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From: ins_apmj@jhunix.UUCP (Patrick M Juola)
Newsgroups: net.physics,net.sci,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: A Sane Man Proposes A Time Travel Experiment
Message-ID: <3301@jhunix.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 1-Aug-86 11:00:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: jhunix.3301
Posted: Fri Aug  1 11:00:53 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 2-Aug-86 23:08:36 EDT
References: <289@axiom.UUCP> <5723@lanl.ARPA> <129@omssw1.UUCP>
Reply-To: ins_apmj@jhunix.ARPA (Patrick M Juola)
Organization: Erisian Liberation Front
Lines: 44
Xref: mnetor net.physics:2522 net.sci:1134 net.philosophy:2239

Attention : all physicists
	Enter suspended-disbelief mode; what you are about to read belongs
somewhere between _2001_ and _Conan the Barbarian_; I realize the premises
sound absurd.  If you must flame me, at least show me *why* they are absurd,
merely invoking God, Gauss, or Newton won't work.

In article <129@omssw1.UUCP> sdp@omssw1.UUCP (Scott Peterson) writes:
>In article <5723@lanl.ARPA> dxm@lanl.ARPA (Douglas Miller) writes:
>>> [...suggests a time travel experiment...]
>>  
>>Time travel violates the conservation of mass and energy laws.
>>Doug Miller   
>
>It doesn't violate conservation of mass if all you send is information.
>I don't know how to send information without influencing the position of
>something at the destination end (something already there) or causing
>some kind of radiation, which amounts to sending energy.  
>
>Scott Peterson, Intel Corp., Hillsboro, OR, ...!tektronix!ogcvax!omssw1!sdp

	E == mc^2, or in English, sending energy *is* sending mass....
Why are we assuming that the conservation laws *must* hold in our limited
(3d) universe?  The fact that we have never observed something appear "from
nowhere" might simply mean that not many people are sending things back this
far through time.  Is there some basis for assuming that the laws we are
observing are not a special case of a more general multi-dimensional
law?  (Absence of evidence != evidence of absence -- the fact that we've never
seen fast things get short doesn't mean they don't.)

	A somewhat related question -- Information theory is a relatively
new science, mostly related to thermodynamics.  Does information have mass?
Or, to put it more specifically, is there some minimum amount of mass/energy
required to transmit one bit of information?  If so, how is this related
to all the other fundamental constants?

	Obviously, my physics-major girlfriend is not around, else she would
have tried to keep me from posting this 8-)

-- 
  seismo!umcp-cs \                      	Pat Juola
    ihnp4!whuxcc  > !jhunix!ins_apmj		Hopkins Maths
 allegra!hopkins /                      

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