Impossible - Revision history

Apm: /* Related / '''Known to be astronomically unlikely'''

2023-06-20T11:11:50Z

Related: * '''Known to be astronomically unlikely'''

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	* [[For all practical purpouses]]		* [[For all practical purpouses]]
			* '''[[Known to be astronomically unlikely]]'''
	* '''[[Ultimate limit]]'''		* '''[[Ultimate limit]]'''

Apm: /* Impossibility in the context of technologies */

2023-06-20T11:08:09Z

Impossibility in the context of technologies

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	"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. <br>		"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. <br>
	When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." (he or she or they to be modern and inclusive). <br>		When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." (he or she or they to be modern and inclusive). <br>
	~~Related:~~ [[~~Informal laws~~]]		This is just an [[informal law]] though and one not to take too seriously.

	=== Differentiating between types of impossibility claims ===		=== Differentiating between types of impossibility claims ===

	There is something beyond Clark's first law ~~though~~. <br>		There is something beyond Clark's first law. <br>
	While statements about absolute impossibility will always remain impossible. <br>		While statements about absolute impossibility will always remain impossible. <br>
	One can distinguish between		One can distinguish between

Apm: /* Related / '''Ultimate limit'''

2023-06-20T11:00:53Z

Related: * '''Ultimate limit'''

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	* [[For all practical purpouses]]		* [[For all practical purpouses]]
			* '''[[Ultimate limit]]'''

	== External links ==		== External links ==

Apm: /* related */

2023-06-14T15:25:55Z

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	* A for practical relevant scales false claim: <br>The tendency towards equilibrium in [[thermodynamics]] makes it impossible to have every atom in a product at exactly the desired location. <br>Yes, Macroscale products will receive and accumulate damage from cosmic radiation. But for smaller structures where this is relevant the claim is false.		* A for practical relevant scales false claim: <br>The tendency towards equilibrium in [[thermodynamics]] makes it impossible to have every atom in a product at exactly the desired location. <br>Yes, Macroscale products will receive and accumulate damage from cosmic radiation. But for smaller structures where this is relevant the claim is false.

	== ~~related~~ ==		== Related ==

	* [[For all practical purpouses]]		* [[For all practical purpouses]]

Apm: * For all practical purposes

2023-06-14T15:25:42Z

* For all practical purposes

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	* [[PPV]] piratically perfect vacuum in macroscale volumes. <br>Albeit with today's technology completely impossible, with future atomically precise technology this should be rather easy to achieve.		* [[PPV]] piratically perfect vacuum in macroscale volumes. <br>Albeit with today's technology completely impossible, with future atomically precise technology this should be rather easy to achieve.
	* A for practical relevant scales false claim: <br>The tendency towards equilibrium in [[thermodynamics]] makes it impossible to have every atom in a product at exactly the desired location. <br>Yes, Macroscale products will receive and accumulate damage from cosmic radiation. But for smaller structures where this is relevant the claim is false.		* A for practical relevant scales false claim: <br>The tendency towards equilibrium in [[thermodynamics]] makes it impossible to have every atom in a product at exactly the desired location. <br>Yes, Macroscale products will receive and accumulate damage from cosmic radiation. But for smaller structures where this is relevant the claim is false.

			== related ==

			* [[For all practical purpouses]]

	== External links ==		== External links ==

Apm: basic page

2023-06-14T15:24:17Z

basic page

New page

Nothing is absolutely impossible. Well yes, but that is not practically relevant. 
What is practically relevant is that many things are [[for all practical purposes]] (FAPP) impossible.

== Impossibility in the context of technologies ==

The first of Clarke's three laws: 
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. 
When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." (he or she or they to be modern and inclusive). 
Related: [[Informal laws]]

=== Differentiating between types of impossibility claims ===

There is something beyond Clark's first law though. 
While statements about absolute impossibility will always remain impossible. 
One can distinguish between
* impossibilities that will require very very surprising fundamentally new discoveries to eventually become possible and
* impossibilities that are just assumed by people because all obvious trivial self suggesting solutions to getting there lead into dead ends. 

In case of the latter it may be that certain critical aspects of the target technology 
can be quite reliably reliably predicted despite that these aspects are not yet directly experimentally testable yet. 
E.g. A (warmed up) tennis-ball shooting machine will with [[FAPP]] absolute certainty work very much as expected on Pluto 
despite not at all being scientifically testable there at the eventual intended target operating destination. 
Note that this is not dismissing the scientific method (and entering crackpot territory). 
The relevant tests just have already been done in a similar enough context. 
[[Exploratory engineering]] exclusively uses solidly established textbook physics. 
And that with large safety margins. 

People nonetheless tend to dismiss technologies as nonsense despite them being clearly amenable to 
feasibility analysis via [[exploratory engineering]]. Which can be detrimental funding and research.

=== Impossibility wrongly assumed due to naive approaches leading to dead ends and other reasons ===

Advanced atomically precise manufacturing. Specifically:
* Claims of [[macroscale style machinery at the nanoscale]] (in [[gemstone metamaterial technology]]) being impossible and claims that this idea is showing lack of understanding about physics
* Claims of [[piezomechanosynthesis]] of [[diamondoid]] [[crystolecules]] being impossible

See: [[Common misconceptions]]

=== Examples of impossibilities that would need very very surprising discoveries to be proven false ===

* Stable matter that is much more dense than osmium (the densest chemical element) but less dense than a neutron star
* [[Femtotechnology]] building femto-robotics out of nucleons is for all we know impossible
* Star Treck like beaming of human meatbag bodies. Several impossibilities with that.
* Nanoscale, microscale, or mesoscale very very small nuclear reactors (nucleo-XYZ energy conversion) … most likely impossible … would be nice if not

== Impossibility in the context of likelihood ==

A good example are the molecules in the air in a human scale room. 
There is a finite chance (not too difficult to calculate) that all molecules just by mere chance gather in one half of the room 
leaving the other half completely empty as a vacuum. Practically this will never happen in the time the Earth exists or even the universe does. 
Different story for very very small rooms.

Heat always equilibriates and chaos always increases (rising entropy). Second law of thermodynamics. 
This is only true for large scale systems though. For rooms small enough this can and will be violated. 
Still perpetuum mobile of second kind remain fundamentally impossible possible. 
You can't detect a nanoscale Poincaret recurrence and then extract the energy. 
You will expend equal or more energy doing the detecting that what you gain harvesting the recurrence. 
Read up on related topics of [[Feynman ratchet]] and [[Maxwell demon]] if you're new to these concepts. 

Related: [[Poincaret recurrence]]

=== Sometimes assumed impossibilities regarding probabilities that do not actually hold ===

* [[PPV]] piratically perfect vacuum in macroscale volumes. Albeit with today's technology completely impossible, with future atomically precise technology this should be rather easy to achieve.
* A for practical relevant scales false claim: The tendency towards equilibrium in [[thermodynamics]] makes it impossible to have every atom in a product at exactly the desired location. Yes, Macroscale products will receive and accumulate damage from cosmic radiation. But for smaller structures where this is relevant the claim is false.

== External links ==

Wikipedia:
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws Clarke's three laws]
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics Second law of thermodynamics]
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poincar%C3%A9_recurrence_theorem Poincaré recurrence theorem]