Wouldn't time travel break the laws of conservation of mass & energy?

[Gonad the Barbarian]

If an object traveled back in time, wouldn't it in essence be creating mass & energy in the space & time it traveled back to? Assuming there is a finite amount of both in the universe, then there would then be that finite amount plus whatever traveled back. In fact, the mass of the object that traveled back would be made up of molecules that already existed in the time the object traveled back to, so the same mass would have to be in two different places at the same time. Wouldn't that break some other law of physics? I watched an eisode of SG-1 where the folks went back to 1969 and got to thinking about this.

 

[Anubis]

yes it breaks a lot of teh laws of physics. basically its just not possiable

 

[Passions]

Time is a man-made concept. It's not 'real'.

 

[klah]

Black Holes break the laws of physics.

Until we have a unified theory almost everything breaks certain laws. We just create laws that seem to apply to certain phenomena and only use them in that context. If/when time travel becomes plausible we will create new theories (branching universes, etc.).

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Actually, I have a question about black holes too (also from an SG-1 episode ). If increased gravitational force slows the flow of time, is there a point where it will actually stop or will it just keep approaching 0 as gravity increases? Because if time actually stopped at some point, and assuming the gravitational forces in the black hole were strong enough to reach that point, wouldn't that cause the whole penomenon to sort of burn itself out?

 

[agnitrate]

If an object traveled back in time, wouldn't it in essence be creating mass & energy in the space & time it traveled back to? Assuming there is a finite amount of both in the universe, then there would then be that finite amount plus whatever traveled back. In fact, the mass of the object that traveled back would be made up of molecules that already existed in the time the object traveled back to, so the same mass would have to be in two different places at the same time. Wouldn't that break some other law of physics? I watched an eisode of SG-1 where the folks went back to 1969 and got to thinking about this.

The thing about creating energy is incorrect I think. Since all energy is moving toward disorder and energy is neither created nor destroyed, if somehow there was an object that went back in time, I would assume that the the entropy of the universe would somehow have to decrease or something so it could be created (I don't think that's going to happen any time soon ). Your argument about being in two places at once would hold true I think. We're not really sure how time would work in that situation though and how they would exactly be bound together so I'm not sure we could say what would happen.

Time travel is possible though. There are many ways to travel into the future. Just going back in time is (thought to be) impossible. Bah, who needs the past anyways?

10Ghz processors + holographic data storage here I come!!

-silver

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

But even going forward would run into the same mass problem in any sort of snap your fingers and you're suddenly 20 years in the future scenerio. The mass of whatever object that is sent to the future would be absent from the universe during the time it took time to naturally progress to that point. You'd have the finite amount of mass in the universe minus the mass of the object for 20 years, in essence you've destoyed mass for that amount of time.

 

[hdeck]

I would just like to add that scientists recently found the exception to the conservation of energy rule. In trying to decide whether or not the universe was contracting or expanding (which they found it was expanding, and always has been and will be, sorry all you big bang fanatics) they discovered something called 'dark energy' which, though they don't know much about it, they do know that it is continually entering our universe causing it to expand.

 

[agnitrate]

But even going forward would run into the same mass problem in any sort of snap your fingers and you're suddenly 20 years in the future scenerio. The mass of whatever object that is sent to the future would be absent from the universe during the time it took time to naturally progress to that point. You'd have the finite amount of mass in the universe minus the mass of the object for 20 years, in essence you've destoyed mass for that amount of time.

I don't think it's possible to just go straight into the future. If you were taken by wormhole or something, it might seem like it would be instantaneous but in that instance, you would actually be traveling between the fabric of space time, right? If somebody checks on howstuffworks.com (another thread had links to it) and look up wormholes, it shows how a wormhole would be a path to another part of the space-time fabric. I have no idea how any of this actually would work but it's interesting to wonder how your mass would be accounted for. Would it just magically appear or is it actually like passing through the space-time fabric and you still exist?

*note to self: invent capability to travel at light speed and find some wormholes.......

-silver

*another note oh yeah, and travel so far into the future, that clothes are no longer deemed necessary