2045 What Black Hole?

Monday, September 29, 2008

Thinking about the collider. If it did happen to create a black hole that didn't disintegrate and swallowed the universe, would we notice?

Movies always show people being stretched as they're being sucked in, and shrieking in pain, but really, I don't know if you'd notice a thing. It's not like your nerve fibers are being stretched. Think of it this way - if overnight, some space was added to every particle, atom, molecule, everything, inside and out, so that everything was twice the size it had been, as long as everything, inside and outside of everything, including you of course, got "bigger", but still retained exactly the same relationship to everything else, would you notice? Maybe not.

So if everything got "smaller", like packed closer together, but all the relationships stayed the same, maybe you wouldn't notice. That would be like being sucked into and being inside a black hole. Maybe the sun would look funny for a nanosecond, before it got sucked in, too, but if all the relationships stayed the same, maybe reactions stay the same, too, and it would continue to "shine" in our "sky". Everything would be "denser" than it was, but in relation to everything else, it's the same.

Sorta like when you travel fast and time slows down, you don't notice because everything traveling with you has slowed down too. I think. I guess.

Maybe it's already happened a time or two or three, the black hole, I mean. Maybe we're in one. How would we know?

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Another LSAT question. This one is bugging me because required information isn't given.

Example 7
Alice, Bobby, Carole, Dwight, and Elva were playing a game with marbles. When the game ended Alice wrote down the following information:
- Carole has more than Alice and Bobby together
- Alice's total is the same as the total of Dwight and Elva together
- Alice has more marbles than Bobby
- Everyone has at least one marble

Question 2
If Dwight has more marbles than Bobby, who ended the game with the least marbles?
A. Alice
B. Bobby
C. Carole
D. Dwight
E. Elva

We know that Carole and Alice both have more than Dwight, and we're to assume that Dwight has more than Bobby, so the question becomes, "Who has the least, Bobby or Elva?"

Let's allow Bobby one marble, and Elva two.
Then Dwight must have at least three marbles, Alice five, and Carole more than six.
That works.

Let's allow Elva one marble, and Bobby two.
Then Dwight must have at least three marbles, Alice four, and Carole more than six.
That works.

Both allocations fit all the rules given, and the premise in Question 2. (Question 1 should have no effect, since it simply asked who ended up with the most marbles, which is obviously Carole.)

Either Bobby or Elva could be the least!

It annoyed me enormously. Then I looked at:

Question 3
Which one of the following is a possible order of children going from most marbles to least?
A. Alice, Bobby, Carole, Dwight, Elva
B. Carole, Alice, Bobby, Elva, Dwight
C. Carole, Bobby, Alice, Dwight, Elva
D. Dwight, Carole, Alice, Bobby, Elva
E. Carole, Alice, Elva, Bobby, Dwight

Carole>Alice+Bobby, therefore
Carole>Alice and Carole>Bobby, and
Alice=Dwight+Elva, therefore
Alice>Dwight, Carole>Dwight, Alice>Elva, Carole>Elva, and
Alice>Bobby
and that's all the players, and that's all we know.
We don't know anything about the relationship between Dwight, Bobby, and Elva.

It's obvious (unless I'm missing something significant) that Carole is the highest, so that eliminates answers A and D, leaving B, C, and E. At this point it's obvious (unless I'm missing something significant) that we aren't to use the supposition in Question 2, because all three of our choices show Dwight as lower than Bobby.

Alice has more than Bobby, so C is out, leaving B and E.

Assigning marbles to the kids in B and E, we can have
B. >9, 5, 4, 3, 2 -or-
E. >9, 6, 4, 3, 2

Both of them check out as possible valid orders, highest to lowest.

So, what's the answer? Do they allow multiple answers? Am I missing something?

I think I found the black hole. Help!

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Actually, I often read and hear things too literally. Last night on the news, a woman was saying that someone had broken into her home "and stole her jury box." I was wondering if she'd bought it at an auction or something, like people who buy church pews, it might be fun to have a jury box if you had like a home theater or something and then she went on to say her "best jury was in it" --- and my head exploded.

It took me a few seconds to figure it out.
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