h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

.......an unstoppable force collided with an immovable object?

The universe would implode and still no one could satisfactorily explain what a hrung is, nor why it chose to collapse.

very good.

but seriously. what would happen. my mate said that the immovable object would move and the unstoppable force would stop but that explanation sounds silly. i think only one would change but not sure which one.....


....either that or the universe would implode and still no one could satisfactorily explain what a hrung is, nor why it chose to collapse.

i have thought about this before, i remember 2 adverts, one said that their cutters could cut through anything, another advert for a chain said nothing could cut it

i have a feeling there is a very interesting element we haven't thought of yet. hence why i am asking the world.

my friend asked it as a cocky joke. i don't think he understood it entirely

This question has been milked by the philosophers guild for millenia. I think somewhere there is a computer mulling over it.

They'd both be destroyed.

why?

They both couldn't exist at the same time. Both are in infinite states.

ahhhh *nod knowingly*

what are infinite states?

According to Iain Banks, the unmovable object moves and the unstoppable force stops

It's in Walking on Glass

Oh, and I thought the answer was, "Somethin's gotta give, somethin's gotta give, somethin's gotta giiiiiive." Silly me.

Myjo

"an unstoppable force collided with an immovable object"
Apparently the two couldn't survive in the same universe.
The answer that "the universe would end in one way or another" suggests severe cognitive short-comings in the species that posed the question.
"What happens when something we can't comprehend actually happens?"
"Oh, the universe ends."
"Wow. Ok then...I can cope with the idea of stuff blowing up."

"According to Iain Banks, the unmovable object moves and the unstoppable force stops"

If the unmoveable object moves or blows up then it wasn't unmoveable. Same goes for stopping and the other object.

Ah, that's easy. The unstoppable force would not stop, and the immoveable object would not move.

The only way I can think of to make a force unstoppable is to make it incapable of interacting with anything it collides with. Otherwise, at least some of the force would be transferred to the object collided with, and introduce the possibility of stopping the force.

Conversly, the only way to make an immovable object is to make it insupceptable to forces, and as such, it would be as unnafected by the unstoppable force as the force would be by it.

No end to the universe and no catastrophic falures of physics. The problem here is creating the force and the object in the first place.

so what you're saying is "make them avoid each other"

but the question is what if they meet?

No, I'm saying that by definition, the two items would be forced to be unnaffected by each other if they met. You caould see this as "they pass through each other", but I'm trying to not limit it to this extent.

Maybe the unstoppable force would bounce of the immovable object, and continue on another trajectory??

That's a good one, too. It could continue at the same speed in another direction without stopping in between.

so the unstoppable force becomes unstoppable but deflectable

I think you might have found a loophole