Positing A Question
So this one is for all of you time-travel junkies out there.
There is an interesting thought posed by John Scalzi's Red Shirts:
Does time travel to the past violate the conservation of matter and energy? (Since the atoms and energy that make up you, or the object, etc. are already in the past- time travel to the past would be introducing matter);
-OR-
Does the conservation of mass and energy apply not from moment to moment, but holistically across all-time space so matter borrowed from the future isn't actually removing or introducing matter from the system as a whole?
I'm actually fascinated by this idea (since I'm of the mind that time travel to the past is pure fantasy or requires so much energy it's impractical).
I'm curious, what do you think?
That is a great question. I would think option 2. If you are made up of matter, I would think it is solely yours, so past, present or future it would go with you. So, I don't think you would disrupt matter.
ReplyDeleteBut if you go back into the past and meet a younger version of yourself, you would both have the same matter. So, I would think the two versions would become one and the future person who appeared would have to disappear and probably not in a good way.
Energy on the other hand is a concept I never even thought of, like disrupting the natural forces which make everything go into the right timeline.
Does that seem logical? Okay, so now I'm really curious too.