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/
so if god creates rock so heavy that it can’t lift it, its hand just passes through the rock? makes sense.
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 now 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.
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.
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.
Well I don’t know about any objects more massive than black holes. I think a black hole is really the only viable form a body can take once there’s enough matter in one place, like there’s an upper limit for the size of stars and after that anything larger collapses into a black hole.
An object of infinite mass is a contradiction, a universe can’t exist with a single object of infinite mass, it would consume everything instantly.
OK, but being very massive is not the same as what was being discussed.
You can also “lift” a finitely massive black hole with anything else massive.
Are you sure? I mean the word “heavy” was what I was going on, but there is a distinction I suppose.
Yeah, that’s true… But again, I do have to stress that there is no alternative to “finitely massive” you really can’t have an object of infinite mass in our universe.
Edit: So I guess it comes down to this: If “lift” and “move” are synonymous, then anyone can move any object of finite mass. An object of infinite mass can’t exist in this universe. So you could say that the answer to the question is definitively no, God can’t create a rock so big that he couldn’t lift it, at least not given the laws of physics in this universe as he created it. (For this conjecture we’re assuming God exists and created the universe).
If God created this universe he could in theory also create other universes with different laws of physics. So in that case, sure, why not, who knows.
It may be worth it to decide how we define ‘unstoppable force’ and ‘immovable object’.
An Immovable Object has 0 velocity:
v = 0
Acceleration is the time derivative of velocity:
a = d/dt(v(t))
a = d/dt(0)
a = 0
And we know that
a = Fnet / m
An object with infinite mass would satisfy this equation, but an object with no net force would too. We could add a correction force that will satisfy the constraint of 0 net force.
|Fnet| = 0
∑Fi = 0
Fcorrection + … = 0
To satisfy Newton’s 3rd law, we would need a reaction force to our correction force somewhere, but let’s not worry about that for now.
A physics definition of ‘Unstoppable Force’ is:
|Funstoppable| =/= 0
In this case the gravitational force fits this description, given a few constraints
Fg = Gm∑ Mi / xi2
As long as the gravitational constant G is not 0, our object has mass, and
∑ Mi / xi2 =/= 0, then
|Fg| > 0
But this does feel kinda like cheating because it’s not really what people mean by ‘unstoppable force’. the other way to define it is just immovable object in a different reference frame.
a = 0, |v| > 0
I’m gonna stop here because this is annoying to type out on mobile
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
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.
lol I am not alluring to anything I am just giving a xkcd twist to this well known paradox
… it’s ‘alluding’, y’all
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
An omnipotent and omniscient being would have the ability to change words definitions or logic. They cant be stopped with a logical contradiction