I have no problem with that (you disagreeing that is). However, the fact
that you and your classmates missed the point does not refute my conclusion.
The law of conservation of momentum is a fundamental physical law; so much
of modern science is based on it that if it were proven to be false, or if
exceptions were to be found, the vast majority of accepted theories in most
disciplines would either collapse or have to be reconfigured. On top of
that, the law of conservation of momentum is so inexorably tied into the
very nature of the physical universe itself that if even one exception was
found we would have to rethink our concepts of what the universe is really
like.
That's why I called such an exception a non-natural phenomenon, because it
would violate the very nature of the physical universe as we understand it
to be. And if that were the only exception extant, it would be more likely
to be a non-natural anomaly rather than a representation of new physical
laws.
Kevin L. O'Brien