this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2024
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A paper, by philosopher of physics John Norton, describes a scenario in which a ball is placed at the apex of a perfectly smooth and frictionless dome. The paper argues that, according to Newton's laws, the ball will spontaneously start rolling down the dome at some random time, without any external force acting on it. Norton's claim suggests that Newtonian mechanics may not a deterministic theory or that there are multiple possible interpretations.

https://sites.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/DomePSA2006.pdf

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 18 hours ago

Thing is that we don't have a complete model of physics either. Whether universe is deterministic or not is still an open question, we don't know if quantum effects are a result of hidden variables or genuine randomness.