Time travel (209)

104 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2007-12-02 16:51 ID:TZ2BDyKP

> Interestingly, a cylinder that is infinitely massive would be unable to be compressed, and it seems that the information of a force should be instantaneous through it, right?

You're making the usual mistake here of thinking of a "solid" as something that actually exists. "Solid" is an intuitive shorthand we use for something which is actually very, very different.

Think about what a "solid" actually is: It's a bunch of atoms packed together, sometimes in a crystal lattice. An atom, on the other hand, is a tiny nucleus surrounded by an electron cloud.

What happens when sound is transmitted is that the atoms move, and their electron clouds push up against each other, and repel because they have similar charges. Now you question becomes, what do you mean by "infinitely massive"? Do you have infinitely massive nuclei with normal electron clouds? Do you have an infinite number of nuclei packed into a finite volumes? What happens to the electron clouds then?

And so on. The answer you end up with is that your question is meaningless and unanswerable, because the situation makes no sense physically.

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