ABSTRACT
I read recently about a baby who was trapped during the night of February 26, 2011, in a locked bank vault in Conyers, Georgia. Naturally, I wondered why that had happened. How had the baby managed to get into the vault? More simply, we might ask, “Why was there someone in the bank vault sometime that night (rather than no one in the vault at any time that night)?” The following, even if true, cannot answer this question:
Smith was in the center of the vault 1 trillionth (10–12) of a second before 3 AM. It is a law of nature that nothing travels faster than the speed of light (3 × 108 meters per second), so in 10–12 second, an object can traverse at most 3 × 10–4 meters (0.3 millimeters). The center of the vault is more than 0.3 millimeters from any wall or door. Therefore, considering Smith’s initial position and this law, Smith had to be inside the vault at 3 AM. Since 3 AM is at night, it follows that there was someone in the vault sometime that night.
