To: maceng2 who wrote (1574480 ) 12/2/2025 4:33:14 AM From: Maple MAGA 2 RecommendationsRecommended By
Read Replies (2) | Respond to The basic physics buzzwords in that rant (Hamiltonians, conservation of momentum, “treat the system as a whole”) are loosely right, but the way they’re applied to JFK is muddled and overblown. It’s not a solid refutation of a shot from behind.“Hamiltonians Canonical Equations describe ‘the many bodied problem’ in great detail… You are not looking at the system (bullet plus jfk) as a whole.” Hamiltonian mechanics is just another way of writing classical mechanics in terms of energy and momenta instead of forces and accelerations. It doesn’t give you different answers than Newton’s laws – it’s a reformulation, not a magic upgrade. Wikipedia+2Chemistry LibreTexts+2 You can treat a bullet + skull + brain as a multi-body system in any of the standard formalisms (Newtonian, Lagrangian, or Hamiltonian). They’re equivalent if you set them up correctly. Wikipedia+1 So “you didn’t use Hamiltonian mechanics, therefore your physics is wrong” is just posturing. The choice of formalism doesn’t decide the answer; the actual inputs and assumptions do. spirit (treat the whole system) is fine; the “Hamiltonian or bust” part is puffery.“You cannot just take one bit of the egg… You have to consider the egg as a whole, even when it's exploded into bits. Momentum is still conserved…” Momentum is conserved for the whole closed system , not for each fragment. The sum of momenta of all the pieces after the explosion equals the total momentum before. Velocity is indeed a vector (magnitude + direction), but there is no law of “conservation of velocity.” Only momentum and (in many cases) energy are conserved. do often focus on one part (say, one fragment) while still keeping track of the rest of the system via constraints . That’s completely legitimate; you don’t have to write out a 3D Hamiltonian for every blood droplet to get a physically correct picture. Nobel laureate Luis Alvarez modeled the system as three interacting masses: the bullet, a forward-moving jet of ejected brain/blood, and the remaining part of the head. He showed that if enough material is expelled forward (in the bullet’s direction), the remainder (the head) can indeed recoil backward – a literal rocket effect. aarclibrary.org+1 Later work using more detailed dynamical models of the head motion also found that the observed backward motion in the film is compatible with a shot from behind , given the jet effect plus neuromuscular reactions. PMC+1 Those analyses already treat the system as more than “just bullet + rigid head” – they explicitly include the ejected jet of material as another mass carrying momentum. That is exactly the “consider the whole system” approach the rant is demanding. Whether you write the equations in Newtonian or Hamiltonian form doesn’t change the conclusion: there’s no fundamental physics reason the observed motion requires a front shot. do treat the system properly, and they find that a rear shot plus jet effect can explain the motion.“All political assassinations in the USA are the result of some ‘lone nut’? … How many times are you going to be told that before you wtfu?” The Warren Commission concluded Oswald acted alone. The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1979 concluded Oswald fired the shots that killed JFK, but suggested a “high probability” of a second gunman based on controversial acoustic evidence. HISTORY+2National Archives+2 Later re-analysis of the dictabelt acoustic data found that the supposed extra “gunshot” impulses were recorded about a minute after the actual shooting, so the evidence for a second shooter from that channel is very weak. Wikipedia anyone else was involved at some level is debated historically, but the physics of the head shot itself does not require a second shooter . True-ish: You should treat the bullet + head + ejected fragments as a whole system if you’re asking questions about momentum/energy. Momentum is conserved. Velocity is a vector. Hamiltonian mechanics is a powerful and elegant way to formulate classical mechanics. False / misleading: That not using Hamiltonian mechanics somehow invalidates standard ballistics or wound analysis. That you “cannot” analyze individual parts (like one part of the skull) while still respecting global conservation laws. Physicists do this all the time. That the backward motion of JFK’s head proves a shot from the front and cannot be explained by a bullet from behind. The published physics says otherwise. PMC+1 Not physics at all: The rant about lone nuts and “wtfu” is opinion, not a scientific argument. without invoking any mystical Hamiltonian wizardry.
