Title text:
Unstoppable force-carrying particles can’t interact with immovable matter by definition.
Transcript:
[An arrow pointing to the right and a trapezoid are labeled as ‘Unstoppable Force’ and ‘Immovable Object’ respectively.]
[The arrow is shown as entering the trapezoid from the left and the part of it in said trapezoid is coloured gray.]
[The arrow is shown as leaving the trapezoid to the right and is coloured black.]
[Caption below the panel:] I don’t see why people find this scenario to be tricky.
Source: https://xkcd.com/3084/
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Pretty sure none of these exist so idk why it bothered any1 in the first place.
There are some pretty close physical analogs that are fun to think about. You cant move a black hole by exerting physical force on it in the normal way so practically infinite gravity wells are like a immovable “object”, though if you’re sufficently nerdy enough you can cook some fun ways to harness its gravitational rotation into a kind of engine, or throw another black hole at it to create a big explosion and some gravitational waves which are like a kind of unstoppable force moving at the speed of light.
Relevant username
You can attract a black hole using gravity tho
You clearly haven’t met my mother.
“What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” that image doesn’t show a force meeting an object
They met, they just didn’t interact. Kinda like me at a work party.
That just moves the problem, what happens if I put a piece of paper between them? Unless they don’t interact with anything they still face the same problem.
There is no force without interaction, just linear momentum.
So neutrinos?
Facepalm Man i’m dumb, this is a great answer to that thought experiment.
Force is not a thing that moves. Force is what is applied to an object. In this “answer” whatever is shown and depicted as force is not force.
Then reverse the assumptions. Maybe it’s the immovable object that can’t be interacted with. Apply all the force you want and meet nothibg
If you applied the unstoppable force and the object of application did not move - then this force was not unstoppable
Eh, it’s just redefining the assumed meaning. “Intangible” does mean “unstoppable” in a way, but that’s not really what’s intended.
i think I’ve made that game engine before.
The expression as I heard included “an irresistible force.”
That’s on the nsfw version of xkcd
Oglaf?
xkcd after dark, or xkcdad. But not pronounced xkc-dad.
Yeah, irresistible force is the version I know. Now I’m wondering if there are even more versions. Are they regional deviations?
Well I’m from Utica and I’ve never heard the term “irresistible force”
Not in Utica, no. It’s an Albany expression.
Maybe the universe will crash due to division by zero, floating-point error, integer overflow and segmentation fault, all of them occurring simultaneously. The objects will experience infinite velocity and infinite forces, there will be rounding errors, the system will run out of RAM and storage space. The universal CPU will max out all threads, and run out of cooling capacity. The hardware catches fire, the entire universe immediately collapses into a singularity, resulting in a new big bang as the system reboots. Oh, and the log files are corrupted, so good luck troubleshooting that one.
A popup will appear asking you to buy the “Extended Physics” DLC
That’s actually how black holes are made
Division by zero is just zero.
Just think about it. You have 4 slices of pie and 0 people to eat any.
How much pie did each of those no people eat. Clearly the answer is just 0.
Education took us for absolute fools.
This one is a bit counterintuitive. My maths teacher explained it like this. Take a look at this graph. If you approach zero from the positive side, it looks like the line goes to infinity. If you approach zero from the negative side, it appears to go to negative infinity instead.
Is it both, is it zero, is it all the values? The canonical answer is “undefined”. The value of y at x=0 doesn’t have a meaningful answer.
It’s just as true a statement to say each of those 0 people at a billion slices of pie.
However, with these types of word problems, there’s usually the implication that the pie is now gone. There’s kind of a problem figuring out where the pie went when nobody ate any pie.
The pie went bad and disintegrated. Its energy got reconverted into the 0 that is all.
If its not clear i was not being all that serious with my last comment. Re constructing math from my own first the principles is something i prefer to do as a hypothetical mind game rather then to find a real profound breakthrough.
so if god creates rock so heavy that it can’t lift it, its hand just passes through the rock? makes sense.
I create an immovable basketball hoop.
You have an unstoppable basketball.
What’s the issue?
I like to jam, but sometimes I also like to slam
