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"Tom Francis - SWSports" wrote in
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On Tue, 23 Dec 2008 05:29:25 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Dec 23, 8:20 am, "Eisboch" wrote:
wrote in message

...
On Dec 23, 6:23 am, Tom Francis - SWSports

wrote:
On Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:45:35 -0500, "Eisboch"
wrote:

"Tom Francis - SWSports" wrote in
messagenews:tdo0l453uk07hkghlv0h15psb00n71vef5@4a x.com...
chew on this for a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldbach's_conjecture

And don't prove the weak conjecture.

That's for pansies.

I'll check in later and see what the results are.

Holy crap.

And people think me and my ions are boring.

Ok - just because I'm a nice guy - here's an easy one.

In the Fletcher's Paradox, the Greek philosopher Zeno (who was the
inspiration for the Socratic Method) stated that for motion to be
occurring, an object must change the position which it occupies.

In keeping with the name of the paradox, let's use an arrow as the
example. For motion to occur, the arrow must move to where it is not.
Thus there are two states - where it is and where it is not.

If we think of time as points (or instants) the arrow cannot move to
where it is not and it cannot move to where it is because it is
already there. Thus, motion cannot occur at any point (or instant) of
time - everything should remain motionless.

Solve that one - it's actually easy.

I can clarify it (or muddy it) with another "puzzle", the old
spaceship and flashlight one.

A spaceship is traveling away from the Earth at the speed of light.
At the exact moment that it is one light-year away from Earth, someone
opens up the back door and turns on a flashlight pointed back towards
earth.

Does that light ever reach Earth, or since it is eminating light at
the same speed backwards as it it moving forward, is the light
"frozen" in space? Bonus question: If it reaches Earth, how long does
it take?

One.

(lightyear)

give or take.

Yup. Depends on how new the batteries are. Kidding!!!

But it seems to me that this disproves Tom's statement:

"If we think of time as points (or instants) the arrow cannot move to
where it is not and it cannot move to where it is because it is
already there. Thus, motion cannot occur at any point (or instant) of
time - everything should remain motionless. "

Motion, light emeging from the flashlight, is occuring at a point in
time. But I'm no expert.

Here's another way to look at it - if you are already here, want to go
there, you can't get there because it's an instant of time - you can't
move forward and you are where you already are.

That is because you are a mathematician. Engineers just need to get close,
and math geeks don't get started as it is an infinite series. And here nor
there, this place is never going to be illuminated, no matter how many
lightyears pass..

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