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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes

however, I think the actual answer has to do with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length

like, I think if it got to the size of a plank length, the object would become a singularity or something like that, though I really don't know. The question reminded me of the Zeno Paradoxes, which I love, I just don't have the physics that some posters do

Be honest, is thus like a homework assignment, or something?

Originally posted by inimalist
however, I think the actual answer has to do with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length

like, I think if it got to the size of a plank length, the object would become a singularity or something like that, though I really don't know. The question reminded me of the Zeno Paradoxes, which I love, I just don't have the physics that some posters do

That's one of those common misconceptions that only effects smart people. The Planck length so far only exists to be shoved into equations. No one knows if it has any physical significance.

Originally posted by RE: Blaxican
Be honest, is thus like a homework assignment, or something?

Those definitely sounds like a homework assignment.

In early math.. Algebra etc... They teach you that you can never divide by zero...

In calculus you learn about limits and discover how to determine number values as you approach 0 or infinity or some number in between... Based upon the functions...

It's all a matter of... At what point is close enough... And that's the real answer.

Originally posted by rotiart
Those definitely sounds like a homework assignment.

In early math.. Algebra etc... They teach you that you can never divide by zero...

In calculus you learn about limits and discover how to determine number values as you approach 0 or infinity or some number in between... Based upon the functions...

It's all a matter of... At what point is close enough... And that's the real answer.

It doesn't sound like a homework assignment to me. Certainly not early math, maybe Calculus or philosophy.

Anyway, saying it is "close enough" misses the whole point of the problem.

Really though, I have yet to see a satisfactory answer to this paradox. Sure mathmatically we can proove that the trains collide or that we can add an infinite number of numbers to a finite amount. But it still doesn't explain how it happens.

I guess one could say time continues to shrink indefinetly as well. But frankly, I don't find that as a satisfactory answer as time runs into the same problem as space.

Well, if you believe everything you read, in "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown, antimatter is the thing that threatens the vatican. At the beginning of the book, it says the he got the idea off of some science projects or physicist.

I don't remember how they made it, but antimatter was extremely dangerous even in very, very small amounts because if it was released, all the matter it came up against had to destroy was destroyed, in explosions. They talked about how an Hydrogen Bomb couldn't even compare with the destruction that antimatter could.

Well technically matter can be "destoyed". It does this by becoming energy. Mass and Energy, however, are always conserved and therefore it was never truly destroyed as the matter simply changes into a different form.

This is what supposedly happens when anti-matter and matter collide. It becomes energy.

This is what Einstein's formula E=mc^2 shows us. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.

If you had an object with negative mass then you could unmake matter by bring it in contact with normal mass. It's physically valid and consistent because the total mass of the system says constant.

Well if you really considered it... In science as far as we know atoms are comprised of empty space... And what we feel is the electromagnetic and/gravitational forces of these tiny things repelling or combining with one another.

And never said it was an early math problem but the question is almost exactly the same as something I've been asked in my english 3 critical thinking class when I was in high school.

Well, we could argue the train thing from one angle which would be related to Planck Length. Edit - Someone beat me to the punch.

There would be a "minimum" distance the trains could approach before they would "collide".

You would first have to set your terms on what "collide" means. Is it the singular displacement of one atom by another atom on the other train? If that's your definition of when the collision starts, the collision could technically start before the trains even touched, macroscopically, because there is a "high pressure" front on both the trains and when those pressure fronts (whose thickness would be determined by the shape of the trains' nose and the speed of the trains) cross paths, before the train even touches, they would displace lots and lots of molecules/atoms that compose the nose paint.

Thus your answer.


If you define collision as the smallest distance possible between the actual atoms/molecules that make up the nose paint, even then, the trains would never collide. The atoms don't actually touch each other when you collide. Rather, the "fields" of forces are colliding (meaning, the electron orbitals do not collide directly).

So, no, the trains never technically collide down to the quark levels.

The box would begin to heat up and then explode. If the force was supernatural, the box would continue to collapse until it formed a black hole. At that point it could only be assumed that the box is continuing to collapse.