# Things that are basically impossible **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 9, 2017, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374 "2017-02-09T04:46:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2017, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/61 "2017-02-11T00:01:33Z")
> [@Projammer](#): > > My phone has more RAM, storage space, and raw computing power than existed on the planet when we put a man on the moon. And yet said phone is not capable of managing the space shuttle, which IIRC uses something in the 80286 family, let alone handling the lunar landing. Weird how that works ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2017, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/62 "2017-02-11T03:31:47Z")
Considering how many magnitudes of complexity the shuttle has over a Saturn V it’s not too terribly unexpected. I’d be willing to bet that a current model Android with a custom OS and suitably interfaced USB devices could have delivered Buzz and Neil to Luna and back safely. ---
**Author:** ![Jennshark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Jennshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jennshark)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2017, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/63 "2017-02-11T03:38:10Z")
My car can calculate the force of a collision and automatically call 911. A little stick thing poked into my TV port gives me access to virtually anything I want to watch, in about 5 seconds. 40 years ago we had to share a phone party line with neighbors and long distance fees were charged for numbers just 40 miles away. In my lifetime I’ve had records, 8 tracks, cassettes, and CDs – this past month I was able to digitize my 300+ CDs into my car’s memory and will never need the physical discs again. Mind blowing! ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2017, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/64 "2017-02-11T03:48:28Z")
> [@Dobbs](#): > > \*Of course, the really impossible thing is radio. You have two boxes, separated, with no connection, even with vacuum between them, and you put information into one of them, and it comes out of the other. It’s still impossible once you know how it works. You’ve got the whole EM field of the universe: incomprehensibly complex, and yet filling all of space, and we have only the barest sliver of a window into it. And despite all the activity, we can still arrange things such that wiggling some charged particles over here induces some charged particles over there to wiggle in sympathy. The EM field is liable to have kilowatts of power per square meter, and yet our devices are so selective that they can pick out a signal roughly a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a watt. One can make a very rough analogy to a swimming pool–you have hundreds of people splashing around, while a tiny bug is walking on the surface on the other side. And our devices can hear the footsteps. Of course, in reality our devices are vastly more sensitive than that analogy suggests. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2017, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/65 "2017-02-11T03:48:38Z")
> [@Weisshund](#): > > And yet said phone is not capable of managing the space shuttle, which IIRC uses something in the 80286 family, let alone handling the lunar landing. > > Weird how that works That is only because it isn’t programmed to do that. It could be if needed many times over. Modern emulators can recreate entire environments going back a really long way down to both the hardware and software level. One of my specialties at work is interfacing really old (but still valuable) hardware with modern computers and my boss is an expert in it. You can easily go back to the 60’s if you really need to with off the shelf adapters configured in the right order and probably even further than that if you had to although that has never come up. Most of the standards in use back then still exist today and you can daisy-chain translators as far back as you need to. This obviously isn’t impossible because it works based on these principles but here is a 1964 modem in a wooden box that can still be used to the modern World Wide Web (slowly) as long as you know what you are doing. You could probably even find one earlier than that. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/X9dpXHnJXaE/hqdefault.jpg "1964 Antique MODEM Live Demo") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9dpXHnJXaE) ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2017, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/66 "2017-02-11T04:10:52Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > It’s still impossible once you know how it works. > > You’ve got the whole EM field of the universe: incomprehensibly complex, and yet filling all of space, and we have only the barest sliver of a window into it. And despite all the activity, we can still arrange things such that wiggling some charged particles over here induces some charged particles over there to wiggle in sympathy. > > The EM field is liable to have kilowatts of power per square meter, and yet our devices are so selective that they can pick out a signal roughly a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a watt. > > One can make a very rough analogy to a swimming pool–you have hundreds of people splashing around, while a tiny bug is walking on the surface on the other side. And our devices can hear the footsteps. Of course, in reality our devices are vastly more sensitive than that analogy suggests. You make a good point. I have never believed in that bullshit at all once I got old enough to look up how radio and over the air TV supposedly work (the latter is a much bigger ruse - you can’t just send tens of pictures a second over the air and have them reassemble themselves in the right order over an metropolitan entire area using the power of an impressive Christmas lights display and there is no way they figured out how to do that with 1920’s - 40’s technology - they barely knew how to make reliable cars or provide basic medical care back then). It makes no sense. My original childhood theory about tiny singers and actors trapped in boxes is still more plausible (although they must be pretty thin these days). I played with some shortwave radios when I was a kid. Sometimes I would turn the dial and pick up some random person in the UK or some other fake thing. AM radio would do the same thing. Sometimes you would be lucky to hear someone talking clearly 20 miles away and others, especially at night, you could hear someone that claimed to be halfway across the country as plain as day. I am not having any of it. Fake, fake, fake. Computers at least make sense even though they are complicated but broadcast radio and TV, not so much. Don’t even get me started on quantum mechanics. The word on the street is that nobody understands it so don’t even try. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2017, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/67 "2017-02-11T04:28:05Z")
You can form a complex scientific idea, and then put a couple of thousand repetitions of 26 marks on a piece of paper with a tiny piece of carbon, and I can hold that paper where light reflects off it, and a minute later repeat back to you everything you were thinking. And learned the basics of how to do that before I learned to tie my shoes. ---
**Author:** ![guitario](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3d9bf3/32.png) [@guitario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guitario)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/68 "2017-02-13T01:47:17Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Driving a race car at 200MPH. > > Your consciousness is about a half second behind real time. You are actually ~150 feet further down the track than where you think you are. You have to start turning before entering a curve, etc. All the time avoiding hitting the tons of wailing metal bobbing all around you. > > And you really, really need a bathroom break. On the plus side, if you crash, you’ll never know! Anyway, here’s what ridiculous stuff boggles my mind on a daily basis… Every time I go for a walk in the woods or any place in nature where I cannot see any man made objects, I always have the same thought; as I look around at the trees, the dirt on the ground, water streams etc, I am absolutely dumbfounded as to how the following… smartphones, the ISS, the internet, AI, stem cells, CERN… all originated from what I am looking at. Only several thousand years ago the most complex action a human being could fathom was in the creation of sharp tools from rocks… and somehow it went from that… to me writing about it on a magic screen, pressing a button, and having those words display on thousands of other such screens, read by people I have never met, let alone know exist… within… a couple of seconds. I mean, Christ. How did our capabilities evolve like that? And what is our limit? More stuff… I still find it unfathomable that everyone else sees the world via a first person perspective - yet I’ll never be able to prove it. In the next 30 seconds, I could view more naked women than the average male living 50 years ago would ever see in his lifetime. Charlie Sheen, Ron Jeremy and Gene Simmons are each said to have been with over 4000 women… I’m 36 years old, and I doubt I’ve ever met 4000 women… let alone had sex with them all. Or to think about it another way… I find it completely unfathomable to comprehend the idea that I could have had sex with every person I’ve ever met and found attractive, and still not be as sexual experienced as a bassist… and I’m a guitarist! ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/69 "2017-02-13T08:12:57Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > Consciousness is a bizarre concept and doesn’t make any sense. Science and philosophy have no satisfying answers and there’s little reason to suspect an answer is coming anytime soon. For some reason, somehow, a lump of meat in a particular configuration attains self-awareness and feels things, whatever _that_ means. > > Life is also a bewildering. It’s made of normal matter, the same stuff you find in the dirt and the air, but it’s somehow moving around and exhibiting sophisticated behavior. On a small scale, its complexity is mind numbing. A single cell is made of trillions of tiny molecular machines and can’t be replicated artificially, except through clumsy reverse engineering. Yeah, and yet, when you look at any of the components, they’re just doing the ordinary things of physics and chemistry. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/70 "2017-02-13T09:35:48Z")
> [@Weisshund](#): > > And yet said phone is not capable of managing the space shuttle, which IIRC uses something in the 80286 family, let alone handling the lunar landing. > > Weird how that works The 80286 debuted in 1982, almost a year after the first shuttle mission. The orbiter was first released in flight from its 747 carrier plane for test landings in '77, before the 8086 CPU was even released. The shuttle control computers were avionics-specific units built by IBM, which simplified their implementation. What is impossible is that the 8086 architecture is still in use. The engineers at Intel have done an incredible job making that ridiculous design carry forward. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/71 "2017-02-13T20:20:26Z")
For a sniper to hit a target at [over 2,000 yards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_recorded_sniper_kills). At that distance an error of less than 0.03 degrees means a 1-yard miss. Not to mention all the other factors that come into play, including the rotation of the Earth. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/72 "2017-02-13T20:22:33Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > I remember the 1969 moon landing. My father kept saying, “They are on the moon. They are talking to people on earth, _from the moon_.” The Onion covers the [moon landing](http://www.theonion.com/graphic/july-21-1969-10515). ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/73 "2017-02-13T21:53:24Z")
> [@Weisshund](#): > > Even more magical, it is actually 2 scratches, and the needle reads reads left and right audio from them respectively. > > What is bloody impossible is that there can be actually 4 audio tracks scratched in the disc > recorded in FM carrier waves that are then decoded into 4 discreet audio channels. > > Preposterous This is the first thing I thought of when I saw the thread title. My attitude about MP3s is essentially “meh”—_of course_ sound can be converted to digits. Nothing remarkable about that. But a _scratch in a vinyl disc_ that contains the sound of a symphony orchestra? That’s completely nuts. I remember seeing a photo of a stereo record groove, and you could see that the right and left walls of the groove were DIFFERENT. How the hell is that even possible? I imagine aliens finding those [Voyager records](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record) millions of years in the future and immediately tossing them, because, hey, no way that could be anything important. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/74 "2017-02-14T00:21:57Z")
> [@erysichthon](#): > > This is the first thing I thought of when I saw the thread title. My attitude about MP3s is essentially “meh”—_of course_ sound can be converted to digits. Nothing remarkable about that. But a _scratch in a vinyl disc_ that contains the sound of a symphony orchestra? That’s completely nuts. I just see it the other way around. The scratches in the vinyl are exact physical analogs of the sound itself. It’s like looking at the graph of the sound wave etched in vinyl. It’s easy to understand how making an object vibrate by following that contour will reproduce the sound. But digitizing anything is amazing to me. I have a BS in Computer Science, a master’s in Information Technology, and 37 years in the IT industry, and I still cannot believe computers actually work. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/75 "2017-02-14T16:40:08Z")
My father scanned a photo from 1883 and sent it to his second cousin (?) who posted it on Facebook. In the photo is probably the only picture of a relative, who was born two months prior to the photo being taken. He died at four months old, probably of some illness that is now preventable with a simple vaccine. Also in that photo is a picture of a young man who died, as near as they can figure out, from appendicitis at age 22. Hard to fathom that 100 years ago, many children did not survive. ---
**Author:** ![ioioio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ioioio/32/316_2.png) [@ioioio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ioioio)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/76 "2017-02-14T18:13:04Z")
I have a degree in Computer Sciences, and I worked for years in IT, but I will flat out state that Google is impossible. I suspect alien involvement :eek:. It’s not just Google’s ability to retrieve vast amounts of information almost instantly, but that the information is available at all. Who are these millions of people who have gone to the time and effort to put the details of pretty much everything online? I worked for an overnight delivery company, and I can say that nation-wide overnight delivery of millions of packages is also impossible. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/77 "2017-02-14T19:56:27Z")
The Apollo command module linking up with the lunar module. Command module is orbiting the Moon. Lunar module is on the lunar surface. Lunar module has to blast off and link up with the command module - the Moon is a pretty big thing - the odds of the two spacecraft encountering each other are lower than Powerball-lottery odds. And yet it happened successfully on every single Apollo mission. Yes, guidance systems or timing, but still, the odds were like two specks of dust in the sky floating into each other. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/78 "2017-02-14T19:58:00Z")
The major league baseball schedule is put together in one evenng by a man and his wife on their kitchen table in Florida, who have the contract with MLB. 2,430 games, with every team playing every opponent at home and away a balanced number of times with equal weekend dates with road trips that allow transport economy with rotating interleague schedules, with days off to comply with the players’ association demands, and probably other considerations that I can’t even think of or don’t know about. ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/79 "2017-02-14T19:59:18Z")
Pills (specifically) and biochemistry (in general). I can pop a tablet of something only measured in mere milligrams to prevent a heart attack, change blood pressure, simulate pregnancy, stop a headache, etc etc. Slightly too much of anything and I cause permanent harm or death. Yet I can walk into a sandwich shop, randomly have them make me one with anything and everything that weighs 10,000 times what one of those little pills does, and survive. Wizards and magic. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374/80 "2017-02-14T22:42:54Z")
> [@ivylass](#): > > My father scanned a photo from 1883 and sent it to his second cousin (?) who posted it on Facebook. > > In the photo is probably the only picture of a relative, who was born two months prior to the photo being taken. He died at four months old, probably of some illness that is now preventable with a simple vaccine. > > Also in that photo is a picture of a young man who died, as near as they can figure out, from appendicitis at age 22. > > Hard to fathom that 100 years ago, many children did not survive. There is a woman that I friended on Facebook. I don’t know her, have never met her, I live in California, she lives in South Dakota. The only reason we are friends is because we play the same game on Facebook, and in order to pass needed materials back and forth to each other in the game, we have to be friends, One day, she posted a picture addressed to a woman I didn’t know, whose last name is Kitchen, the same as mine. The picture was from a high school yearbook. In the picture was my first cousin, David, who is now dead. I saw this picture, saw that the picture was addressed to somebody with my same last name, and I had to ask her, “Who are you?” She, and the other woman she was addressing, are my first cousin’s daughters, whom I have never met. The other daughter lives in South Carolina. The only reason we were connected on Facebook was because of the game. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-are-basically-impossible/779374.md?page=5)