Minh’s Notes

Human-readable chicken scratch

Minh Nguyễn
January 17th, 2003
Science
#372

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Anhilliation

From Scott’s profile:

What would happen if an irresistable force (i.e. a cannonball that connot be stopped by anything) met an immovable object (i.e. a wall that cannot be moved by anything)?

This sparked an interesting conversation:

Minh Nguyễn
What would happen? Instant anhilliation. Case in point: when hydrogen and antihydrogen collide, they anhilliate each other, leaving only photons (light) and pions (the lightest type of meson) in their wake.
Scott Feister
Ah, I think you overlooked a key paradox.
Nothing would happen because the situation is impossible.
Minh
But antimatter is a paradox.
Scott
The terms irresistable force and immovable object cannot coexist.
Minh
Antimatter is, in a sense, existing matter, yet, in another sense, is the absence of matter — in fact, its exact opposite.
Scott
Dark matter.
Minh
Not necessarily, although that is one explanation.
You could also view antimatter as matter, just with a negative mass. But that brings us back to the beginning.
Don’t you just love physics? Or, should I say, antiphysics?
Scott
Actually I’m thinking of going into something science.

Given, I’m not the expert on antimatter. But I do think that it would be the solution to the paradox.