It can look dumb, but I always had this question as a kid, what physical principles would prevent this?
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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Even if the stick were made of the hardest known material, the information would take about 7 hours to travel from Earth to the Moon, according to the equation relating Young's modulus and the material's density.
Also, even if you could somehow pull the stick, Newton’s Second Law (F = ma) tells us that the force required to move it depends on its mass and desired acceleration. If the stick were made of steel with a 1 cm radius, it would have a mass of approximately 754×10^6kg due to its enormous length. Now, if you tried to give it just a tiny acceleration of 0.01 m/s² (barely noticeable movement), the required force would be:
F = (754×10^6) × (0.01) = 7.54×10^6 N
That’s 7.54 MN, equivalent to the thrust of a Saturn V rocket, just to make it move at all! And that’s not even considering internal stresses, gravity differences, or the fact that the force wouldn’t propagate instantly through the stick.