Atkinson, David and Johnson, Porter (2010) Nonconservation of Energy and Loss of Determinism. II. Colliding with an open set. [Published Article]
Abstract
An actual infinity of colliding balls can be in a configuration in which the laws of mechanics lead to logical inconsistency. It is argued that one should therefore limit the domain of these laws to a finite, or only a potentially infinite number of elements. With this restriction indeterminism, energy nonconservation and {\em creatio ex nihilo} no longer occur. A numerical analysis of finite systems of colliding balls is given, and the asymptotic behaviour that corresponds to the potentially infinite system is inferred.
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