Conservation of Mass VS Time Travel

Designer

Temporal Navigator
Conservation of Mass VS Time Travel.

Time travel fails the conservation of
mass(energy) theory. Below here is the
test that will make it fail.

Here is the test.

1. Stand in front of the time machine for
six hours.

2. Go in the time machine for a 1 minute
trip back 1 hours.

3. Get out of the time machine and invite
other self into the time machine.

4. repeat 2. and 3. six times.

5. At the end reverse everything before the
hour is up or else another paradox will
occur in which people will spontaneously
disappear out of the time machine. Since
they would never be there to pick up in the
first place if you know what I mean. This
is another problem with this scenario.

So now you see the problem with this conservation
of mass problem in which all you are standing
in front of the time machines to be picked
up and now there are 6 of you for a short period
of time.

Everything in this scenario does not make sense
since you can't make mass out of nothing by
creating people.

So as you can see this is one of my problems
with time travel. Now I am losing faith with
my time travel religion. Can some one help
me out of this problem.

Note the branching universe idea does not cut
it since we do it 6 times.

My main question is when does the universe create
a separate you. Is it after one hour, one day,
one year or 40 year.
 
But doesn't time travel 'violate' the Law of Conservation of Mass any which way you cut it? The traveler appears from nowhere (mass gain) and departs to somewhere (mass loss).

But if this can happen, there is no "Law" of conservation of mass. On the other hand, in this case it might be said that the mass really wasn't destroyed, but simply transferred elsewhere where it is undetectable.

BUT...: if it goes out of existence while it is elsewhere there is no way that could be known, (except by God) which makes it an empiric observation. There is really no way this so-called law (mass-energy conservation) can actually be validated. But it is a good rule of thumb. PB
 
PackerBacker

If you can make people out of thin
air then time travel can make a
lot of money.

Re due the experiment by replacing
it with money. Start out with
one thousand dollar by the end
of the trip you get 6 thousand
dollar. That a lot of money for
6 hours of work isn't it. LOL
The only problem is the serial
number will be the same. LOL.
/ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
Time travel fails the conservation of
mass(energy) theory.

Only in the Classical limit. In General Relativity conservation of mass-energy is not necessarily a global law in the same sense of Classical physics.

Even if you look at it Classically the paradox can be somwewhat whisked away. If I look at the world as a 4-D set of coordinates, x, y, z & t I can move a lump of mass from Point A to Point B, each having different spatial coordinates and we have no problem with a seeming paradox. If I move it far enough away, say several light years, and don't tell you that I've done it you won't complain that your local frame of reference is now "missing" mass-energy. An observer several light years distant isn't going to complain that mass-energy suddenly appeared in his frame thus violating some conservation law. That's pretty straight forward.

Now we convert the coordinate frame from normal 3-D Cartesian coordinates with a time axis to 4-D Minkowskian coordinates.- x1, x2, x3, x4. The spatial and time coordinates are all the same. Now move the mass-energy from Point A to Point B where only one axis, which happens to be the time coordinate, changes. Same result. The mass left one 4-D coordinate and ended up at another 4-D coordinate. No paradox. One location lost mass-energy and another gained the same amount of mass-energy. Net zero - mass-energy was conserved. It's just a rotation of the frame so that the mass-energy moves along a different axis.
 
Darby

I guess what you are saying is
if I move back in time there
will be no money(person) out
there since it is already
in the time machine.

So the money(person) outside
of the time machine will
disappear since it has already
move on the 4D time axis to
where the money(person) is in
the time machine.

/ttiforum/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
Designer:
The only problem is the serial
number will be the same. LOL.
!

No problem. Gold doesn't have a serial number


P.S. I have a story in the fiction (HDRkid) section called "Freddy the Time Traveler(1)."

Suppose you are seen off on by your pals on a trip ten years in the future. The trip seems to take only a few minutes. When you get there there they are--a little older and worse for wear. Their question for you is "What have you been doing for the last ten years?" They've lived through ten years day after day. They recall waving buh-bye as you disappear, and exactly ten years later, saying hi as you pop back into existence. Where have you been?
 
Darby

You said there would be light that
is far away of the object and
through time travel an object that
is up close.

My point is this the object that is
far away is a mirage(not there) so
if you touch it it would not be there
since it is old light. But the close
object is real and touchable thus
conservation of energy.

But if you go in the time machine to
that far away point money is a mirage
and would not be there physically
right since the old light has move off and
the image of it there is now new light
from the object not being there.
 
guess what you are saying is
if I move back in time there
will be no money(person) out
there since it is already
in the time machine.

So the money(person) outside
of the time machine will
disappear since it has already
move on the 4D time axis to
where the money(person) is in
the time machine.

No, not exactly. What I'm saying is that we move "stuff" around all day long, from one place to another, and we don't see that as violating any conservation law. We somewhat arbitrarily defind the bounds of our "closed system" (our house, our yard, work space, etc.). When we move massive objects around inside the closed system we say that the total mass-energy didn't change. The mass-energy was simply placed at another location within the bounds of the system as we have arbitrarily defined it. If we move the mass outside the bounds of our arbitrarily defined system we still don't see any paradox. The car was in the driveway this morning. We defined our closed system as our yard, located in California. Someone drives the car to Nova Scotia, far outside the bounds of our closed system. No problem. We just redefine our closed system as the North American continent and we are satisfied that the mass-energy of our car is conserved. This morning it was in our driveway. At some point in the future it is in Canada. Take a video of the event. Run it backwards. The car, in the future is in Nova Scotia and moves in space-time toward the past and ends up in the driveway in California. No apparent paradox.

If we define the closed system as to include a time axis, making it 4-D, then moving mass-energy through time, forward or backwards, doesn't change the total mass-energy inside the system. We just moved it from "here" to "there", acknowledging that we moved it along both the time axis and the spatial axes, except that along the time axis we are moving toward the past rather than toward the future (-t rather than +t). The car (the molecules, atoms and particles) doesn't care what direction in time it's moving.

Admittedly, the examples that I've used today and yesterday are very simplistic and more metaphysical than physical. There are more complex situations where the closed system can't be so loosely defined. There are thermodynamic events (irreversible events) that can't be undone by simply running the film backwards. It would be a paradox that can't be quite so easily explained away, as I've done above, if we see broken cups "unbreak" and form the shards into a complete unblemished cup. Running the film backwards doesn't explain that one.

And Packerbacker got it right about gold. Subatomic particles don't have serial numbers. All protons look just like every other proton (same for the other particle classes). Even if you move the "stuff" through time you really can't say that it was the same stuff (exactly the same molecules, atoms and particles) that left Point A and arrived at Point B. Sure, it probably is for the most part but there's no experiment that you can run to proove it other than to conclude that statistically the probability is X that Y% of the stuff at Point B is the same stuff that was originally at Point A.
 
The whole cop out of this thing
is the John Titor explanation.
He would say that if you go back
in time the gold would not be there
because of temporal divergence, in
essence you would be on another time
line or world line. My problem with
this is who decides which time line
to put you on with a temporal
divergence in effect? /ttiforum/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
The whole cop out of this thing
is the John Titor explanation.
He would say that if you go back
in time the gold would not be there
because of temporal divergence, in
essence you would be on another time
line or world line. My problem with
this is who decides which time line
to put you on with a temporal
divergence in effect?

I hear you on that one. I suppose that the best answer to your question is that the sci-fi writer gets to decide which "time line" you landed on. It's called literary license. If the writer has a stumbling block in the plot that needs a fix, s/he invents one.
 
So as you can see this is one of my problems
with time travel. Now I am losing faith with
my time travel religion. Can some one help
me out of this problem.

Note the branching universe idea does not cut
it since we do it 6 times.

My main question is when does the universe create
a separate you. Is it after one hour, one day,
one year or 40 year.

Life is a choice we made to learn truth.

Well first of all time travel itself should not be a religion. It is a way to view the future or the past and to change the future or the past or create problems such as paradoxs which ever is the case. When does the universe create a seperate you. Well that depends on your beliefs of alternate realities or alternate universes. My guess is everyone has another you right now in another dimension but there is only one you. And when you die sooner or later you will be born again because all you really are is information being represented by energy sub-atomicly. So, sooner or later the conditions will be right in this universe, or another universe, or even another dimension for your rebirth. How long take to happen? My guess is not long at all to a very long time depending on what the actual physics really are for time, space, and other dimensions of reality. You see not all that is actually known for sure at this time but we do know that other universes and maybe alternate universes in other dimensions may exist. I don,t think our universe would be here right now if conditions did not exist for other universes to exist too. So the potential for all of us to re-live our lives again and even do that differently than we did the first time around is there to think about and explore.
 
Darby

If you put gold on the outside
of the time machine for 6 hours.
And at the time of 6 hours you
go into the time machine and
after every hour take the gold
ending up with 6 time the
original amount of gold.

You really had a good idea by
making a boundary system. But
if the boundary is within the
6 hours for your system then
the gold should not be outside
of the time machine due to the
conservation of energy/mass.

If I am wrong about my conclusion
tell me about it and wether there
would be gold out of the time
machine or not.
 
If you put gold on the outside
of the time machine for 6 hours.
And at the time of 6 hours you
go into the time machine and
after every hour take the gold
ending up with 6 time the
original amount of gold.

This is one of the not so easily explained away paradoxes - the situation where the gold and the time machine replicate infinitely and where the time machine invents itself. It's an inconsistent paradox.

The quantum mechanics of the situation seem to prevent this paradox on several levels - blue sheets, wormhole collapse, Pauli's exclusion principle, etc. But no one really knows for sure.
 
Time travel does not violate the law of conservation of Mass. No mass is created or destroyed it's just moved from place to place along the time line, much the same as teleportation would move an object from place to place along the a physical plane.
Time travel does ofcourse mess with the bucket theory, as it changes the total mass occupied by the universe at any given point of time.
 
John

So basically what you are
saying when he time travels
back in time with the gold
there will be no gold outside
the time machine. /ttiforum/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
So basically what you are
saying when he time travels
back in time with the gold
there will be no gold outside
the time machine.

Designer,

I'm still not sure what you're getting at but there is a paradox as I've indicated above (and I'm thinking that you too are concerned about a paradoxical situation).

Assume that a time traveler starts and finishes in the same universe. The assumption might or might not be valid because we really don't know the answer - but let's go with the assumption for now:

You have two really trick machines. The first machine has the ability to extract every molecule of gold from the entire planet, right down to the core, and reassemble it as a huge block of refined 24 k gold. It reassembles the gold inside the cargo bay of your rather large time machine.

You transport the gold into the past and drop it off.

Next you return to the future but your target frame is before you extracted the gold. You now have all the unrefined gold still in the ground as well as the large block of gold that you originally transported to the past. You then have your refining machine extract all the gold again which would also include the gold block. Transport it back to the same time as when you first dropped the block off in the past. It's still there. You drop off the new block which is twice the mass of the first block. You now have the gold in the ground, one block with a mass equal to the gold in the ground and another block with twice the mass of the gold in the ground - together its four times the total mass that originally existed.

The paradox: Where did all of the "extra" gold come form? Considering that you dropped off both blocks in the past, when you first returned to the future why didn't you see two gold blocks instead of just one? If when you returned the first time and did see two blocks, as should be logically the case, what would happen if you simply stopped the experiment there and never made the second trip? Where did the second block of gold come from? How did you, in that case, manage to violate the cause-effect relationship by eliminating the cause altogether?

How you managed to violate conservation of mass-energy might end up being the least important question.

The experiment, if we accept the assumptions, indicates that you can create infinite mass from a finite mass.
 
Designer,

In the example that I gave above you really don't need two machines. All you need is one gold coin. The example holds. In the experiment replace "all of the gold on the planet" with "one gold coin". The implied effect is that you can end up with an infinite number of gold coins that are mystically created from "nothing" and without an underlying cause.
 
I honestly don't know the answer to this.
But if there was time travel they should
be the richest people in the world if
they perform this trick(GOLD). LOL

All I am saying depending on the result of
this then will determine wether time travel
is possible or impossible?

In conclusion I believe mass move along with
time. After every tick mass move along the
time axis and all previous tick there is
nothing left or else there will be a build up
of mass over small periods of time.

But the problem with this ideas if you go
back in time nothing really should exist;
just space. LOL. Thus time travel impossible.
 
The thing that really get
me is if mass exist over the
whole time line then you must
create mass constantly to
manifest the future. It
gets a little crazy. Where
does the energy exist to
do this constant creation
of matter for the future.
This is a question that is
really hard to answer /ttiforum/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
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