How can powerful telekinesis avoid violating Newton's 3rd Law?

Characters with powerful telekinesis are portrayed as being able to exert a superhuman force using only their minds. For example, they can throw a car.

Based on what I remember from high school physics, throwing a 2000 kg vehicle to 10 m/s requires an impulse of 20000 Nâ‹…s. But Newton's 3rd Law states that momentum is always conserved and every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So exerting a 20000 Nâ‹…s impulse"”whether by gravitational, magnetic, or other means"”would throw an 80 kg superhero backwards at 250 m/s. Even if they could survive that, it would be awfully inconvenient to walk back to the battlefield.

No violation of Newton's 3rd law has ever been observed by experiment, so even saying that our hero can draw on a vast energy source doesn't solve the problem.

So how could our hero throw a car without also throwing himself? Can the momentum be put somewhere else? Or is there a way for our hero to use his powers to protect himself from harm?

_{Note: I'm not looking for a scientific explanation for where the superpower itself comes from, just a little logical consistency. Truth be told, I mostly want a headcanon for when I watch X-Men films.}

posted over 5 years ago

Cheezey‭

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