Monday, May 19, 2008

Interesting read it

For years people have written, told stories and even made films about time travel. It is man's greatest fantasy to go back in time to change all his mistakes. Or peek into the future to know what’s about to happen to us. Wouldn’t it be great to know the next president or the no. which will win us a lucky draw? But here I propose to prove that such a machine will be a completely useless invention! This is because a time machine will not only break most of the fundamental laws of physics but will be of no use to man. Let us see how!According to the law of conservation of mass and energy, the total amount of mass + energy in the universe remains constant in a given time period. So, to move from one time instant to another, we’ll have to ‘destroy’ mass + energy in one instant and ‘create’ a similar amount in another. This is not acceptable by the above law. Also it will be very tough to create an exact replica of what was destroyed in the first time instant.But there’s a way to overcome this problem. If instead of ‘destroying & creating’, if we can ‘transform and substitute’ mass and energy, we will not be violating this law. Now let us assume a scientist wanting to create a time machine (in the present), he’ll require help in the future. For this he’ll have to co-ordinate between two time periods and send information from one period to another. He cannot wait for some years to activate it himself. Because in this case, his present (eventually becoming his past), will have no log of him making use of that machine. Similarly one will face the same problem trying to get into the past. He won’t be able to get into the past as in the past he’ll have no idea about the machine! Alternately he’ll need a machine which can send signals from future to past and vice versa. As signals are nothing but energy, he’ll need a time machine to make a time machine. This is absurd as we’ll be tangled in a loop.
For years people have written, told stories and even made films about time travel. It is man's greatest fantasy to go back in time to change all his mistakes. Or peek into the future to know what’s about to happen to us. Wouldn’t it be great to know the next president or the no. which will win us a lucky draw? But here I propose to prove that such a machine will be a completely useless invention! This is because a time machine will not only break most of the fundamental laws of physics but will be of no use to man. Let us see how!According to the law of conservation of mass and energy, the total amount of mass + energy in the universe remains constant in a given time period. So, to move from one time instant to another, we’ll have to ‘destroy’ mass + energy in one instant and ‘create’ a similar amount in another. This is not acceptable by the above law. Also it will be very tough to create an exact replica of what was destroyed in the first time instant.But there’s a way to overcome this problem. If instead of ‘destroying & creating’, if we can ‘transform and substitute’ mass and energy, we will not be violating this law. Now let us assume a scientist wanting to create a time machine (in the present), he’ll require help in the future. For this he’ll have to co-ordinate between two time periods and send information from one period to another. He cannot wait for some years to activate it himself. Because in this case, his present (eventually becoming his past), will have no log of him making use of that machine. Similarly one will face the same problem trying to get into the past. He won’t be able to get into the past as in the past he’ll have no idea about the machine! Alternately he’ll need a machine which can send signals from future to past and vice versa. As signals are nothing but energy, he’ll need a time machine to make a time machine. This is absurd as we’ll be tangled in a loop.

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