RE: starship-design: Re: Paradox

[Steve VanDevender <stevev@efn.org>]

L. Parker writes:
 > Steve,
 > 
 > Before Isaac starts whacking you...what an interesting idea. I've never even 
 > heard that objection before. Did you come up with it? Gives a whole new meaning 
 > to the phrase "time bomb".

I'm sure that I've seen other people discuss the problem of time travel
violating conservation of mass, so I won't claim it as my own idea.  I
don't know whether anyone else has come up with the idea of sending
enough mass back in time to collapse the universe.  The other fun thing
with that is that, of course, the collapsed universe is heavier than the
original.  Hmm.

This is definitely getting pretty far afield of designing realistic
starships, although I think anything that helps people understand
relativistic physics in a useful way will probably help the design
process, as many of the interesting design problems are consequences of
relativity.