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Today.

Today was a day of breakthroughs.

It started innocently enough, with an early bird wake up call at the ungodly hour of 10:30am. A text message from a colleague inquiring about lunch plans was a good way to start the day, and little did I know that it would only get better from there. As the day progressed, I just about finished up my general relativity assignment (in which I spoke like a pirate, and wrote a short story about Captain Kirk and the USS Enterprise), and snagged a delicious cup of coffee from everyone’s favorite coffee shop all before heading off to GR at 3:30.

It was then that the cogs began to spin.

A mere hour and fifteen minutes later, I had another 10 pages of immaculately taken notes, and a head full of ideas on how to resolve some of the field’s most terrible contradictions. Take, for example, some of the biggest issues with Loop Quantum Gravity. For those of you who don’t know, LQG is one of the biggest opponents to String Theory as a quantum theory of gravity (it has about 8% of the market share, where String Theory has 90% and everything else has about 2%). It remedies the singularity problem by showing (in an interesting way) that gravity becomes repulsive on very small length scales (we’re talking Planck-scale here, so don’t even think about trying to reduce your weight during your annual physical). This has the interesting side effect of turning the “Big Bang” into a “Big Bounce” where a “previous universe” collapsed to a near-singularity, and then expanded again into what we’re living in right now.

Sound cool right? Definitely. The only thing is, how do you explain the fact that - according to our most recent estimates of Hubble’s constant - not only is the universe decidedly not collapsing, but worse off it might actually be accelerating in it’s expanse! This means we’re probably not going to end up dealing with a “Big Crunch” which - while good for anything still alive at that point - is bad for LQG. After all, how do you explain that in one universe, there wasn’t enough energy to keep it expanding so it collapsed, but when the same universe went around again for a second (or third, or forth, or nth) time, it suddenly had more than enough energy than it needed? Conservation of energy has something to say about that, and you know what? So do I.

It’s all the fault of a giant, multidimensional pencil! It’s grievous graphite has destroyed our universe and sentenced us (or at least our great^358,483,294,895 grandchildren) to the cold death of the universe! (Though, to be fair, unless we’ve moved into a new solar system by then, we should be more worried about being enveloped by the sun).

Let’s go on a little thought adventure. Picture the universe not as a strangely complex 4-dimensional object suspended in nothingness (nor as an absurd 10, 11, or 13 dimensional object suspended in a sea of 10^(way too many to ever test) possible universes), but rather as a two-dimensional plane. Now, imagine if you will that the customary theory of multiple universes extends here, wherein we might find a number of two dimensional planes representing different universes. Perhaps they overlay one another as would the pages of a book.

Now, what I want you to do is make a model of this on your desk. Go ahead, take a second. It’s not too hard. Grab four or five sheets of paper, layer them on top of another, and then grab a soda because you’re done. Next, I want you to find the nearest pencil (if you don’t have one a pen will do). Now, hold the paper in such a way that you can punch the pencil through it without damaging anything.

Now punch the pencil through the paper.

No. You’re going to want to use the sharp end, try again.

Okay good.

Did you hurt yourself?

That’s okay, I’ll wait.

…

Alright, hopefully you put a band-aid on that. You really shouldn’t have put the paper on your thigh. I mean, where did you think the pencil was going to go? I’m trying to illustrate a point, not show by some freak twist of reality that paper will somehow be strong enough to stop a speeding pencil. Geeze. Anyway, if you remove the pencil (and ignore the blood stains) what you’ll notice is that the paper bends down. That’s what happened to our universe! All sorts of dark energy must be bleeding into the universe from our neighboring universes because some douchebag created a rift between the universe because they stabbed us with a giant pencil!

I hope they stabbed themselves in their leg too.

That wasn’t all though. Through a combined discussion with Josh and Jamison I determined that a space rhinoceros’s favorite food is tachyons, and that they can interact with them because thanks to a charm in Exalted they can move faster than the speed of light. Which means - assuming the minimum requirements for Wind-Racing Essence Infusion - a space rhinoceros must have a stamina of at least 67,061,659. This means that if a Lunar were to take the form of one, they would have a ludicrous lethal soak of 33,530,830 (since Exalts get to round up).

A stamina value that high would allow them to move faster than the speed of light according to the charm’s use, thus allowing them to interact with tachyons. This opens up a whole new group of questions though, like “if they can eat tachyons, what the hell are they doing gobbling up the particle pairs formed at the border of black holes?”

Huey’s theory on Hawking Radiation might be in grave danger.

All of this before 6:00 too. What a great day.

[Edit: Of course, just so we're all on the same page, don't cite any of this in a scientific paper. I'm pretty sure it'll get you laughed at, in the same way Josh and I laughed at each other for discussing it this afternoon.]

Tabletop RPGs, pseudoscience exalted, Geek, jamison, josh, pseudoscience

You lied to me CNN! Barack Obama didn’t spend his inauguration day giving speeches and eating at fancy luncheons, he was saving the day with his new partner: Spiderman! Dammit, I knew I liked this guy for a reason. How could I have missed something like that? Our President is a freakin superhero! And I was so sure that he was just your mild-mannered political upstart that changed history.

Well, though I might have been unaware of all of that, this much is for sure. Barack Obama isn’t wasting any time.

Just look at him! By the time he was 24 hours into his tenure as the President of the United States he put together a draft executive order to shut down Guantanamo Bay, froze terrorism trials so the system can be evaluated, cut the fiscal projections for White House staff by capping a number of salaries that are probably already paying these people more than they deserve, eliminated avenues through which political operators could remain incognito and by doing so ensuring a higher degree of transparency in Washington, spoke to the leaders of Egypt and Jordan, came down hard on lobbyists that want to work with this new government, set up a meeting to discuss a responsible withdrawal from Iraq, started up a committee to take action on the failing economy, and still had the time to share a luncheon with selected members of Congress (poor Teddy Kennedy), have his first dance with his wife as Mr. and Mrs. President, took the time to swear in a few cabinet members and he still probably found some time to get to sleep.

You know, of all the run on sentences in my life (and I’ve written a great many), I think I’m most proud of that one. It feels damn good to be an American right now. I mean, at this rate he should have this whole mess cleaned up by what? Next Tuesday? Well, you can sign me up for the “I’ve still got three years and fifty-one weeks left of my Presidency and jack-shit left to do” party he’s probably going to throw next week. I’ll have to pick up a six pack or two, but that’s okay, he’s worth it. It’s the least I can do for a guy who pal’s around with Spiderman.

Here’s lookin’ to the future. Cheers!

Politics Geek, obama, Politics

My roommate and I were sharing a male bonding moment over a Sci-Fi Channel showing of Total Recall, and the following dialogue came up:

The TV: Good, now take the pill and put it in your mouth… swallow it!
Adam: It goes without saying, but “it’s a trap!”
Me: Your tastebuds can’t repel that magnitude of flavor!

Given a set of basis elements {you’ve seen Total Recall, you’re any kind of Star Wars fan, you’ve seen the Robot Chicken Star Wars episode}, the preceding dialogue will make sense if and only if your experiences (set in the plane of entertainment) have real-valued components in each of these bases. Add in the fact that just beforehand we managed to slip in a timely “why oh why didn’t I take the blue pill?” and you’ll get a feeling of just how epic this viewing of Total Recall was.

But guess what: that’s not why I’m writing (surprise!!). Instead, as I was wandering into the bathroom shortly after the above interchange, I had a thought: why is it that the visions of the future from the past are always so. god-damned. wrong. I know this isn’t an original thought, and I know it’s hard to predict the future, but is it so wrong to expect that society would improve the way it does simple things as time goes on? Example: automobile design. Why the fuck would you design non-aerodynamic cars in the future? Is there some kind of special anti-friction coating you put on everything so you can make it look like whatever you want? Seriously. Don’t be dumb. If you’re going to envision the future, picture a place where science continues to seek to improve the world around us by laying the groundwork for new, efficient technology that builds on concept’s we’re already aware of.

With that said, Total Recall is still a kick ass movie, and I have to say… to their credit, they got a few things right. *cackle*

Geek, Rant Geek, Rant, scifi