Post your favourite paradoxes

[dchao]

Anything in parenthesis can (not) be ignored.

[uranium]

now i have a new way to get girls to show me their boobs...

[Twerp]

A time paradox:

I went back in time to kill my grandfather, but since he died, I wasn't born so I couldn't go back and kill him. And since I couldn't kill him, I went back and killed him so I couldn't be born...

[Jerome Scuggs]

today in class these people were trying to prove to my english teacher that the alanis lyric "it's a free ride when you've already paid" was a paradox.

i'm in too much emotional grief to tell you what happened next

[Send]

what happened next

[DoTheFandango]

The below statement is true

The above statement is false

[Twerp]

It's already been posted by jerome above.

[DoTheFandango]

Great minds think alike.

Thats not a paradox, just talking about me and Jerome.

[Bob (SRB)]

This isn't really a paradox, but one of the hardest things to get my mind around it the fact that if the universe isn't infinte, then what is outside the universe? An easier way to envision this is using the big bang theory. According to this theory the universe originated as an almost infintely dense single point of matter, smaller than an atom. If the whole universe was smaller than an atom, what was around it? What is it like to look at something that is comprised of.. absolutely nothing? Does nothing have a colour? Does nothing have a shape?

Also, lets say you look at a star exploding that is 1 billion light years away, you are actually looking 1 billion years into the past. And the fact that humans can't see around corners because the light coming from around that corner isn't able to bend towards us, because we don't exude a gravitational force powerful enough to bend it towards us. Lets say our eyeballs had gravitational force strong enough to bend light into them, then technically we would be able to see literally everything (everything in the area where our gravititational force is strong enough to attract light). What would it be like to see everything, what would it be like to see completely around a corner?

Lastly, the closer you come to attaining the speed of light, the more time slows down. Let's say you were to reach the speed of light, that would mean everything else around you would be stuck in a standstill, while "time" would seem to be progressing normally for you. Even though "time" wouldn't be progressing for everyone else. Also, if you were to exceed the speed of light, you would technically be going backwards in time. Humans have taken comfort in their assumption that time is fixed and completely seperate from space because our minds don't have the capability of thinking properly otherwise. These new scientific discoveries are really mind-blowing.

[ZeUs!!]

Iraq, thats a paradox

[DoTheFandango]

WAR ON TERROR IN IRAQ.

Crap I just saw Zeus!!!'s

[K2Grey]

Wikipedia quote:

The Monty Hall problem is a riddle in elementary probability that arose from the American game show Let's Make a Deal with host Monty Hall. In spite of being an elementary problem, it is notorious for being the subject of controversy about both the statement of the problem and the correct answer.

The problem is as follows: At the end of the show, a player is shown three doors. Behind one of them, there's a prize for him to keep, while the other two contain goats (signifying no prize to be won). Although the show host knows what is behind each door, of course the player does not. After the player makes a first choice, Monty opens one of the two other doors, revealing a goat. He then offers the player the option to either stick with the initial choice or switch to the other closed door. Should the player switch?

The answer is that the chances of getting the prize increase substantially if he switches. Wrap your mind around that ;P

[Vykromond]

Also, if you were to exceed the speed of light, you would technically be going backwards in time. Humans have taken comfort in their assumption that time is fixed and completely seperate from space because our minds don't have the capability of thinking properly otherwise. These new scientific discoveries are really mind-blowing.

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[Ewan]

yes

[K2Grey]

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

It's true that theoretically time slows down as velocity -> c / speed of light, and that theoretically time stops at c, and that it goes backwards at v > c, and that the first part is actually more or less confirmed (for example GPS satellites are adjusted for this).

However, its also true that theoretically mass increases as v -> c (I _think_ this was confirmed but I'm not sure), so that in order to get v = c you'd need probably an infinite mass (IIRC), and v > c is even more theoretically impossible, not to mention even if it was possible the practical difficulties would be pretty amazing.

So it's not really that mind boggling when it can't happen