this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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That strongly depends on your reference frame. As in, what system are you looking at? Where are you drawing your box? If your box is around the entire universe, then yes, every action is a reaction stemming from the big bang, with very few notable exceptions pertaining to black holes that I wont go into.
However, if your reference frame is a hand and a ball, then the hand pushing the ball is an original action, the ball moving its reaction.
What do you mean about the black holes?
It's also worth noting, I think, that the universe might be spatially infinite, which makes "box" a funny way of saying it.
Well, its kind of a matter of debate really on the black holes, and its in regard to the law of conservation of information. I'll freely admit, we are getting to the edge of my understanding here, but essentially black holes very nature of being inescapable by anything means that information, once inside, is permanently lost.
The reason hawking radiation was such a big deal is that it found a way for this information to potentially be released into the universe once again. That radiation is actually a pair of "virtual particles" (which aren't real particles, more a mathematical trick to describe complex interactions between different fields and their particles). One of the particles "pops in" to existence on the inside of the event horizon and one on the outside, thus separating the pair. One falls in, one escapes. But since they didn't annihilate the energy that the now real particle has must come from the black hole, hence, the energy has escaped the black hole.
Now, is that "action" a reaction, or is it a brand new action with no inciting incident? I dont have an answer, and its up to speculation because hawking radiation may or may not even exist. But its our best guess.
I mean, action and reaction aren't rigorously defined concepts. When a nucleus spontaneously decays, you could just as well say that's an action with no reaction by that measure, but it happens all over the place. Vacuum polarisation from an electromagnetic field is even closer.
While I would agree, both of those are theoretical - just like my example. The truth is we haven't, and can't, test these things and see their mechanisms take place because of their timescales. But it is a really fun thought experiment
What if the ball was talking shit?
Or if the ball was thrown at them..
The hand was guided by neurological impulse
Not if your chosen reference frame is a hand and a ball, as per the example
I mean aren't you saying: "Something can happen without a cause if we just ignore the cause."
I read ops question as about reality, not hypothetical universes that contain a hand that moves a without an arm or brain attached.
This isn't the Addams Family.
I get the confusion, but a reference frame is a very important limitation for calculating what you need. Its not about whether the arm exists behind the hand, but whether its effects are important for the calculation.
For the sake of the hand pushing the ball, its not. Only the momentum of the hand and the inertia of the ball are important.
I understand very well, and also understand anyone with the capacity will understand the frame of reference doesn't explain the phenomenon. It's how we went from four corners to heliocentrism to galaxy, universe, and multiverse.
The neurological impulse is not part of the frame of reference, just the hand. That's the point of a frame of reference.
Don't leave us hanging! Go into it!
In physics, we can't really consider the universe to be deterministic at the quantum scale. We only think it must be when we try to look at particle interactions as a scaled down billards game.