Conservation of Matter

[Nameless Twin]

As the Brainly site asks in one quiz;

Conservation of matter is an example of a scientific

a. theory

b. fact

c. law

d. hypothesis


If you answer correctly, ask yourself how this would work with the transmission of matter through time?
If Antoine Lavoisier's 1789 discovery of The Law of Conservation of Mass is correct, mass can neither be created nor destroyed. No matter, no matter how small (excuse the pun), can exist in two places at once, and all matter exists at all times.
A physical object; cat, person, raven, or writing desk, sent back in time would be made of material that ALREADY EXISTS in that time. There is no space for its duplication.
Over the course of every seven years, the matter in our bodies is replaced.
So for PHYSICAL time travel to occur, transposition would be necessary. The past version of that matter would have to be brought to the future, trading places with the future version sent to the past. In the case of living things, this would be catastrophic, as we are not now made of the same matter we were in our own past.
Therefore, the only time travel stories that I’m aware of that are even remotely possible are Quantum Leap and The Butterfly Effect. Of those, I tell you with certainty that the Ashton Kutcher film is the one closest to what actually happens. And one small detail that gets mentioned in this movie is the damage done to the traveler’s brain. Only, in reality, it is much more insidious with each successive move. My own experience is not the bringing of knowledge into my past self, but LOSS. Fragments of memory remain, traumatic damage to neural pathways.
I know only that, on another level of the tower, I was, at this point in my life, a theoretical and experimental physicist. Damn, I’ve written that so many times that my phone autofills the phrase.
My memory of how I did this to myself is fragmented beyond usefulness. I only know that I used to be a smart guy… still am, really, in another reality, assuming my experiment didn’t kill me. I tried to insert myself into my own past (which really is the only option, as brains are all quite unique), thinking I could make some changes to events.
Instead, I created injuries in my own younger self’s mind. I’ve been a conundrum to teachers and my parents. Obvious, tested high IQ, but struggles with memory retention. Flashes of memory of things that didn’t happen that have had me in therapy and on medications from psychologists (and a full on psychiatrist at one point).

 

[Traveler 25042]

Any violation of the law of conservation of matter from the frame of reference of one universe would still hold if one takes multiple universes into consideration. The matter that moves relative to another observer (i.e., what appears to be "time travel") is really just incomplete information.

What you describe / what butterfly effect describes is a form of self-consistency, but only from the frame of reference of the observer itself. i.e., you change something in your past and are aware of the change, only because you exist in a universe where that change is already factored in / already done (not the original universe from which the change was made)

 

[Darby]

Conservation of matter is an example of a scientific
a. theory
b. fact
c. law
d. hypothesis

None of the above. Matter is not a conserved quantity. Don't confuse it with Conservation of Mass. Mass and matter are not the same thing. Further, conservation of mass and energy is local, not universal and related to closed systems. The universe is not closed, it is infinite and contains infinite mass/energy. (I seem to be repeating myself today.)

If you expose matter to anti-matter they will completely annihilate. Both the mass and matter are replaced with pure energy in the form of massless gamma ray photons.

Brainly's answer is about 100 years out of date. Paul Dirac and Erwin Schrödinger shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for their work with anti-matter and other new forms of energetic interactions.

 

[Traveler 25042]

None of the above. Matter is not a conserved quantity. Don't confuse it with Conservation of Mass. Mass and matter are not the same thing. Further, conservation of mass and energy is local, not universal and related to closed systems. The universe is not closed, it is infinite and contains infinite mass/energy. (I seem to be repeating myself today.)

(Not sure if you were speaking to OP or me on this) I want to draw a distinction between the unaccounted baryonic matter problem vs missing mass problem that is observed today because I see (and myself sometimes use) them almost interchangeably.
Missing mass problem = the gravitational effects we can observe but not see (e.g., effects of dark matter) in places like galaxies.
Missing matter problem = the unaccounted baryonic matter (what is assumed to be dark matter) itself.

In OP's thought experiment they ask about the matter (appears to be correct term) that would have to move in a physical time travel scenario. The "matter" needs to move because of matter + energy equivalency. The mass (being a component of energy) goes along with the matter & physically taking it out of one universe would lead to the appearance of dark matter (assuming mass is conserved across the multiverse). IF mass is conserved across the multiverse, the effects of various different universes are still local (i.e., the missing mass in one galaxy can be a different universe interaction than the missing mass in a different region of space)

The universe is not closed, it is infinite and contains infinite mass/energy. (I seem to be repeating myself today.)

The system I'm describing above should be an open system but please correct I seem to have gotten something wrong.

 

[Darby]

(Not sure if you were speaking to OP or me on this)

I was referring to the false premise upon which the OP based the thought experiment. The Law of the Conservation of Matter is a pre-quantum physics classical theory that was falsified almost 100 years ago. Matter/anti-matter interactions and nuclear reactions violate Conservation of Matter. They also violate Conservation of Mass. All that is left after such an interacton are high energy photons which are not matter and are massless. This or that universe is irrelevant.

In fact every element on the periodic table except hydrogen-1 violates conservation of mass. If you calculate the mass of an individual proton and neutron and then count the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus of an atom you will discover that the mass is always less that the sum of the mass of the individual particles.

That missing mass is the binding energy of the nucleus. It explains why nuclear weapons release at least a million times more energy than an equivalent mass of chemical explosives. Protons do not want to be close to each other yet they find themselves glued together in the nucleus by the strong nuclear force. Getting them 10^-12 m apart took tremendous energy. The +2 EM charge repulsive force between the two protons is about 30 kg at that distance! That's just two protons - infinitesimally tiny in size and mass yet the force between them is measured in tens of kilograms. But when they get just a touch closer the strong force snaps them together with a force 100 times greater - 3 metric tons. That's the force that has to be overcome in nuclear weapons - the binding energy...the missing mass. When those weapons detonate considerable matter and mass is converted to energy - non-matter massless photons.