Is it true that there is a small chance of anything happening?

Question

For example, if you were to lean against a wall forever, wouldn't you eventually go through it?

Answer 1

Great question. Mathematically, it is expedient to calculate probabilities with a infinite pool of possible results. However, causality rules the day for organizing those possibilities into realistic probabilities. So, one can safely say that the probability of all the QED probabilities inherent in your hand and the wall suddenly violating the molecular and chemical structures involved would be equally infinite. It is unreasonable to estimate. Just like the ridiculous hundred monkeys producing Shakespeare if given enough time. The reality is this: a hundred monkeys in one room die of pretty quickly. Oh, what about just a random stream of letters? Who constructs this random string? And keeps it running? They will all be extinct before it spits out half a page of text. Two probabilities that need infinite time to realize a result do not sum to a possibility in this case.

Answer 2

No.

IT can sometimes seem that way when you look at things using the ideas of statistical mechanics. For instance, if I took two bottles of gas and linked them then there is a finite chance (about 1 in 10^100) that all of the molecules will end up at some time in one of the bottles. The vastly low probability - which means it would take 10^50 times the life of the universe to happen - is why we never see it.

But this can only happen if the random event still obeys laws such as conservation of energy, momentum etc. The above example does. But, for instance, the gas above could NOT suddenly and all on its own drop 100C in temperature (conservation of energy) or start moving at 30 mph to the left (conservation of momentum).

Answer 3

I don't think so.... unless the wall got very old and then started to crack and you fell down on it, but then it wouldn't be your doing but time's doing. I don't think that's true because there is the most minute chance that I can fly in the next minute because there is no way that can happen. No chance. But then physics is a rather complicated subject and I guess if life was able to appear then I guess crazy things could happen. Don't know.

Answer 4

In an infinite number of universes, one (or more) versions of you will phase through the wall when you lean against it, but the likelihood of you in particular leaning up against a wall and falling through it, even if you leaned against it for the rest of your life, are infinitely small as well.

Answer 5

If I remember correctly, it is the "uncertainty principle" in the micro-world that has been extended to ourselves, that brings this concept about. Because nothing can be completely known in the world of the atom, that means by association, the same principle applies to ourselves.

This is sorta like the probability of all the atoms in a single closed box at some point in time all being on one side with nothing on the other. You gotta let these guys live in their own world. The "probability" of them escaping is very small.

Answer 6

Yes. Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Mechanics.

Answer 7

Theoretical physics does allow mathematically for almost anything to happen. A whale suddenly poofing into existence in your bedroom, the universe suddenly spontaneously turns into jello pudding, every human on earth grows a horn out their forehead...stuff like that. The probability of these occurrences is so minutely infinitesimal so as to be impossible however.

Answer 8

anything is possible. maybe the wall has a crack, and leaning on it might make it fall. you never know.

Answer 9

no, for instance, there is no chance that two mutually exclusive things can happen at the same time

but many things that seem impossible, are actually just very, very, unlikely

Answer 10

No...the wall is much too strong.