a mental isometric exercise, submitted for your approval

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can anybody out there calculate what would happen if an irresistable force met an immovable object? just wonderin'.....

i would think that all "objects" are moving. if one considers that in space, there is no point of absolute stillness, then everything is moving relative to variable points of reference.

how can one say that an object is still? if i consider an object to be not moving, then i must be using it as an axial (or hub) reference point for the rest of the universe.

for me to do that, i would have to ascribe an importance (or gravity) to that object that outweighs all other things in the universe.

the object would have to be infinitely massive, and therefore the mass of rest of the universe would not equal the mass of this object. in fact the mass of the rest of the universe divided by the mass of the object would be zero.

if that is the case, then the object would have infinite gravity, and the whole universe would be drawn in "hyperspace" toward it and instantaneously be included in it.


the only force that is irresistible would be a force that could deflect or influence an object of infinite mass, and if the object has infinite mass, then the force would be be a factor of the mass itself, and that force is the moment of the mass that is infinite.

just an idea anyway.

No, they can't; like most so-called paradoxes the question is itself is at fault. Bear in mind that language and mathematics are tools we use to describe the universe, but they are not themselves the universe, so seemingly "impossible" puzzles created with tricks of language or maths don't usually have any real meaning; they expose flaws in our description of something, not in reality.

wow
behold the power of superior minds to make short work of [il]logic. if enough powerful brains can be teamed harmoniously together, what problems cannot be solved eventually? perhaps even the problems besetting this country, and later the world. a dream, anyways.

only nothing can be divided by zero.
nothing on nothing is 1.
anything else on nothing is infinity which is a universal overflow.

:p: Well, you know what they say, ask a bunch of people with a propensity for literal mindedness a silly question, get an overelaborate and rambling answer.

But to continue (perhaps) in the original spirit of the question, the closest thing to an immovable object I can think of would be the supermassive black holes (usually though to lie) in the centre of galaxies; they're very, very high mass objects and from their "point of view" almost everything else moves around them; the only thing comparable to them is another supermassive black hole, so perhaps the answer is "when an irresistable force meets an immovable object, they're both actually examples of the same thing, and, recognising each other as friends, they agree not to fight but to stick together as friends for the rest of their lives (which will be a stupidly long time.)"

And (number)/0 is "undefined". I always thought it was infinity, but it ain't. I suspect it may come down to whether you approach it from a programmer's or mathematician's viewpoint.

What is the smallest unit of force?

What is the smallest "object", ie "something" a force can act upon or has an recognizable existence of its own?

Is there any "thing" known forces can not act upon?

No, because in order for us to observe something, it must somehow interact with our senses (or with the machines we build to amplify our senses). An object which was not acted upon by forces could perhaps be predicted, but its existence could never be confirmed. There are some things which have very low rates of interaction with matter, like neutrinos.

I'm not sure what the smallest objects are. You can't really put a precise size on things like electrons, and then there are quarks and gluons and all that stuff that doesn't really have an existence as a single object, only as multiples. I don't (and never really did ) understand quantum physics.

There is no smallest unit of energy or force as far as I know.

I'm not really good at that stuff.

neither am i! but it surely is a good and edifying sport watching the cognitive elites do the hard work of teasing-out the wisdom of intractible problems, like an intellectual wrestling match. since they have shown they can do this efficiently, then it is a short stretch to think they can solve humanity's real unsolved problems if only they could see it in their hearts to put their mental shoulders to the task. this world needs all the smart folk it can get. but also, it needs the bulk of the smart folk to have compassion [at least in the form of enlightened self-interest] as well- like albrecht schweitzer and albert einstein. bill gates surely is developing well along these lines. just wishin' and hopin'...