It’s often said that nothing is impossible, just highly improbable. If this is true, will someone eventually split an atom by tearing tinfoil to wrap a sandwich? Is there anything that is utterly impossible, not just highly improbable?
mods: I’m a newbie, if I’m in the wrong spot, please redirect as needed, thanks.
No, the nuclear bonding energy of aluminum (or any other atom) is far too high to be overwhelmed by any physical forces you could conceivably apply to it. It’s far, far easier to break the weaker electrostatic bonds between the atoms, so that’s what goes first when you tear it.
Welcome, Dan Turk. By the way, I don’t think it makes any difference if you tear the foil for a sandwich or a hat. Dan didn’t mention hats at all, so this is officially a tangent. Don’t let me distract you…just act normally. We’re just not- talking about foil hats, how 'bout you?
now im pretty sure there are some impossible things. one that comes to mind is for me to never have started typing this sentence (a theory i have, probably improperly, deemed retrospective impossibility)
Fission requires that intramolecular bonds be broken within the atom. Tearing, something involves intermolecular bonds between two different atoms or molecules. Here is a related question however that your question has caused me to ponder: The Earth is constantly being bombarded with high energy cosmic rays from distant celestial objects. Most of these rays are dispersed by the Earth’s magnetic field. However, what would happen if a particularly strong cosmic ray (say from a Super Nova) struck an atom of Uranium 238 in just the right manner? Could an atomic reaction occur? Would it have to hit a heavy metal or could something like Nitrogen be split?
Don’t get carried away with the “nothing is impossible, only highly improbable” line.
That applies to the second law of thermodynamics which stated roughly is that heat will not flow from a high temerature to a low temperature unless energy is expended to make it do so.
In other words if there is a saucer of 15 C water sitting on the counter in 25 C. air temperature it will not get colder of its own accord. But this is only highly improbable. On the molecular level the air and the water molecules have an energy distribution about their respective means. The mean for the air is represented by 25 C and that of the water, 15 C. However individual water molecules can be much “hotter” than 25 C and individual air molecules can be much “colder” than 15 C. It is not impossible that just by chance in a majority of the times a water molecule at the surface collides with an air molecule, the water molecule is hotter and gives up energy to the air molcule making the water colder. However it is so improbable that if every particle in the universe were a saucer of water and they had all been sitting on the counter under the conditions stated since the big bang I suspect that the chances are close to zero that a single saucer of water would have gotten colder.
Despite the above possibility, it is still impossible over a period of time to get more energy out of something than is put into it.
Cosmic rays rip things to shreds regularly. Although, at sea-level this usually happens in a boring way.
Muons make up the bulk of the sea-level cosmic ray flux. The energies of these muons is such that they usually stop before they’ve had a chance to affect any nuclei. Once one stops, it either decays (~90%) or gets captured by a proton (~10%). If it gets captured by a proton that’s a part of, say, a carbon-12 nucleus, then that nucleus becomes boron-12, which is an unstable isotope with a half life of 20 milliseconds. This happens in your body once every few minutes, give or take.
More rarely (by a factor of 1000 (a rough estimate)), a sea-level muon will smash a nucleus to bits while in-flight. This usually results in both direct nuclear debris (protons, alphas, …) and a hadronic shower – a jet of mesons resulting from the original muon-quark.
In the upper atmosphere, the cosmic ray flux is dominated by protons and other light nuclei. These cosmic rays bust up nuclei regularly since the energies are higher and, more importantly, since they can interact via the strong force (since they are made of quarks).