What is truly impossible?

I used to roll back my eyes when I hear parents telling their kids that they can achieve anything they want, and as long as they really work hard for it, nothing is impossible. Or impossible is nothing, as adidas puts it.

But this is clearly giving the child false hope. What if the child wants to be superman? Or he or she wants to be like Captain Jane and pilots a starship? Some may say that the statement means "anything...but within reason". But I beg to differ, it sounds pretty absolute to me, there is no disclaimer whatsoever...and you cannot expect a child to ask if there is a fine print some where for what you said.

Eventually, these kids grew up and they went to take part in America idol and got a taste of reality from Simon (at least some did, the rest still firmly BELIEVES).

But, critically speaking, is the statement: nothing is impossible, really crap?

These days, i think "nothing is impossible" may well hold water.

Often, we mistake what is highly improbable to be impossible. Possible for the Sun not to rise tomorrow? Unlikely, but NOT IMPOSSIBLE. There can be a hundred reasons for this to happen, all very unlikely, but none impossible.

Travel back in time...quantum mechanics says its highly improbable, which means....possible. Jump to the moon....all the mass in your body to be converted to energy, this is more than possible, it could get you to Mars maybe....so, possible too.

How about rolling a dice 1000 times and getting the same outcome every single time? Nature had beaten far unlikely odds...consider the assembly of molecules into amino acids, proteins and enzymes and DNA...how about life itself?

We draw the line between what is possible and impossible based on our current understanding of the workings of the physical world. This is very reasonable, what else should we base it upon?

But, as our understanding of the physical world continues to change and expand, so should this line be re-defined. Maybe we should always leave room for the currently impossible to have a fighting chance...by simply acknowledging its possibility, however crazy it can be.

So, back to becoming superman....the parent should say: " I have no idea now how that can be done, but hey, don't let me discourage you. But please don't start wearing your underwear on the outside just yet."

Re-inventing the wheel....or not?

One of the greatest human inventions is the wheel.

And this begs the question: if the wheel is so useful and great, why haven’t nature thought of it before (read evolution), it certainly has enough time to do all the thinking.

Well, the answer may surprise you. Nature had thought of it already.

Enter the bacteria’s flagella! It is a freely rotating piece of tail-like structure that projects from the cell body, use for locomotion. In simple terms, it’s a motor propeller.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagella

Scientist are even studying this to develop and build nano-sized motors.

Anyhow, wheel structures are still not seen in macro organisms. The problem of entangled blood vessels, the need to suspend a freely rotating axial still buffers the greatest innovator. Some also argue that there is really no real edge as the wheel needs complimenting accessories like roads to be truelly effective.

Puts a new light to the phrase “reinventing the wheel”.

be careful what you are encouraging....

I read some where that there was once this paleontologist who suspects that a certain area buries beneath it are tons of dinosaur bones. He is not sure (nobody can be 100% sure of such things), and neither does he has the money to hired diggers to do the physical work for him.

So, he thought of a smart idea. He placed a reward for every piece of dinosaur found and bought to him.

This is very smart. He is not paying for the work, he is only paying for the results. No risk for him whatsoever. Clearly defined KPI and motivation factors.

So what's wrong with this idea? The flaws later reveals itself.

Turns out there were in fact buried bones in the area. But the people who finds them breaks them into smaller pieces in order to maximize their profit.

Bad news for the paleontologist.