Quote:
Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
I hate to dignify this discussion with my own contribution, but that "slight shift" is, dare I say, illusory.
When Bilmore lifts Bilmore's opponent off the mat in the first place in preparation for the coup de grace, Bilmore would essentially push the Earth down and out of its orbit slightly in order to purchase the requisite potential energy to reside in Bilmore's opponent. At the moment Bilmore releases Bilmore's opponent into brief gravitational free fall, the Earth would be infinitesimally attracted by the mass of Bilmore's opponent (and vice versa, only less infinitesimally for Bilmore's opponent vis-a-vis the Earth, if you catch my drift, har har), and Bilmore's opponent and the mat would necessarily meet in the exact middle, cancelling action and reaction.
In short, the "slight shift of the earth" Bilmore's expecting is only in relation to where the Earth would be if Bilmore's opponent and the Earth could sustain permanent gravitational free fall toward each other. From a distant observer's frame of reference, Bilmore's opponent and the Earth would return to precisely the points in orbit that they were in when the whole enterprise started, accounting for the constant rotation and revolution of the Earth in the meantime.
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Ah! The simplicity of a world without entropy. The flaw in your analysis, your Waterloo here as it were, is your attempt to oversimply the problem to eliminate unknown variables. Here, you seem to assume Billmore and opponent as points of force application. Of course, Billmore would be applying these forces through his shoes, and the frictional losses here would vary dependant on his shoe selection that day. If this Paigow woman is correct, and Billmore is wearing white buck loafers, there would be a good deal of sliding. Also, the plaid polyester suit would restrict much of the presumed lifting, creating only more frictional losses. Much of the potential force reactions against the earth would instead manifest themselves in so much raising of dust, and wearing thin of the underarm areas in an otherwise still good jacket.
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