I am the guy who dreamed up the paradox. I was in Dr. nave's modern physics, and he showed us the pole-barn paradox. I thought up the bug-rivet paradox as a more challenging version, then asked Dr. Nave and the rest of the class what happens. He couldn't answer at the time, but he put it on his website. I never anticipated the life my question would take on.
What's your view on the problem, Dawoool? Thanks for the interesting scenario, by the way. And welcome to sciforums.
The paradox is ill-conceived imo. The faulty and unstated premise being the rivet is infinitely stiff, which contradicts relativity at the outset. Nevertheless no-one bothered to consider a frame in which bug-in-hole and rivet have equal and opposite velocities. In that frame, it's manifestly obvious the bug is safe - IF the fantasy of an infinitely stiff rivet (and hole) is assumed.
That is the solution to the paradox. It is not obvious that rigidity is the crux of the issue. Not until you have the answer.
Ah good! I also learned as an aside that one or two current notable names in another forum signed up here many moons ago....
http://math.ucr.edu/~jdp/Relativity/Bug_Rivet.html THE PARADOX: Is the bug touched by the rivet? Yes --- before the collision in one frame and after the collision in the other frame! In fact, special relativity requires that after collision, the rivet shank length increases beyond its at-rest length d. To require rigidity and to reject "rivet-stretching," is to accept the fact that the future affects the present. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Relativ/bugrivet.html http://www.engr.mun.ca/~ggeorge/astron/BugRivet.pdf
Which then morphs into a 'real-world counterexample' to a so-called Tachyonic antitelephone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyonic_antitelephone
