The Conundrum of Duplicating Atoms in Time Travel

[Jbcourt]

Let’s say someone travels one year in the past to change their own lives coarse, maybe lotto numbers or something else. Doesn’t matter if time travel is possible or not, this is just a thought experiment.?
The problem I see is that somehow you’ll have to duplicate the nuclei that make up your body. Because now there will be two of them.
If your back in time looking at yourself means that there will be two of you and most of the atoms that made up your body a year ago still makeup your body now. Wont the atom need to be dulicated

How is that possible?
Or am I thinking of this the wrong way?

 

[edgepflow]

Making copies of yourself seems to violate many "conservation" laws so many physicists hope that time travel to the past is prohibited by nature.

 

[JaredJames]

Why would time travel involve making copies?

If you take your future self and put it in the past - at that point there is two of you - but once you reach the point in the future where you went back, one copy 'goes away' and brings the balance back.

The atoms would continue to age, so even if you kept sending yourself back in a way which would give you many 'copies' in the past, you would still experience ageing and there would come a point where you couldn't go back any more (death) and the balance would be restored once and for all.

It comes down to how you view time travel, which method etc. Very speculative though, nobody knows whether or not it's possible so dictating the 'rules' isn't exactly easy.

 

[Endervhar]

I think you have to make a distinction between going back through time, in which case there would be two of you; and turning back time, in which case you would just return to being you as you were at that point in the past. Both are very speculative, and both raise some interesting problems, even if you invoke the multiverse.

 

[JaredJames]

I think you have to make a distinction between going back through time, in which case there would be two of you; and turning back time, in which case you would just return to being you as you were at that point in the past. Both are very speculative, and both raise some interesting problems, even if you invoke the multiverse.

There are so many ways you can use for time travel, each one removes the problems of the other but brings its own.

Just too speculative to be of use.

 

[Endervhar]

Wasn't it Einstein who said "Imagination is more important than knowledge." ?

 

[JaredJames]

Wasn't it Einstein who said "Imagination is more important than knowledge." ?

Given we don't know whether or not time travel is possible, speculating on potential flaws is putting the cart before the horse in my opinion.

"Imagination" is all well and good, but the PF rules only stretch so far.

Given any argument for / against time travel can be countered quite easily it's something of a never ending debate.

 

[Endervhar]

"Imagination" is all well and good, but the PF rules only stretch so far.

You are absolutely right, of course. The trouble is, I need little prompting to get into both speculative and silly stuff. However, I shall try to restrict these to a more appropriate forum.