I have been trying to write about my recent trip to Uzbekistan but that will take time (because there is a lot to type about and life is being hectic right now). So instead of writing about that I decided to procrastinate by writing another post which is about something that has been bouncing around in my head for the past few days.
I watched the latest episode of Dr Who over the weekend (It was awesome and I should do a post on that later) and in it one of the plot device is that the same matter can’t occupy the same space when time traveling as it would cause an explosion. (They use it to move the plot along, even though they have ignored it in previous episodes). That is not the interesting part, that came to me after I was done with the episode and kind of avoiding thinking about work (as I was working over the weekend).
Basically, the law of conservation of mass says that “for any system closed to all transfers of matter the mass of the system must remain constant over time.”, which implies that mass can neither be created nor destroyed, although it may be rearranged in space, or the entities associated with it may be changed in form.
So over a period of time, atoms (or molecules) that were part of object A, could very well become part of object B. Now comes the interesting part: if the same matter can’t occupy the same space when time traveling (As per the new Cannon of the show) and over time matter from one object could very well end up in another object or just a stay molecule of gas then it is quite possible that when we time travel it would be quite possible to suddenly have an explosion for no apparent reason because one of the molecules in your body/clothing/air etc that you brought with you from the future is the same as a molecule in something you are touching. This would end up making time-travel extremely risky and destructive.
A possible way around would be to ensure you are traveling only to places very far from where you are coming from to reduce the probability of matter duplication across time. But that still wouldn’t be a certainty though.
Another problem would be that time travel by necessity introduce matter into the system which didn’t exist before… So would end up violating the law of conservation of mass. Unless the system is also including the 4th dimension (time) when considering the closed system.
What do you think? (I think that I need some sleep and less caffeine in my system)
– Suramya