Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Paradox of the Day

Posted by Lucas Green

I recently had someone try to get all smart on me by asking the old paradoxical question "What happens if an unstoppable force meets and immovable object."
My answer was rushed and not completely articulate but was as follows;

The real and practical answer is that there are no unstoppable forces OR immovable objects so it's obviously not a rumination on physical possibilities. It's just a logic exercise with no real answer. That's just a paradox. They're cool but it just shows our imaginations ability to create situations that could not possibly exist. Like, "Can God create a stone so heavy that not even He can lift it?" The paradox is a challenge to those who believe in god and that he is all powerful. He obviously can't be all powerful because he either can't make a stone that heavy or he can and therefore can't lift it.
Back to the physical possibilities of the original paradox though. As I said there are no unstoppable forces or immovable objects. All objects with mass have inertia. An object at rest has inertia that keeps it at rest and will stay that way until acted upon by an outside force. It's "amount" of inertia comes from it's mass. So, if an object could not be moved that means it has infinite inertia and therefore infinite mass. We're not being crushed by it, therefore it doesn't exist.
Also, an unstoppable force would require infinite energy and we won't even go into the problems with that concept right now.

Now, assuming in some hypothetical universe that there were an immovable object and it was met with an unstoppable force. Energy cannot be created or destroyed it can only be transferred from one form to another, right? We all learned that one early on in high school at the latest. So if an unstoppable force with infinite energy were to meet and immovable object with infinite mass the energy would be transferred from kinetic energy that would normally move the object to other forms like heat, light and radiation. So, the immovable object would immediately begin to glow with infinite brightness and would create the most intense heat for infinity and this light and heat would radiate from everywhere since the object has infinite mass.
So, basically, hell would form. LOL
Any thoughts?

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