Temperature, movement, radiation... all energy.
Mass, too.
An Explanation of why TIME TRAVEL does not work
by Terry 110 Replies latest jw friends
-
JWoods
-
VoidEater
There is no difference between matter and energy per se - they are different states of the same "substance". E equals (is the same thing as) MC 2 . That's more than a convenient way to blow things up.
There are many more dominoes than just the one box. The amount of "substance" is pragmatically approximately infinite and either moving about spatially or dimensionally once you get beyond the myopic perspective of man.
Time should not be viewed as very much more special a dimension than what we think of as the mundane three. As far as travel goes...well, you can't walk there, and you can't move up in the air - until you get an airplane, then you see with the assistance of technology you can indeed move in a direction hitherto improbable. Movement in the up direction is really limited by indirect forces (e.g., gravity in this case) and we are likely similarly bound in the time direction not by something directly related to time but by indirect forces that tend to keep us moving at a subjective steady state.
We already know that the passage of time is relative, bound to relative speed. So there's nothing constant about our movement through time, only our subjective experience of that movement.
I suspect time travel, should it come, will not be about moving dominoes - it will be about morphing dominoes already at the destination.
-
Aeiouy
How about a paradox. How do you know that the matter that is here in the present is not really matter from the future? Let's say we have a car from the future appear in the present. Your reasoning would mean that that car is an addition to the matter/energy quantity in the universe, and therefore cannot exist because you can't create or destroy matter/energy. How de we know that that car was not supposed to appear in the present, and is not accounted for in the matter/energy quantity of the present universe? :)
Aeiouy
-
-
Razziel
I'm late to the party, but I wanted to comment on heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Terry's explanation (with the example of a momentum measurement affecting position, and vice-versa a position measurement affecting momentum) was how the uncertainty principle was explained to me in university physics when we briefly overviewed quantum physics.
Later, when I took the actual quantum mechanics course, it was mathematically shown the uncertainty principle goes a lot further than that. It's inherent in the mathematics of the sub-atomic world. Solving the schrodinger and matrix equations for whatever operator you want to define (energy, momentum, position, etc) involves using complex conjugates (you get two answers). One answer is (value +h/2), and the other is (value -h/2). So the theoretical answer is (value +/- h/2). This is dealing only in theoreticals, with no physical measurements involved whatsoever.
It follows that the uncertainty in the measurements we could possibly make of sub-atomic particles are a consequence of the uncertainty principle, they aren't the cause of it.
-
myelaine
huh?...
weird...I was just talking to my ex-husband today about how the muscles in my cheeks were sore...like I had been laughing A LOT..anf I was just reading this thread and cheerios post and denials post made me laugh so much...I snorted...crazy...
love michelle
p.s.(anyone have a spare flux capacitor)
-
Razziel
Heisenberg originally developed the principle for the reasons Terry outlined, and it is logical. The math didn't come until schrodinger's equation and then it was shown that the uncertainty wasn't a part of the measurement process. If it was, then the uncertainty wouldn't be there when dealing with purely theoreticals. In other words, uncertainty is not an observer effect. According to the present theory, quantum particles with both a definite position and momentum do not exist.
-
SixofNine
well there can't just be chaos, for God's sake!< Schrodinger's
-
Razziel
Back to the original topic, though I don't believe backwards time travel is possible, it would not directly violate the conservation of mass/energy law. It has to do with the reference frame used. Though an observer from the past might see an object instantly pop out of nowhere from the future, which from their reference frame appears to violate the conservation laws, from the reference frame of the object traveling through time, no laws are violated.
This is the same reasoning for why distant objects from earth can appear to be moving faster than the speed of light, but relative to the objects' reference frame, the speed of light is not being broken. When relativity is taken into account, the laws often appear broken from other reference frames but are still conserved locally.
-
Razziel
To put my previous post in terms of Terry's original domino analogy, there are two timelines:
State 1. The dominos at time A in an arbitrary configuration.
State 2. The dominos at time B (dominos from time A at a later time in the future in a configuration descended from time A).
If the dominos from state 2 go backwards in time to state 1, then it appears from the perspective of the state 1 dominos that duplicate dominos have appeared out of thin air in a different configuration, basically being in two places at once and violating the premise there are a finite amount of dominos.
The flaw in Terry's reasoning is that he's only considering things from the perspective of the state 1 dominos. You have to look at it from the perspective of the state 2 dominos, since they are the dominos actually traveling through time.
From their perspective along their timeline, they still originate from the finite set of state 1 dominos. Along their timeline they still have a definite relationship to the dominos in their past and at no time were dominos created or destroyed. So in this sense, even though the rules appear to be broken from the pov of the state 1 dominos, from the pov of state 2 dominos they aren't. They are conserved locally.
