I heard it a long long time ago in a physics lecture, but I since verified it. The variation in where a ball is struck is magnified by the ratio of (distance to the next collision) / (radius of a ball), which could be a factor of 30. Seven collisions gives you a factor of about 22 billion.
I also tried the same calculation with the motion of gas molecules. If the ambient gravitational field is varied by an amount corresponding to the displacement of one electron by one Planck length at a distance equal to the radius of the observable universe, I think I got about 30 or 40 collisions before the extrapolation breaks down.
I heard it a long long time ago in a physics lecture, but I since verified it. The variation in where a ball is struck is magnified by the ratio of (distance to the next collision) / (radius of a ball), which could be a factor of 30. Seven collisions gives you a factor of about 22 billion.
I also tried the same calculation with the motion of gas molecules. If the ambient gravitational field is varied by an amount corresponding to the displacement of one electron by one Planck length at a distance equal to the radius of the observable universe, I think I got about 30 or 40 collisions before the extrapolation breaks down.
Awesome. Thanks for the spot-check, I’ll probably use this as a dramatic example going forward.