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Given that a tauon's lifespan is ridiculously small (something to the order of 3e10 to the -10-something power) before it decays into a hadron particle, you'd have to shrink that box pretty damned fast for it to have any effect on your poor decaying particle. Seeing as, unlike fatman, you cannot move at the speed of light or anywhere near it, you wouldn't be able to shrink your box rapidly enough for it to have an effect on the tauon and you'd soon be experimenting with a different particle.

The answer, thus, is "nothing." The last shrinkable box was sold out last week, we should be getting a shipment in a few days. Check back on monday.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

you'd create a wormhole to the universe of pure money and live in happiness for the rest of your life

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both of you are wrong, in case anyone else wants to take a shot at the correct answer.

You mean shrink a box until zero?, well...that's imposible. I saw that reduction as a hiperbolic function, of this kind: f(x)=1/X. Well, to be more precise, you can get half of its size ( X=2), and half of that( X=4), and half of that(X=8), and so. ( just put any value to X), well the bigger the number take "X" , the smaller the box will be. ( i.e X= 1000, f(x)= 0,001 of the original size of the box) . When you reach a value, equal to infinite, then the size of the box will be zero, undoubtely. Well, if that happens..I couldn't imagine its results. But maybe , the "big bang" is the best answer to this...

This post has been edited by Moglv99 on 5th August 2005 14:36

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"Its no cheating if you don't get caught"

nevermind, i was out of my mind posting something like this, and not only was it not fair, it detroyed the game for a few days. i was expecting laz or iain to solve it, but iain never comes here anymore anyway.

now:

of course it is impossible to shrink a box until 0 (there is no such thing as zero size in the universe, except for things which do not exist); i pointed that out explicity in the question post. but for you sticklers of reality who absolutely refuse to work with a question of thought-experiment, assume shrikining the box down to the planck length. for all purposes the exact same thing happens.

simply, the main idea of the answer i was looking for is that, as i shrink down the box (and thus zero in on the position of my particle), the particle will begin moving much more erratically and making abrubt changes in its momentum that would be prohibited by classical physics. eventually, when i shrink the box down to the plank length (or, surely, far sooner), my particle would quantum tunnel *through* the walls of the box and free itself from confinement.

the reason i chose a tau is precisely because of the decay associated with it; originally i expected to have the answer differentiate between box sizes (such that i could shrink the box quite quickly enough [or, realistically, convey the information that the box has been shrunk, since with present-day technology, this experiment is impossible] before my tau decayed) and even box characteristics (as certain box characteristics would govern the nature of the decay of the tau; there are no less than three ways by which a tau can decay into other elementary or non-elementary particles), but then i decided that was unfair and so i added "(or any other particle, really)," to emphasize that i was looking for quantum leaping. at any rate, the "full" answer would have still included the quantum leaping of the products of the tau lepton's decay -- in this case, almost certainly *not* into hadrons, but probably into the least-mass case, electron/neutrino decay. i figured someone might come along and solve still the question fully within its own capacity. again, i was being unfair.

but i thought, what with all the pop-science physics on these boads lately, someone would have conjectured quantum tunelling.

while it's my usual fare to award questions to people who got a portion of the question right, it is extremely obvious to me that silverlance simply looked up the definition of a tau on wikipedia or similar website (something i highly discourage in these types of threads; especially this particular one, which seems to be a great big excersise in thought) and pretended he had just forgotten a factor os so in the exact time of decay of the tau; someone who makes the conjecture that light may move at one planck lengt to two planck times is obviously nowhere near well-versed enough in physics to have memorised the lifespan of one of the most useless particles in existence.

in fact, the most interesting answer is moglv99's. if i had enough matter-energy (and not just a single particle whose elementary constituent is planck-length in size itself), and i compressed it to a high enough energy-density (one which would undoubtedly be reached at planck-length-sized compression), then i would probably phase the matter into quark-gluon plasma (a phase of matter present several microseconds after the big bang), which would explosively (just as in the big bang) release its energy density into regular matter. spectacular insight.

the question is up for grabs.

what if...

i were to travel back in time and change an event in my life, that i was unsatisfied with

what would occur

*note one event will definately occur which would later result in three possibilities
therefore there are three possible right answers*

This post has been edited by Cloud_Strife510 on 8th August 2005 01:15

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"Have you ever seen a baby do that before?"

The answer to that is simple.

"Something."

"Something" would result in one of three things: a better outcome than now, a worse outcome than now, or a different but ultimately equal outcome.

Seeing as nobody has any clue what your life is like, that's either poorly worded or meant to be a general reply. It's impossible to be much more specific without knowing the events of your life.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

it doesn't matter who's life it is

somebody went back in time to change something that happened in the past

what would occur

*note; the event doesn't matter, but the fact it was changed does*
that is a major hint, think about it well

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"Have you ever seen a baby do that before?"

Quote (Silverlance @ 7th August 2005 20:26)

The answer to that is simple.

"Something."

"Something" would result in one of three things: a better outcome than now, a worse outcome than now, or a different but ultimately equal outcome.

This is as undeniably true as it gets, no matter what the situation.

The event could result in you being worse off after all, despite you thinking it was bad (I can think of many seemingly bad things in my life that turned out pretty good in the end.)

The event could actually end up being a bad thing, all in all, and you would end up being better off. For instance, some car crash that rendered you crippled being undone could allow you to lead a much better life.

Or, the event will cause changes to your life, but you'll neither be better off or worse off. For instance, you may undo a bad grade you got on an important exam only to realise there isn't enough space left in the college you wish to attend. Or you could settle on a different job offer and find yourself less bored, yet end up having less free time.

Any other answer would have to deal with theories that are neither proven nor provable. In fact, this answer itself is flawed in that it assumes the following.

1- Time can be changed.
2- Time travel is even possible.
3- Events altered by time would not have an impact on the events leading up to you being able to change the past.
4- The toffee in my vest's left front pocket hasn't melted into a sticky mass yet.

For the purpose of your post, it's unlikely that 1 and 2 are false, and 3 being true would mean the events would cancel themselves out, which ultimately is like saying 1 is true. 4, luckily, is not yet true.

Further developping the answer to this question would mean making highly theorical statements on the nature of time as a whole which we lack the means to prove, and therefore such an answer would be just as incorrect as it would be correct. In other words, your question doesn't have an answer anyone can prove, therefore any answer would be right (within limits.)

This post has been edited by Silverlance on 8th August 2005 02:36

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

good answer
well thought out, but still too generalized

something is bound to happen, but thats too general of an answer

what is that something, that would occur, no matter what, if you were to change an event in the past

*think a little more along the lines of human error, rather than the properties of time*

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"Have you ever seen a baby do that before?"

Quote (Cloud_Strife510 @ 8th August 2005 06:54)

good answer
well thought out, but still too generalized

something is bound to happen, but thats too general of an answer

what is that something, that would occur, no matter what, if you were to change an event in the past

*think a little more along the lines of human error, rather than the properties of time*

How far back in the past? Because I maintain my belief that this entire thread was a product of human error.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

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It's quite simple. By changing the event, the altered-future you would have no reason to go back to change the event, thus, the altered-future you would not go back, and therefore, you create a paradox and the correctiver mechanism may very well be that nothing changes for YOU, but you create an alternative timeline.

Or you blow the entire universe apart and cause the big bang again.

Or God loads from a backup copy, and deletes you from the universe with Norton Anti-Timetraveller.

And since either way leads to nothing of benefit or something of pain, it's the biggest human error in history since the defenders at Troy figured "Hey, a big wooden horse can't hurt us! Let's take it inside!", and it's your error alone. I bet you feel very silly now.

This post has been edited by Del S on 8th August 2005 11:06

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

very good Del S you hit the nail on the head

it would cause a loop in time, derived from no longer having any need to change the event,


which could have several possible results


it's your turn Del S

This post has been edited by Cloud_Strife510 on 8th August 2005 11:15

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"Have you ever seen a baby do that before?"