The Limits of Impossible

Indeed, eight years before Orville and Wilbur Wright took their home-built flyer to the sandy dunes of Kitty Hawk, cranked up the engine, and took off into the history books, Lord Kelvin, the President of the Royal Society of England made a forceful declaration. "Heavier than air flying machines are impossible," said this very powerful man of science....Rumor has it Lord Kelvin was slightly in error.

The above statement from 1896 was not made by a common man. Indeed, he could not be more uncommon — William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin. He is the one responsible for the Kelvin scale, the most scientific way to measure temperature.

But even he was dead sure that human flight was just impossible. He was dead sure, and reiterated the same six years later.

"No; I think it cannot be done. No balloon and no aeroplane will ever be practically successful."

Just 2 years later, the Wright Brothers proved him wrong.

For a long time, the Four-minute mile was deemed impossible. Until it wasn’t. For over 6 decades, sprinters and coaches all over the globe sought to conquer this seemingly impossible summit.

Bryant reminds us that runners had been chasing the goal seriously since at least 1886, and that the challenge involved the most brilliant coaches and gifted athletes in North America, Europe, and Australia. “For years milers had been striving against the clock, but the elusive four minutes had always beaten them,” he notes. “It had become as much a psychological barrier as a physical one. And like an unconquerable mountain, the closer it was approached, the more daunting it seemed.”

As Bryant correctly noted, it was as much a mental/psychological barrier as it was physical.

After he slew the dragon in 1954, the barrier has been broken over 1400 times. Once people knew it could be done, they went ahead and did it.

The same applies to the Two-hour Marathon, a feat recently achieved by Eliud Kipchoge.

You can see the progression of the marathon times over the years. Kipchoge might just have broken the mental barrier and we might see a lot more sub-2 hour marathons in the future.

Finally, last year, "The Beast", Eddie Hall, broke the deadlift record and another mental barrier when he conquered the 500kg mark. Before him, the record was 465 kg.

Whenever anyone has dared to go after something deemed impossible, or outside of human limits, they have often been ridiculed by the larger public. Just look around you. Your smartphone is more powerful than the computer that launched the Apollo mission. We have 3D printing technology. The Voyager 2 recently left our solar system. Before cars were invented, large metropolitan cities were at the risk of being drowned in horse manure. Diseases like Polio and Tuberculosis that killed millions have almost been eradicated for good. We have conquered the highest mountain on the planet, and sent probes to our neighbor Mars. The great Einstein thought nuclear power could never be tamed.

Everything seems impossible until someone does it.