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From: jmc@riccb.UUCP (Jeff McQuinn )
Newsgroups: net.physics,net.sci,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Re: A Sane Man Proposes A Time Travel Experiment
Message-ID: <720@riccb.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 1-Aug-86 06:45:30 EDT
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Posted: Fri Aug  1 06:45:30 1986
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> 
> Time travel violates the conservation of mass and energy laws.  Consider
> transporting a 1Kg cube of gold 1 hour back in time.  Then in the universe
> of 1 hour ago, there is this extra 1Kg from nowhere, totally unaccounted
> for.  Similarly in the here and now, we lost 1Kg of mass, poof, just like
> that.  Mass wasn't conserved in our universe.  That, as you should well
> realize, is a big no-no.
> 

The big question is not whether mass and energy are conserved, they must be,
but rather how can time travel take place and still conserve mass and energy.
Since time and distance traveled are more or less interchangeable quantities
(one can't be expressed without the other) it would seem that in order to
back up in in time, the events that occured between leaving the future and
arriving in the past would have to "unhappen".  The first event to unhappen
would be that I tried to move back in time (which may short circuit the 
attempt).  Secondly, since my time is firmly locked together with the rest
of the universes time, my events unhappening would need to drag the rest
of the universe along (to back up to yesterday I would need the earth to back
up one revolution and so on and so on because universal movements were an
event that happened during my time).  Next, my concept of having this time
trip would have to unhappen.  So here I somehow am an hour before with no
concept of having gotten here, and no idea of whats going to happen.  Since
my time trip unhappened I didn't do it and since I don't know I didn't do it
I couldn't prove that I didn't (-: do it.  I would expect a short circuit on
the attempt and see no results.  The worst case result being that while I'm
expending all the energy in the universe to get it to back up, time gets stuck.

                                          Jeff McQuinn just VAXing around