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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by xkcdbot@lemmy.world to c/xkcd@lemmy.world

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/

explainxkcd for #3084

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[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 36 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Maybe 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.

[-] gnufuu@infosec.pub 21 points 6 days ago

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

[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 7 points 6 days ago

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

[-] lud@lemm.ee 6 points 6 days ago

What currency?

I doubt the universe accepts Euro or whatever.

[-] noxonad@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago

It's just 17.99. Take it or leave it.

[-] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 6 points 6 days ago

That's actually how black holes are made

[-] Zwrt@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days 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 no people eat. Clearly the answer is just 0.

Education took us for absolute fools.

[-] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 9 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

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

However, with these types of word problems, there’s usually the implication that the pie is now gone. There’s kind of a problem figuring out where the pie went when nobody ate any pie.

[-] Zwrt@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

The pie went bad and disintegrated. Its energy got reconverted into the 0 that is all.

If its not clear i was not being all that serious with my last comment. Re constructing math from my own first the principles is something i prefer to do as a hypothetical mind game rather then to find a real profound breakthrough.

[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days 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 instead.

Is it both, is it zero, is it all the values? The canonical answer is “undefined”. The value of y at x=0 doesn’t have a meaningful answer.

[-] jecxjo@midwest.social 19 points 6 days ago

i think I've made that game engine before.

[-] argarath@lemmy.world 10 points 6 days 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

[-] Charlxmagne@lemmy.world 10 points 6 days ago

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

[-] Harvey656@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago

You clearly haven't met my mother.

[-] lugal@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 days ago

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

[-] Harvey656@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago
[-] pyre@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days 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.

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days 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

[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

These kinds of contradicitons exist in man 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.

[-] Spzi@lemm.ee 2 points 6 days ago

It can bother people who believe in omnipotent deities.

[-] billwashere@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago
[-] jsomae@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 days ago

Ugh. This is a good point. Force = energy, and even an immovable object can carry energy. I assume.

[-] AmidFuror@fedia.io 65 points 1 week ago

The expression as I heard included "an irresistible force."

[-] Tudsamfa@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

"And irresistible is what I am, baby!"

[-] SGG@lemmy.world 85 points 1 week ago

That's on the nsfw version of xkcd

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this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
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