My previous attempt at a reply didn’t make much sense. And this is deep enough into the thread that I won’t bother with rot13.
Let’s try again:
The description given by Thomas accurately models how each individual particle accelerates (towards the origin). It thus also accurately models how the center of mass accelerates in the non-limiting case.
I think Richard Kennaway’s answer is correct and it seems to me to be opposite to your original answer. The non-limiting case is not interesting. The question is whether there is a coherent extension of Newtonian mechanics to infinitely many particles. It does cover this case and the center of mass still works.
My previous attempt at a reply didn’t make much sense. And this is deep enough into the thread that I won’t bother with rot13.
Let’s try again: The description given by Thomas accurately models how each individual particle accelerates (towards the origin). It thus also accurately models how the center of mass accelerates in the non-limiting case.
I think Richard Kennaway’s answer is correct and it seems to me to be opposite to your original answer. The non-limiting case is not interesting. The question is whether there is a coherent extension of Newtonian mechanics to infinitely many particles. It does cover this case and the center of mass still works.
I think this paradox shows that the answer is no.
I can’t figure out what this sentence was intended to mean.
Richard Kennaway’s answer