Sam Cooke...................................................76
James Dean & Jayne Mansfield................74
Elvis Presley.................................................72
Roy Orbison..................................................71
Buddy Holly..................................................70
Sal Mineo & Lee H Oswald.........................68
John Lennon & Ricky Nelson.....................67
Cass Elliot, Ritchie Valens
& Otis Redding..............................................66
Sharon Tate and Jim Croce.........................64
Freddie Prinze...............................................53
John F Kennedy, Jr & Princess Diana.......46

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(1) "Parallel Universes" by Max Tegmark
in Scientific American, May, 2003.

(2) From Wikipedia Biography Section