xkcd #3084: Unstoppable Force and Immovable Object

Comments

• jecxjo@midwest.social ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  i think I’ve made that game engine before.

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• Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I choose to believe that 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.

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  • Zwrt@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    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 0 people eat. Clearly 0.

    Education took us for absolute fools.

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    • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      It’s just as true a statement to say each of those 0 people at a billion slices of pie.

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    • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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.

      Is it both, is it zero, is it all the values? The canonical answer is “undefined”.

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  • gnufuu@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    A popup will appear asking you to buy the “Extended Physics” DLC

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    • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      First billion years free. After that it’s 17.99 per millennia.

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  • starman2112@sh.itjust.works ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    That’s actually how black holes are made

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• Goretantath@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Facepalm Man i’m dumb, this is a great answer to that thought experiment.

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  • ech@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Eh, it’s just redefining the assumed meaning. “Intangible” does mean “unstoppable” in a way, but that’s not really what’s intended.

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  • Piafraus@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    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.

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    • AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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

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• LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Bingpot!

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• SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  So neutrinos?

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  • stebo02@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    more specifically, right handed neutrinos (only left handed neutrinos interact)

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• ianhclark510@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” that image doesn’t show a force meeting an object

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  • BartyDeCanter@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    They met, they just didn’t interact. Kinda like me at a work party.

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    • Successful_Try543@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      There is no force without interaction, just linear momentum.

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    • wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      “where’s the food and booze?”

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    • InnerScientist@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      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.

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• argarath@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Dammit I should have posted my exact same solution back when I thought of it for the first time, but I was lazy so eh my fuck up

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• Charlxmagne@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Pretty sure none of these exist so idk why it bothered any1 in the first place.

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  • pyre@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    if people only bothered to think about things that exist (especially things that they think exist) we would probably go the way of the dodo. funnily enough that would prevent the dodos from going that way but whatever.

    I highly recommend watching the Vsauce video on supertasks—it’s a great video as expected from Vsauce but also ends on a great note about people and their tendency to think about things like this.

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  • Harvey656@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    You clearly haven’t met my mother.

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    • lugal@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Is the an unstoppable force or an immovable object or a little bit of both?

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  • Smokeydope@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    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 clever and 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 gravitational waves which are like a kind of unstoppable force which can just barely be detected with our finest LIGO sensors spanning a sizable length of the planet.

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    • turtlesareneat@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Relevant username

      You can attract a black hole using gravity tho

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  • AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Neutrinos are pretty close to an unstoppable force: they can pass right through the earth without being stopped.

    I believe this is an expectation of dark matter, to being even closer to an unstoppable force. Perhaps a reason we haven’t found it yet would a because we don’t have a detector that can stop it

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  • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    These kinds of contradicitons exist in made structures, such as laws, rules and regulations. In situations like that, a judge has to pick which rule to follow and which one to ignore. The first time that happens, it becomes the standard solution (precedent) for those kinds of problems.

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  • Spzi@lemm.ee ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It can bother people who believe in omnipotent deities.

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• iAvicenna@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  so if god creates rock so heavy that it can’t lift it, its hand just passes through the rock? makes sense.

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  • Gladaed@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    A rock so heavy you cannot lift it is not an immovable object. Just cause you are weak does not mean you are right.

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    • iAvicenna@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      tell that to god

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  • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I think if God creates a rock so heavy he can’t lift it, it’s probably a black hole. By definition we can’t know what happens inside a black hole, because no information escapes the event horizon. As it’s consistent with known physics that we can’t know many aspects of this interaction between God and the black hole, I think this paradox is basically solved. We don’t know any more about the interaction, but it’s no longer a paradox, it’s consistent with physics.

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    • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Actually, the new theory is that the hawking radiation exfiltrates information from inside the black hole via quantum entanglement. Of course, it hasn’t been tested yet for obvious reasons.

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    • ripcord@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      But black holes have finite mass. By “heavy” you’re implying it’s infinitely heavy or something.

      You can definitely also lift a black hole.

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  • Dasus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I create an immovable basketball hoop.

    You have an unstoppable basketball.

    What’s the issue?

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    • Shardikprime@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I like to jam, but sometimes I also like to slam

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  • Saleh@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    God is distinct from the creation and has no physical shape inside the creation so the idea of “object too heavy to lift” is already conceptually nonsensical.

    But also in the scope of our physics: What would an object be that is too heavy to “lift” for anyone and anything? It would be the heaviest object in the universe. So what will happen with the heaviest object in the universe? It would be the main center of gravity for everything else. In the same way you cannot “lift” the earth, but rather lift yourself from it as your force will just propel you away from the earth rather than the earth away from you, while you are inside the area dominated by earths gravitational field.

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    • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      When you jump you are pushing the earth away from yourself a little bit, and then some of your gravity pulls the earth back toward you. For a brief moment your jump has in fact altered Earth’s orbit.

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    • iAvicenna@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      nothing is distinct from xkcd, if it exists there is an xkcd about it

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  • PlexSheep@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    No that doesn’t make sense. The thing you’re alluring at is a classical thought experiment showing contradiction in allmightiness.

    P1: God is Almighty, meaning he can do anything

    Therefore he must be able to create a stone he can’t lift. But then there is something he can’t do: Either he can not lift the super stone, or he can not create a super stone that he can’t lift.

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    • iAvicenna@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      lol I am not alluring to anything I am just giving a xkcd twist to this well known thought paradox

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    • AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Easy to resolve that conflict. A creator would by definition be outside the universe since he predated it. However, if he went into the universe, his presence there would be subject to its laws

      We can easily say the creator could make an immovable object, within its environment. If the creator went into the environment, he would be subject to its laws, and the front would fall off …. Er, the object would be immovable. However when his being s beyond the environment, creating an immovable object is just part of his plan

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    • RandomVideos@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      An omnipotent and omniscient being would have the ability to change words definitions or logic. They cant be stopped with a logical contradiction

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• billwashere@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  🤯

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• WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  So who would win in a fight between the Juggernaut and the Blob?

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  • raltoid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    That has been debated to death before and it obviously depends on the writer and version of the characters, but in most cases neither are fully immovable or unstoppable. If they were, Juggernaut would probably just be redirected and keep going.

    A little more practically speaking, Juggernaut wins easily:

    • The Blob is a mutant who can basically lock himself to the ground with a short distance around him and become immovable in relation to the ground while being able to absorb most impacts to effectively eliminate the force experience by him and thus the ground.

    • The Juggernaut is not a mutant, but an avatar of Cyttorak the Destroyer, the God/Demon ruler of the Crimson Cosmos dimension. He can tap into more and more of that power to the point where he can fight pretty angry Hulk on almost equal ground.

    Even if you let Blob be immovable and able to ignore all kinetic force, he still has a big weakness. As demonstrated when he tried to go after one of the intelligent versions of Hulk. He realized he couldn’t move or hurt him, so he grabbed his stomach and started pulling. It quickly hurt so much that he instinctively stopped anchoring himself to the ground. At which point he basically became an invincible bouncing ball, which is how Hulk treated him. Until he sent him flying by using a big metal girder as a bat.

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• schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Is Randall now just retelling YouTube videos from 2013? www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eKc5kgPVrA

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  • chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Two people can have the same idea. There’s even a term for it in science. Do you think Randall has watched every YouTube video that exists? I personally have never seen the video you linked, and while it has a decent amount of views, 13M over 12 years is pretty insignificant for other viral videos(for instance, nigahiga has multiple videos in the 30-60m range, and plenty more in the same 10-20m range like this video).

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    • refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Do you think Randall has watched every YouTube video that exists?

      Yes.

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    • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Quite possibly true, it’s just that I haven’t seen this kind of thing from xkcd before.

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• Cochise@lemmy.eco.br ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  This is soo politically charged that can’t be seen as political anymore.

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  • Misspelledusernme@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I don’t see the political charge. How do you mean?

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    • captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      (I think this is a reference to the recent “a grad student was grabbed off the street in my town last month” entry into the series and the “ooh XKCD gone political” response to same)

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    • Cochise@lemmy.eco.br ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I have seen the current US sitiatuation be described many times as a unstoppable force (Trump) going against every law and institution, but they are characterized as unmovable, because they refuse to exert resistance to Trump advances.

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  • Visstix@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    My dude, it’s an arrow and a block

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• dryfter@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I’m driving. I lose my brakes and can’t slow down as if my gas pedal is stuck (unstoppable force). I’m on a road that stops at a T intersection and there’s a concrete wall to keep people from going straight when they are moving vertically towards the T intersection (immovable object).

  The car just goes right through the concrete wall with no damage?

  Replace the concrete wall with a wooden fence. Technically the fence is immovable, but the car is going to smash right through that thing.

  So is this about clarifying what exactly the objects are? I’m not smart enough for this one and am so confused…

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  • floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    In this example your car is not an unstoppable force, it is just a “travelling” mass

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    • Mostly_Gristle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      The fact that the car had brakes to begin with would suggest that it is, by design, a force which stops regularly.

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  • andros_rex@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    The thrust of your car engine is a very stoppable force.

    Concrete walls are resilient, but can be moved.

    What will happen is that the kinetic energy from the collision will crumple the front part of your car, as the concrete wall applies an equal and opposite force. Ideally, the fact that some of the energy is “used” in deforming your car (and subsequently escapes as heat) decreases the amount of kinetic energy that is used to deform you.

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  • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    The car just goes right through the concrete wall

    Well, maybe…

    with no damage?

    No.

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