Puzzling Theory in need of explanation....

Ok

I love physics and theorys and im very good at grasping the concepts of such theorys, but i am no physisist.

One night out of pure bordom i had my two index fingers in front of me and touching them together at the tip of my fingers.

And then it hit me......

Nomatter how small the distance between two objects, that distance can always be divided. And then that distance devided, and so on and so on. So techincally shouldnt it be impossible for two objects to ever come into physical contact, and just get increasingly closer as the distance between them becomes infinitly smaller, forever.

I cant quite get my head around this, and as obviously in practicality two object can come into contact, would that not imply that there must be a minimum possible distance and that time and space would be almost like a movie, made of small frames.

I hope some of you physics buffs out there can help me out with this one, or if this forms part of an already thought of theory. Its been bugging me for years.

London

Well technically...no two objects really do touch eachother. Even when you're standing on a floor, you're not actually touching the floor. On a microscopic level, you're floating on a magnetic field.

Directly regarding your theory though, I've heard this theory before...back in high school I think. The way it was told to me was say I'm trying to throw a ball at a wall. Before the ball can get to the wall, it has to go half way. But, before it can go half way, it has to go half of that...and so on, and so on. The only problem is that we all know that when we throw a ball at a wall, barring weakness or bad aim...it's going to hit the wall.

Distance being divided again and again for ever is also well known as one of Zeno's paradoxes.
www.mathacademy.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink">Zeno's paradoxes

Space and time can only be divided so many times though. en.wikipedia.org...

Im no physicist either btw, just how I understand it works and that in itself could be quite wrong.

Originally posted by kameuh
Distance being divided again and again for ever is also well known as one of Zeno's paradoxes.
www.mathacademy.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink">Zeno's paradoxes

Space and time can only be divided so many times though. en.wikipedia.org...

Im no physicist either btw, just how I understand it works and that in itself could be quite wrong.

Thats where it all gets confusing, when u get to that minimum level, whats in between that? seeing as you could halh that distance too. Makes my head throb lol

But thanks for the links, altho it shows i wasnt the first to think of it grrrrr haha

You CAN travel an infinite set of sub-distances in a finite span.

In other words, you can halve the distances within 1 inch 20 billion times, but you still only need to travel 1 inch.

A better question is HOW do we travel distance? Do we smoothly transition from one coordinate (spatial coordinate) to another, or do we hop between them?

For that matter, HOW "tied" are we to this physical universe, or at least to these 3 +1 dimensions (if you count Time as a dimension)?

Finally, we need to know more about how Time affects Spatial objects. If time is truly part of a higher dimension, then we can potentially "move" because we exist beyond just the 3 basic dimensions.

Read about infinitesimals if you want to understand how the smallest spaces are calculated.

en.wikipedia.org...

The example that they gave us in college is this. A guy and a beautiful girl, with each step the boy takes it halves the distance between them. They never touch, but they come infinitely close.

The one that blew my mind was trying to imagine infinity.

The Planck units are not necessarily the absolute lower limit on scale. It is possible, and I would say even probable, that it never stops getting smaller beyond those units, but it is important to note that modern physics cannot predict/explain anything smaller than those units.

Originally posted by LondonCalling
Ok

I love physics and theorys and im very good at grasping the concepts of such theorys, but i am no physisist.

One night out of pure bordom i had my two index fingers in front of me and touching them together at the tip of my fingers.

And then it hit me......

Nomatter how small the distance between two objects, that distance can always be divided. And then that distance devided, and so on and so on. So techincally shouldnt it be impossible for two objects to ever come into physical contact, and just get increasingly closer as the distance between them becomes infinitly smaller, forever.

I cant quite get my head around this, and as obviously in practicality two object can come into contact, would that not imply that there must be a minimum possible distance and that time and space would be almost like a movie, made of small frames.

I hope some of you physics buffs out there can help me out with this one, or if this forms part of an already thought of theory. Its been bugging me for years.

London

If you constantly divide the distance between your fingers by two, then yes, the fingers will never come in contact. However, this is not what happens in reality. In reality, the distance is not divided by two.

This is the classic problem of Achilles and the Tortuise, known from ancient times. However, it is a word play. Let's see why, with numbers.

Suppose I have to travel a distance of 100,000 meters.

If I divide this distance by 2, I have to travel 50,000 meters. Suppose that I do so...then only 50,000 meters are left.

Suppose now that I travel half of the remaining distance...so it is 25,000 meters left.

In the next step, it is 12500 meters left.

In the next step, it is 6250 meters.

Then it is 3125.

Then 1562.5.

Then 781.25.

390.625

After 10 more steps, I would still have 0.19073486328125 meters to go.

So no matter how many steps I will go, there is still some distance to cover. This is because

If a distance D is composed of parts A and B, and I never travel the B part, I will never cover the whole distance D.

Easy!

Originally posted by BlueTriangle
Well technically...no two objects really do touch eachother. Even when you're standing on a floor, you're not actually touching the floor. On a microscopic level, you're floating on a magnetic field.

That is indeed correct. It's amazing that we all think we know reality, yet, reality is so different from what we perceive that there is no way we are even close to understanding reality.

this is where the term "atom" comes from(ancient times)

it was accepted to believe in a point that can not be divided. to ease the minds of the people, i suppose.

We Are 99.9% Empty Space

I wrote ^that^ a while ago with this sort of stuff in mind. It's pretty amazing what happens down there on that sub-atomic level. More than I will ever understand, I know that.

Originally posted by LondonCalling

Thats where it all gets confusing, when u get to that minimum level, whats in between that? seeing as you could halh that distance too. Makes my head throb lol

The classical interpretation of physics states that matter and energy exists separate from and reside within space-time. If anything Zeno's paradox is an indicator that classical physics has it wrong.

There is a theory called Loop Quantum Gravity a unifying thoery that predicts that all matter and energy is comprised of nothing more than space-time knots.

LQG (Loop Quantum Gravity) states that the minimum distance between two objects is constant and that the perception of distance is merely an illusion created by variables within what's called a spin network.

Sounds very confusing if you are not a Physicist I know.

Here is a good thread on this subject.

Finally an answer to EVERYTHING - Quantum Field Gravity - BRAIDS

In a nutshell... You, me, the chair you are sitting on, everything around you, everything that exists in the universe are all made of space-time, and are the products of vibrational events at the planc scale.

There is no separation, there are no gaps.

All the best,

NeoN HaZe.

[edit on 10-4-2007 by Neon Haze]