Space, Time & Stephen Hawking Jive

[FNHinVA]

Actually, one of Stephen Hawking's graduate assistants.

I have a physics question that has baffled me for many years. I posed it to a few physicists and got unsatisfactory answers. So I decided to email Stephen Hawking. (Why fool around with amateurs?)

As expected, he did not answer. But one of his graduate assistants did. But first, the question...

I am going to do a "time trial" over the distance A to B (A|B). I will maintain a constant rate of speed. Obviously, in order to traverse A|B, I must first traverse half of A|B which I will do in half the time. Just as obviously, I must also traverse half of the half of A|B. (You see where this is going...)

Since I have in front of me an infinite number of "halves" I must traverse (and take time doing it), how will I ever pass the B finish line? Obviously, it will take forever. But, because I know I can, in fact, traverse A|B in a finite amount of time, I know it doesn't take forever.

The answer from Mr. Hawking's graduate assistant involved calculus, Planck lengths and the uncertainty principle.

Essentially, what all of this (and he) said was "when things get that small, we can no longer measure them so we don't know what the hell is going on."

Anyone have a better answer?