Time Log Episode 1!

Hey everyone! So I know that I should be writing the follow-up post to "And He Built A Crooked House", but instead I got excited about writing this new miniseries! So come watch and enjoy! Thanks as always, and let your friends know that I exist...

--J

A Story of the Future (Part 1)

This story below is called "--And He Built A Crooked House". If you have read it before, then I'd still recommend reading it again, and if you haven't read it yet, keep reading! This was one of the first physics/math-related stories that I ever read (closely followed by The Martian Chronicles [Ray Bradbury. Depressing at points but brilliant] and The Foundation Trilogy [Isaac Asimov. Not depressing and a fantastic sci-fi trilogy]). This story mainly talks about the weird and not-so-serious implications of the fourth spatial dimension. After I finish posting the whole story (which may take a few posts) I will add a special post afterwards to try to explain what a tesseract (a.k.a. a hypercube) is! The story is in three parts and go continuously from part to part (just for your convenience!). Enjoy the story.

—And He Built a Crooked House
by Robert A. Heinlein


Americans are considered crazy anywhere in the world.

They will usually concede a basis for the accusation but point to California as the focus of the infection. Californians stoutly maintain that their bad reputation is derived solely from the acts of the inhabitants of Los Angeles County. Angelenos will, when pressed, admit the charge but explain hastily, "It's Hollywood. It's not our fault—we didn't ask for it; Hollywood just grew."

The people in Hollywood don't care; they glory in it. If you are interested, they will drive you up Laurel Canyon "—where we keep the violent cases." The Canyonites—the brown-legged women, the trunks-clad men constantly busy building and rebuilding their slap-happy unfinished houses—regard with faint contempt the dull creatures who live down in the flats, and treasure in their hearts the secret knowledge that they, and only they, know how to live.

Lookout Mountain Avenue is the name of a side canyon which twists up from Laurel Canyon. The other Canyonites don't like to have it mentioned; after all, one must draw the line somewhere!

High up on Lookout Mountain at number 8775, across the street from the Hermit—the original Hermit of Hollywood—lived Quintus Teal, graduate architect.

Even the architecture of southern California is different. Hot dogs are sold from a structure built like and designated "The Pup." Ice cream cones come from a giant stucco ice cream cone, and neon proclaims "Get the Chili Bowl Habit!" from the roofs of buildings which are indisputably chili bowls. Gasoline, oil, and free road maps are dispensed beneath the wings of tri-motored transport planes, while the certified rest rooms, inspected hourly for your comfort, are located in the cabin of the plane itself. These things may surprise, or amuse, the tourist, but the local residents, who walk bareheaded in the famous California noonday sun, take them as a matter of course.

Quintus Teal regarded the efforts of his colleagues in architecture as faint-hearted, fumbling, and timid.

· · · · ·

"What is a house?" Teal demanded of his friend, Homer Bailey.

"Well—" Bailey admitted cautiously, "speaking in broad terms, I've always regarded a house as a gadget to keep off the rain."

"Nuts! You're as bad as the rest of them."

"I didn't say the definition was complete—"

"Complete! It isn't even in the right direction. From that point of view we might just as well be squatting in caves. But I don't blame you," Teal went on magnanimously, "you're no worse than the lugs you find practicing architecture. Even the Moderns—all they've done is to abandon the Wedding Cake School in favor of the Service Station School, chucked away the gingerbread and slapped on some chromium, but at heart they are as conservative and traditional as a county courthouse. Neutra! Schindler! What have those bums got? What's Frank Lloyd Wright got that I haven't got?"

"Commissions," his friend answered succinctly.

"Huh? Wha' d'ju say?" Teal stumbled slightly in his flow of words, did a slight double take, and recovered himself. "Commissions. Correct. And why? Because I don't think of a house as an upholstered cave; I think of it as a machine for living, a vital process, a live dynamic thing, changing with the mood of the dweller—not a dead, static, oversized coffin. Why should we be held down by the frozen concepts of our ancestors? Any fool with a little smattering of descriptive geometry can design a house in the ordinary way. Is the static geometry of Euclid the only mathematics? Are we to completely disregard the Picard-Vessiot theory? How about modular system?—to say nothing of the rich suggestions of stereochemistry. Isn't there a place in architecture for transformation, for homomorphology, for actional structures?"

"Blessed if I know," answered Bailey. "You might must as well be talking about the fourth dimension for all it means to me."

"And why not? Why should we limit ourselves to the—Say!" He interrupted himself and stared into distances. "Homer, I think you've really got something. After all, why not? Think of the infinite richness of articulation and relationship in four dimensions. What a house, what a house—" He stood quite still, his pale bulging eyes blinking thoughtfully.

Bailey reached up and shook his arm. "Snap out of it. What the hell are you talking about, four dimensions? Time is the fourth dimension; you can't drive nails into that."

Teal shrugged him off. "Sure. Sure. Time is afourth dimension, but I'm thinking about a fourth spatial dimension, like length, breadth, and thickness. For economy of materials and convenience of arrangement you couldn't beat it. To say nothing of the saving of ground space—you could put an eight-room house on the land now occupied by a one-room house. Like a tesseract—"

"What's a tesseract?"

"Didn't you go to school? A tesseract is a hypercube, a square figure with four dimensions to it, like a cube has three, and a square has two. Here, I'll show you." Teal dashed out into the kitchen of his apartment and returned with a box of toothpicks which he spilled on the table between them, brushing glasses and a nearly empty Holland gin bottle carelessly aside. "I'll need some plasticine. I had some around here last week." He burrowed into a drawer of the littered desk which crowded one corner of his dining room and emerged with a lump of oily sculptor's clay. "Here's some."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'll show you." Teal rapidly pinched off small masses of the clay and rolled them into pea-sized balls. He stuck toothpicks into four of these and hooked them together into a square. "There! That's a square."

"Obviously."

"Another one like it, four more toothpicks, and we make a cube." The toothpicks were now arranged in the framework of a square box, a cube, with the pellets of clay holding the corners together. "Now we make another cube just like the first one, and the two of them will be two sides of the tesseract."

Bailey started to help him roll the little balls of clay for the second cube, but became diverted by the sensuous feel of the docile clay and started working and shaping it with his fingers.

"Look," he said, holding up his effort, a tiny figurine, "Gypsy Rose Lee."

"Looks more like Gargantua; she ought to sue you. Now pay attention. You open up one corner of the first cube, interlock the second cube at the corner, and then close the corner. Then take eight more toothpicks and join the bottom of the first cube to the bottom of the second, on a slant, and the top of the first to the top of the second, the same way." This he did rapidly, while he talked.

"What's that supposed to be?" Bailey demanded suspiciously.

"That's a tesseract, eight cubes forming the sides of a hypercube in four dimensions."

"It looks more like a cat's cradle to me. You've only got two cubes there anyhow. Where are the other six?"

"Use your imagination, man. Consider the top of the first cube in relation to the top of the second; that's cube number three. Then the two bottom squares, then the front faces of each cube, the back faces, the right hand, the left hand—eight cubes." He pointed them out.

"Yeah, I see 'em. But they still aren't cubes; they're whatchamucallems—prisms. They are not square, they slant."

"That's just the way you look at it, in perspective. If you drew a picture of a cube on a piece of paper, the side squares would be slaunchwise, wouldn't they? That's perspective. When you look at a four-dimensional figure in three dimensions, naturally it looks crooked. But those are all cubes just the same."

"Maybe they are to you, brother, but they still look crooked to me."

Teal ignored the objections and went on. "Now consider this as the framework of an eight-room house; there's one room on the ground floor—that's for service, utilities, and garage. There are six rooms opening off it on the next floor, living room, dining room, bath, bedrooms, and so forth. And up at the top, completely enclosed and with windows on four sides, is your study. There! How do you like it?"

"Seems to me you have the bathtub hanging out of the living room ceiling. Those rooms are interlaced like an octopus."

"Only in perspective, only in perspective. Here, I'll do it another way so you can see it." This time Teal made a cube of toothpicks, then made a second of halves of toothpicks, and set it exactly in the center of the first by attaching the corners of the small cube to the large cube by short lengths of toothpick. "Now—the big cube is your ground floor, the little cube inside is your study on the top floor. The six cubes joining them are the living rooms. See?"

Bailey studied the figure, then shook his head. "I still don't see but two cubes, a big one and a little one. Those other six things, they look like pyramids this time instead of prisms, but they still aren't cubes."

"Certainly, certainly, you are seeing them in different perspective. Can't you see that?"

"Well, maybe. But that room on the inside, there. It's completely surrounded by the thingamujigs. I thought you said it had windows on four sides."

"It has—it just looks like it was surrounded. That's the grand feature about a tesseract house, complete outside exposure for every room, yet every wall serves two rooms and an eight-room house requires only a one-room foundation. It's revolutionary."

"That's putting it mildly. You're crazy, bud; you can't build a house like that. That inside room is on the inside, and there she stays."

Teal looked at his friend in controlled exasperation. "It's guys like you that keep architecture in its infancy. How many square sides has a cube?"

"Six."

"How many of them are inside?"

"Why, none of 'em. They're all on the outside."

"All right. Now listen—a tesseract has eight cubical sides, all on the outside. Now watch me. I'm going to open up this tesseract like you can open up a cubical pasteboard box, until it's flat. That way you'll be able to see all eight of the cubes." Working very rapidly he constructed four cubes, piling one on top of the other in an unsteady tower. He then built out four more cubes from the four exposed faces of the second cube in the pile. The structure swayed a little under the loose coupling of the clay pellets, but it stood, eight cubes in an inverted cross, a double cross, as the four additional cubes stuck out in four directions. "Do you see it now? It rests on the ground floor room, the next six cubes are the living rooms, and there is your study, up at the top."

Bailey regarded it with more approval than he had the other figures. "At least I can understand it. You say that is a tesseract, too?"

"That is a tesseract unfolded in three dimensions. To put it back together you tuck the top cube onto the bottom cube, fold those side cubes in till they meet the top cube and there you are. You do all this folding through a fourth dimension of course; you don't distort any of the cubes, or fold them into each other."

Bailey studied the wobbly framework further. "Look here," he said at last, "why don't you forget about folding this thing up through a fourth dimension—you can't anyway—and build a house like this?"

"What do you mean, I can't? It's a simple mathematical problem—"

"Take is easy, son. It may be simple in mathematics, but you could never get your plans approved for construction. There isn't any fourth dimension; forget it. But this kind of a house—it might have some advantages."

Checked, Teal studied the model. "Hm-m-m—Maybe you got something. We could have the same number of rooms, and we'd save the same amount of ground space. Yes, and we would set that middle cross-shaped floor northeast, southwest, and so forth, so that every room would get sunlight all day long. That central axis lends itself nicely to central heating. We'll put the dining room on the northeast and the kitchen on the southeast, with big view windows in every room. Okay, Homer, I'll do it! Where do you want it built?"

"Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I didn't say you were going to build it for me—"

"Of course I am. Who else? Your wife wants a new house; this it it."

"But Mrs. Bailey wants a Georgian house—"

"Just an idea she has. Women don't know what they want—"

"Mrs. Bailey does."

"Just some idea an out-of-date architect has put in her head. She drives a new car, doesn't she? She wears the very latest styles—why should she live in an eighteenth century house? This house will be even later than this year's model; it's years in the future. She'll be the talk of the town."

"Well—I'll have to talk to her."

"Nothing of the sort. We'll surprise her with it. Have another drink."

"Anyhow, we can't do anything about it now. Mrs. Bailey and I are driving up to Bakersfield tomorrow. The company's bringing in a couple of wells tomorrow."

"Nonsense. That's just the opportunity we want. It will be a surprise for her when you get back. You can just write me a check right now, and your worries are over."

"I oughtn't to do anything like this without consulting her. She won't like it."

"Say, who wears the pants in your family anyhow?"

The check was signed about halfway down the second bottle.

[End Part 1]

A Story of the Future (Part 2)

—And He Built a Crooked House
by Robert A. Heinlein

Things are done fast in southern California. Ordinary houses there are usually built in a month's time. Under Teal's impassioned heckling the tesseract house climbed dizzily skyward in days rather than weeks, and its cross-shaped second story came jutting out at the four corners of the world. He had some trouble at first with the inspectors over these four projecting rooms but by using strong girders and folding money he had been able to convince them of the soundness of this engineering.

By arrangement, Teal drove up in front of the Bailey residence the morning after their return to town. He improvised on his two-tone horn. Bailey stuck his head out the front door. "Why don't you use the bell?"

"Too slow," answered Teal cheerfully. "I'm a man of action. Is Mrs. Bailey ready? Ah, there you are, Mrs. Bailey! Welcome home, welcome home. Jump in, we've got a surprise for you!"

"You know Teal, my dear," Bailey put in uncomfortably.

Mrs. Bailey sniffed. "I know him. We'll go in our own car, Homer."

"Certainly, my dear."

"Good idea," Teal agreed; " 'sgot more power than mine; we'll get there faster. I'll drive, I know the way." He took the keys from Bailey, slid into the driver's seat, and had the engine started before Mrs. Bailey could rally her forces.

"Never have to worry about my driving," he assured Mrs. Bailey, turning his head as he did so, while he shot the powerful car down the avenue and swung onto Sunset Boulevard, "it's a matter of power and control, a dynamic process, just my meat—I've never had a serious accident."

"You won't have but one," she said bitingly. "Will you please keep your eyes on the traffic?"

He attempted to explain to her that a traffic situation was a matter, not of eyesight, but intuitive integration of courses, speeds, and probabilities, but Bailey cut him short. "Where is the house, Quintus?"

"House?" asked Mrs. Bailey suspiciously. "What's this about a house, Homer? Have you been up to something without telling me?"

Teal cut in with his best diplomatic manner. "It certainly is a house, Mrs. Bailey. And what a house! It's a surprise for you from a devoted husband. Just wait till you see it—"

"I shall," she agreed grimly. "What style is it?"

"This house sets a new style. It's later than television, newer than next week. It must be seen to be appreciated. By the way," he went on rapidly, heading off any retort, "did you folks feel the earthquake last night?"

"Earthquake? What earthquake? Homer, was there an earthquake?"

"Just a little one," Teal continued, "about two A.M.If I hadn't been awake, I wouldn't have noticed it."

Mrs. Bailey shuddered. "Oh, this awful country! Do you hear that, Homer? We might have been killed in our beds and never have known it. Why did I ever let you persuade me to leave Iowa?"

"But my dear," he protested hopelessly, "you wanted to come out to California; you didn't like Des Moines."

"We needn't go into that," she said firmly. "You are a man; you should anticipate such things. Earthquakes!"

"That's one thing you needn't fear in your new home, Mrs. Bailey," Teal told her. "It's absolutely earthquake-proof; every part is in perfect dynamic balance with every other part."

"Well, I hope so. Where is this house?"

"Just around this bend. There's the sign now." A large arrow sign, of the sort favored by real estate promoters, proclaimed in letters that were large and bright even for southern California:


· · · · ·

THE HOUSE OF THE FUTURE!!!

COLOSSAL—AMAZING—REVOLUTIONARY
SEE HOW YOUR GRANDCHILDREN WILL LIVE!
Q. TEAL, ARCHITECT


· · · · ·

"Of course that will be taken down," he added hastily, noting her expression, "as soon as you take possession." He slued around the corner and brought the car to a squealing halt in front of the House of the Future. "Voilà!" He watched their faces for response.

Bailey stared unbelievingly, Mrs. Bailey in open dislike. They saw a simple cubical mass, possessing doors and windows, but no other architectural features, save that it was decorated in intricate mathematical designs. "Teal," Bailey asked slowly, "what have you been up to?"

Teal turned from their faces to the house. Gone was the crazy tower with its jutting second-story rooms. No trace remained of the seven rooms above ground floor level. Nothing remained but the single room that rested on the foundations. "Great jumping cats!" he yelled, "I've been robbed!"

He broke into a run.

But it did him no good. Front or back, the story was the same: the other seven rooms had disappeared, vanished completely. Bailey caught up with him, and took his arm. "Explain yourself. What is this about being robbed? How come you built anything like this—it's not according to agreement."

"But I didn't. I built just what we had planned to build, an eight-room house in the form of a developed tesseract. I've been sabotaged; that's what it is! Jealousy! The other architects in town didn't dare let me finish this job; they knew they'd be washed up if I did."

"When were you last here?"

"Yesterday afternoon."

"Everything all right then?"

"Yes. The gardeners were just finishing up."

Bailey glanced around at the faultlessly manicured landscaping. "I don't see how seven rooms could have been dismantled and carted away from here in a single night without wrecking this garden."

Teal looked around, too. "It doesn't look it. I don't understand it."

Mrs. Bailey joined them. "Well? Well? Am I to be left to amuse myself? We might as well look it over as long as we are here, though I'm warning you, Homer, I'm not going to like it."

"We might as well," agreed Teal, and drew a key from his pocket with which he let them in the front door. "We may pick up some clues."

The entrance hall was in perfect order, the sliding screens that separated it from the garage space were back, permitting them to see the entire compartment. "This looks all right," observed Bailey. "Let's go up on the roof and try to figure out what happened. Where's the staircase? Have they stolen that, too?"

"Oh, no," Teal denied, "look—" He pressed a button below the light switch; a panel in the ceiling fell away and a light, graceful flight of stairs swung noiselessly down. Its strength members were the frosty silver of duralumin, its tread and risers transparent plastic. Teal wriggled like a boy who has successfully performed a card trick, while Mrs. Bailey thawed perceptibly.

It was beautiful.

"Pretty slick," Bailey admitted. "Howsomever it doesn't seem to go any place—"

"Oh, that—" Teal followed his gaze. "The cover lifts up as you approach the top. Open stair wells are anachronisms. Come on." As predicted, the lid of the staircase got out of their way as they climbed the flight and permitted them to debouch at the top, but not, as they had expected, on the roof of the single room. They found themselves standing in the middle one of the five rooms which constituted the second floor of the original structure.

For the first time on record Teal had nothing to say. Bailey echoed him, chewing on his cigar. Everything was in perfect order. Before them, through an open doorway and translucent partition lay the kitchen, a chef's dream of up-to-the-minute domestic engineering, monel metal, continuous counter space, concealed lighting, functional arrangement. On the left the formal, yet gracious and hospitable dining room awaited guests, its furniture in parade-ground alignment.

Teal knew before he turned his head that the drawing room and lounge would be found in equally substantial and impossible existence.

"Well, I must admit this is charming," Mrs. Bailey approved, "and the kitchen is just too quaint for words—though I would never have guessed from the exterior that this house had so much room upstairs. Of course some changes will have to be made. That secretary now—if we moved it overhere and put the settle over there—"

"Stow it, Matilda," Bailey cut in brusquely. "Wha'd'yuh make of it, Teal?"

"Why, Homer Bailey! The very id—"

"Stow it, I said. Well, Teal?"

The architect shuffled his rambling body. "I'm afraid to say. Let's go on up."

"How?"

"Like this." He touched another button; a mate, in deeper colors, to the fairy bridge that had let them up from below offered them access to the next floor. They climbed it, Mrs. Bailey expostulating in the rear, and found themselves in the master bedroom. Its shades were drawn, as had been those on the level below, but the mellow lighting came on automatically. Teal at once activated the switch which controlled still another flight of stairs, and they hurried up into the top floor study.

"Look, Teal," suggested Bailey when he had caught his breath, "can we get to the roof above this room? Then we could look around."

"Sure, it's an observatory platform." They climbed a fourth flight of stairs, but when the cover at the top lifted to let them reach the level above, they found themselves, not on the roof, but standing in the ground floor room where they had entered the house.

Mr. Bailey turned a sickly gray. "Angels in heaven," he cried, "this place is haunted. We're getting out of here." Grabbing his wife he threw open the front door and plunged out.

Teal was too much preoccupied to bother with their departure. There was an answer to all this, an answer that he did not believe. But he was forced to break off considering it because of hoarse shouts from somewhere above him. He lowered the staircase and rushed upstairs. Bailey was in the central room leaning over Mrs. Bailey, who had fainted. Teal took in the situation, went to the bar built into the lounge, and poured three fingers of brandy, which he returned with and handed to Bailey. "Here—this'll fix her up."

Bailey drank it.

"That was for Mrs. Bailey," said Teal.

"Don't quibble," snapped Bailey. "Get her another." Teal took the precaution of taking one himself before returning with a dose earmarked for his client's wife. He found her just opening her eyes.

"Here, Mrs. Bailey," he soothed, "this will make you feel better."

"I never touch spirits," she protested, and gulped it.

"Now tell me what happened," suggested Teal. "I thought you two had left."

"But we did—we walked out the front door and found ourselves up here, in the lounge."

"The hell you say! Hm-m-m—wait a minute." Teal went into the lounge. There he found that the big view window at the end of the room was open. He peered cautiously through it. He stared, not out at the California countryside, but into the ground floor room—or a reasonable facsimile thereof. He said nothing, but went back to the stair well which he had left open and looked down it. The ground floor room was still in place. Somehow, it managed to be in two different places at once, on different levels.

He came back into the central room and seated himself opposite Bailey in a deep, low chair, and sighted him past his upthrust bony knees. "Homer," he said impressively, "do you know what has happened?"

"No, I don't—but if I don't find out pretty soon, something is going to happen and pretty drastic, too!"

"Homer, this is a vindication of my theories. This house is a real tesseract."

"What's he talking about, Homer?"

"Wait, Matilda—now Teal, that's ridiculous. You've pulled some hanky-panky here and I won't have it—scaring Mrs. Bailey half to death, and making me nervous. All I want is to get out of here, with no more of your trapdoors and silly practical jokes."

"Speak for yourself, Homer," Mrs. Bailey interrupted, "I was not frightened; I was just took all over queer for a moment. It's my heart; all of my people are delicate and high-strung. Now about this tessy thing—explain yourself, Mr. Teal. Speak up."

He told her as well as he could in the face of numerous interruptions the theory back of the house. "Now as I see it, Mrs. Bailey," he concluded, "this house, while perfectly stable in three dimensions, was not stable in four dimensions. I had built a house in the shape of an unfolded tesseract; something happened to it, some jar or side thrust, and it collapsed into its normal shape—it folded up." He snapped his fingers suddenly. "I've got it! The earthquake!"

"Earthquake?"

"Yes, yes, the little shake we had last night. From a four-dimensional standpoint this house was like a plane balanced on edge. One little push and it fell over, collapsed along its natural joints into a stable four-dimensional figure."

"I thought you boasted about how safe this house was."

"It is safe—three-dimensionally."

"I don't call a house safe," commented Bailey edgily, "that collapses on the first little temblor."

"But look around you, man!" Teal protested. "Nothing has been disturbed, not a piece of glassware cracked. Rotations through a fourth dimension can't affect a three-dimensional figure any more than you can shake letters off a printed page. If you had been sleeping in here last night, you would never have awakened."

"That's just what I'm afraid of. Incidentally, has your great genius figured out any way for us to get out of this booby trap?"

"Huh? Oh, yes, you and Mrs. Bailey started to leave and landed back up here, didn't you? But I'm sure there is no real difficulty—we came in, we can go out. I'll try it." He was up and hurrying downstairs before he had finished talking. He flung open the front door, stepped through, and found himself staring at his companions, down the length of the second floor lounge. "Well, there does seem to be some slight problem," he admitted blandly. "A mere technicality, though—we can always go out a window." He jerked aside the long drapes that covered the deep French windows set in one side wall of the lounge. He stopped suddenly.

"Hm-m-m," he said, "this is very interesting—very."

"What is it?" asked Bailey, joining him.

"This." The window stared directly into the dining room, instead of looking outdoors. Bailey stepped back to the corner where the lounge and the dining room joined the central room at ninety degrees.

"But that can't be," he protested, "that window is maybe fifteen, twenty feet from the dining room."

"Not in a tesseract," corrected Teal. "Watch." He opened the window and stepped through, talking back over his shoulder as he did so.

From the point of view of the Baileys he simply disappeared.

But not from his own viewpoint. It took him some seconds to catch his breath. Then he cautiously disentangled himself from the rosebush to which he had become almost irrevocably wedded, making a mental note the while never again to order landscaping which involved plants with thorns, and looked around him.

He was outside the house. The massive bulk of the ground floor room thrust up beside him. Apparently he had fallen off the roof.

He dashed around the corner of the house, flung open the front door and hurried up the stairs. "Homer!" he called out, "Mrs. Bailey! I've found a way out!"

Bailey looked annoyed rather than pleased to see him. "What happened to you?"

"I fell out. I've been outside the house. You can do it just as easily—just step through those French windows. Mind the rosebush, though—we may have to build another stairway."

"How did you get back in?"

"Through the front door."

"Then we shall leave the same way. Come, my dear." Bailey set his hat firmly on his head and marched down the stairs, his wife on his arm.

Teal met them in the lounge. "I could have told you that wouldn't work," he announced. "Now here's what we have to do: As I see it, in a four-dimensional figure a three-dimensional man has two choices every time he crosses a line of juncture, like a wall or a threshold. Ordinarily he will make a ninety-degree turn through the fourth dimension, only he doesn't feel it with his three dimensions. Look." He stepped through the very window that he had fallen out of a moment before. Stepped through and arrived in the dining room, where he stood, still talking.

"I watched where I was going and arrived where I intended to." He stepped back into the lounge. "The time before I didn't watch and I moved on through normal space and fell out of the house. It must be a matter of subconscious orientation."

"I'd hate to depend on subconscious orientation when I step out for the morning paper."

"You won't have to; it'll become automatic. Now to get out of the house this time—Mrs. Bailey, if you will stand here with your back to the window, and jump backward, I'm pretty sure you will land in the garden."

Mrs. Bailey's face expressed her opinion of Teal and his ideas. "Homer Bailey," she said shrilly, "are you going to stand there and let him suggest such—"

"But Mrs. Bailey," Teal attempted to explain, "we can tie a rope on you and lower you down eas—"

"Forget it, Teal," Bailey cut him off brusquely. "We'll have to find a better way than that. Neither Mrs. Bailey nor I are fitted for jumping."

Teal was temporarily nonplussed; there ensued a short silence. Bailey broke it with, "Did you hear that, Teal?"

"Hear what?"

"Someone talking off in the distance. D'you s'pose there could be someone else in the house, playing tricks on us, maybe?"

"Oh, not a chance. I've got the only key."

"But I'm sure of it," Mrs. Bailey confirmed. "I've heard them ever since we came in. Voices. Homer, I can't stand much more of this. Do something."

"Now, now, Mrs. Bailey," Teal soothed, "don't get upset. There can't be anyone else in the house, but I'll explore and make sure. Homer, you stay here with Mrs. Bailey and keep an eye on the rooms on this floor." He passed from the lounge into the ground floor room and from there to the kitchen and on into the bedroom. This led him back to the lounge by a straight-line route, that is to say, by going straight ahead on the entire trip he returned to the place from which he started.

"Nobody around," he reported. "I opened all of the doors and windows as I went—all except this one." He stepped to the window opposite the one through which he had recently fallen and thrust back the drapes.

He saw a man with his back toward him, four rooms away. Teal snatched open the French window and dived through it, shouting, "There he goes now! Stop thief!"

The figure evidently heard him; it fled precipitately. Teal pursued, his gangling limbs stirred to unanimous activity, through drawing room, kitchen, dining room, lounge—room after room, yet in spite of Teal's best efforts he could not seem to cut down the four-room lead that the interloper had started with.

He saw the pursued jump awkwardly but actively over the low sill of a French window and in so doing knock off the hat. When he came up to the point where his quarry had lost his headgear, he stopped and picked it up, glad of an excuse to stop and catch his breath. He was back in the lounge.

"I guess he got away from me," he admitted. "Anyhow, here's his hat. Maybe we can identify him."

Bailey took the hat, looked at it, then snorted, and slapped it on Teal's head. It fitted perfectly. Teal look puzzled, took the hat off, and examined it. On the sweat band were the initials "Q.T." It was his own.

Slowly comprehension filtered through Teal's features. He went back to the French window and gazed down the series of rooms through which he had pursued the mysterious stranger. They saw him wave his arms semaphore fashion. "What are you doing?" asked Bailey.

"Come see." The two joined him and followed his stare with their own. Four rooms away they saw the backs of three figures, two male and one female. The taller, thinner of the men was waving his arms in a silly fashion.

Mrs. Bailey screamed and fainted again.

[End Part 2]

A Story of the Future (Part 3)

—And He Built a Crooked House
by Robert A. Heinlein

Some minutes later, when Mrs. Bailey had been resuscitated and somewhat composed, Bailey and Teal took stock. "Teal," said Bailey, "I won't waste any time blaming you; recriminations are useless and I'm sure you didn't plan for this to happen, but I suppose you realize we are in a pretty serious predicament. How are we going to get out of here? It looks now as if we would stay until we starve; every room leads into another room."

"Oh, it's not that bad. I got out once, you know."

"Yes, but you can't repeat it—you tried."

"Anyhow we haven't tried all the rooms. There's still the study."

"Oh, yes, the study. We went through there when we first came in, and didn't stop. Is it your idea that we might get out through its windows?"

"Don't get your hopes up. Mathematically, it ought to look into the four side rooms on this floor. Still we never opened the blinds; maybe we ought to look."

" 'Twon't do any harm anyhow. Dear, I think you had best just stay here and rest—"

"Be left alone in this horrible place? I should say not!" Mrs. Bailey was up off the couch where she had been recuperating even as she spoke.

They went upstairs. "This is the inside room, isn't it, Teal?" Bailey inquired as they passed through the master bedroom and climbed on up toward the study. "I mean it was the little cube in your diagram that was in the middle of the big cube, and completely surrounded."

"That's right," agreed Teal. "Well, let's have a look. I figure this window ought to give into the kitchen." He grasped the cords of Venetian blinds and pulled them.

It did not. Waves of vertigo shook them. Involuntarily they fell to the floor and grasped helplessly at the pattern on the rug to keep from falling. "Close it! Close it!" moaned Bailey.

Mastering in part a primitive atavistic fear, Teal worked his way back to the window and managed to release the screen. The window had lookeddown instead of out, down from a terrifying height.

Mrs. Bailey had fainted again.

Teal went back after more brandy while Bailey chafed her wrists. When she had recovered, Teal went cautiously to the window and raised the screen a crack. Bracing his knees, he studied the scene. He turned to Bailey. "Come look at this, Homer. See if you recognize it."

"You stay away from there, Homer Bailey!"

"Now, Matilda, I'll be careful." Bailey joined him and peered out.

"See up there? That's the Chrysler Building, sure as shooting. And there's the East River, and Brooklyn." They gazed straight down the sheer face of an enormously tall building. More than a thousand feet away a toy city, very much alive, was spread out before them. "As near as I can figure it out, we are looking down the side of the Empire State Building from a point just above its tower."

"I don't think so—it's too perfect. I think space is folded over through the fourth dimension here and we are looking past the fold."

"You mean we aren't really seeing it?"

"No, we're seeing it all right. I don't know what would happen if we climbed out this window, but I for one don't want to try. But what a view! Oh, boy, what a view! Let's try the other windows."

They approached the next window more cautiously, and it was well that they did, for it was even more disconcerting, more reason-shaking, than the one looking down the gasping height of the skyscraper. It was a simple seascape, open ocean and blue sky—but the ocean was where the sky should have been, and contrariwise. This time they were somewhat braced for it, but they both felt seasickness about to overcome them at the sight of waves rolling overhead; they lowered the blind quickly without giving Mrs. Bailey a chance to be disturbed by it.

Teal looked at the third window. "Game to try it, Homer?"

"Hrrumph—well, we won't be satisfied if we don't. Take it easy." Teal lifted the blind a few inches. He saw nothing, and raised it a little more—still nothing. Slowly he raised it until the window was fully exposed. They gazed out at—nothing.

Nothing, nothing at all. What color is nothing? Don't be silly! What shape is it? Shape is an attribute of something. It had neither depth nor form. It had not even blackness. It was nothing.

Bailey chewed at his cigar. "Teal, what do you make of that?"

Teal's insouciance was shaken for the first time. "I don't know, Homer, I don't rightly know—but I think that window ought to be walled up." He stared at the lowered blind for a moment. "I think maybe we looked at a place where space isn't.We looked around a fourth-dimensional corner and there wasn't anything there." He rubbed his eyes. "I've got a headache."

They waited for a while before tackling the fourth window. Like an unopened letter, it might not contain bad news. The doubt left hope. Finally the suspense stretched too thin and Bailey pulled the cord himself, in the face of his wife's protests.

It was not so bad. A landscape stretched away from them, right side up, and on such a level that the study appeared to be a ground floor room. But it was distinctly unfriendly.

A hot, hot sun beat down from lemon-colored sky. The flat ground seemed burned a sterile, bleached brown and incapable of supporting life. Life there was, strange stunted trees that lifted knotted, twisted arms to the sky. Little clumps of spiky leaves grew on the outer extremities of these misshapen growths.

"Heavenly day," breathed Bailey. "Where is that?"

Teal shook his head, his eyes troubled. "It beats me."

"It doesn't look like anything on Earth. It looks more like another planet—Mars, maybe."

"I wouldn't know. But, do you know, Homer, it might be worse than that, worse than another planet, I mean."

"Huh? What's that you say?"

"It might be clear out of space entirely. I'm not sure that that is our sun at all. It seems too bright."

Mrs. Bailey had somewhat timidly joined them and now gazed out at the outré scene. "Homer," she said in a subdued voice, "those hideous trees—they frighten me."

He patted her hand.

Teal fumbled with the window catch.

"What are you doing?" Bailey demanded.

"I thought if I stuck my head out the window I might be able to look around and tell a bit more."

"Well—all right," Bailey grudged, "but be careful."

"I will." He opened the window a crack and sniffed. "The air is all right, at least." He threw it open wide.

His attention was diverted before he could carry out his plan. An uneasy tremor, like the first intimation of nausea, shivered the entire building for a long second, and was gone.

"Earthquake!" They all said at once. Mrs. Bailey flung her arms around her husband's neck.

Teal gulped and recovered himself, saying:

"It's all right, Mrs. Bailey. This house is perfectly safe. You know you can expect settling tremors after a shock like last night." He had just settled his features into an expression of reassurance when the second shock came. This one was no mild shimmy but the real seasick roll.

In every Californian, native born or grafted, there is a deep-rooted primitive reflex. An earthquake fills him with soul-shaking claustrophobia which impels him blindly to get outdoors! Model Boy Scouts will push aged grandmothers aside to obey it. It is a matter of record that Teal and Bailey landed on top of Mrs. Bailey. Therefore, she must have jumped through the window first. The order of precedence cannot be attributed to chivalry; it must be assumed that she was in readier position to spring.

They pulled themselves together, collected their wits a little, and rubbed sand from their eyes. Their first sensations were relief at feeling the solid sand of the desert land under them. Then Bailey noticed something that brought them to their feet and checked Mrs. Bailey from bursting into the speech that she had ready.

"Where's the house?"

It was gone. There was no sign of it at all. They stood in the center of flat desolation, the landscape they had seen from the window. But, aside from the tortured, twisted trees there was nothing to be seen but the yellow sky and the luminary overhead, whose furnacelike glare was already almost insufferable.

Bailey looked slowly around, then turned to the architect.

"Well, Teal?" His voice was ominous.

Teal shrugged helplessly. "I wish I knew. I wish I could even be sure that we were on Earth."

"Well, we can't stand here. It's sure death if we do. Which direction?"

"Any, I guess. Let's keep a bearing on the sun."


· · · · ·

They had trudged on for an undetermined distance when Mrs. Bailey demanded a rest. They stopped. Teal said in an aside to Bailey, "Any ideas?"

"No … no, none. Say, do you hear anything?"

Teal listened. "Maybe—unless it's my imagination."

"Sounds like an automobile. Say, it is an automobile!"

They came to the highway in less than another hundred yards. The automobile, when it arrived, proved to be an elderly, puffing light truck, driven by a rancher. He crunched to a stop at their hail. "We're stranded. Can you help us out?"

"Sure. Pile in."

"Where are you headed?"

"Los Angeles."

"Los Angeles? Say, where is this place?"

"Well, you're right in the middle of the Joshua Tree National Forest."


· · · · ·

The return was as dispiriting as the Retreat from Moscow. Mr. and Mrs. Bailey sat up in front with the driver while Teal bumped along in the body of the truck, and tried to protect his head from the sun. Bailey subsidized the friendly rancher to detour to the tesseract house, not because they wanted to see it again, but in order to pick up their car.

At last the rancher turned the corner that brought them back to where they had started. But the house was no longer there.

There was not even the ground floor room. It had vanished. The Baileys, interested in spite of themselves, poked around the foundations with Teal.

"Got any answers for this one, Teal?" asked Bailey.

"It must be that on that last shock it simply fell through into another section of space. I can see now that I should have anchored it at the foundations."

"That's not all you should have done."

"Well, I don't see that there is anything to get down-hearted about. The house was insured, and we've learned an amazing lot. There are possibilities, man, possibilities! Why, right now I've got a great new revolutionary idea for a house—"

Teal ducked in time. He was always a man of action.

The End

*********************************************************************************************************************************************

As always, thank you to all who read this (we are fast approaching 750 views! 1,000 views is well in sight.). I will update soon enough with a more comprehensive explanation of what a tesseract/hypercube is (with pictures and animated photos). Keep a finger on the wire! This next post is bound to blow your mind! Hope everyone enjoyed the story.

--J

Insult to Injury (feat. Patrick Stewart!)

Okay, so I know that the title of this post might be a little misleading, but let me explain.

This and this annoy me (don't worry, they open in a new window and they're just articles). I could go on and on, listing site after site, article after article on the elusive and now-discovered particle, the Higgs Boson. Don't get me wrong, I am overjoyed that we have found evidence for the Higgs Boson. If it proves to be conclusive and we confirm it based on in-depth analysis of the data then I will dance around the streets and make myself look like an idiot to everyone except those that will feel the same way.

But whereas those two previous articles annoyed me, THIS aggravates me. Why? Let me sum up the article if you don't want to read it with the only important information that everyone immediately takes away from it.

1) The page title of the article. Here is a screenshot of the tab open on my computer at the moment:

"Higgs boson found". That's all anyone needs to read!

It simply starts with "Higgs boson found: Scientist.....". That's the first thorn in my side. I'm going to avoid saying what the problem with this is until the end of my short list so that hopefully it makes a more significant impact on you.

2) The big bold audience-attracting title.

Awwwwwwww.....how nice.......

I understand the sentiment here. I really do. I love the fact that in this incredible man's lifetime, he saw his work come to fruition. But let's take a closer look, shall we?

They did?

This gets under my skin. This genuinely makes me think that this article was not written for an all-inclusive audience, but rather for an audience with people that really doesn't see the need to take interest in this discovery beyond acknowledging that it happened. I'm fine with people not really taking an interest in the discovery. If you are not scientifically-inclined then good for you, you're not necessarily down the road to self-destruction! However, I do not really appreciate fairly credible news sources releasing stories with titles like this (or at least just in this case alone). Again, I will explain after the list.

3) The very first line of the article.

"The search for the 'God particle' is over."


Uh, I wasn't aware of that. I mean, the current search for it is suspended until we analyze the data more, but as far as I know, the search isn't over.

4) The first remediate phrase.

"However, the teams, which included hundreds of Britons, stopped short of declaring it the Higgs boson, saying more work is needed to confirm its properties."



Finally! That's what I was looking for. Yet, it still bothers me. This is the end of the short list so I can finally bring to bear why this article in particular irks me, whereas the first two I mentioned only annoy me to a small degree.


It is one thing to claim the definitive existence of a newly-supported particle. It is one thing to then make clear the skepticism surrounding this potential new Higgs boson. It is quite another thing to acknowledge the skepticism surrounding the potential new Higgs boson and make it sound as if it is still discovered even though they outright acknowledge that they are still "confirm"ing the particle! Look, I understand that this is a breaking story and is worthy of being in the annals of history for all-time. Again, I am overjoyed at what we found. But let me clarify what we actually found if you don't want to go into the technical/scientific videos surrounding the newly discovered particle. When they attempt to find particles in particle accelerators, what they really do is smash a stream of particles against another stream of particles, and look through the "jets" of energy that come out of the collision to find trails of particles. These collision creates everything from antimatter, to supermassive particles, to miniature black holes (that then emit more particles and energy). From the jets and trails left in the specialized detectors they can find evidence of different particles. From the data they collect on these jets, scientists can determine an astounding number of factors, including electric charge, mass, speed, energy, etc. This data is then correlated to proposed energies of particles that are hypothesized by other scientists. The accuracy of the data found versus the proposed model is then checked by Standard Deviations. Typically a level of 4 to 6 "Sigma" (the greek letter notation for 1 standard deviation) implies that there is a high level of confidence that this is the Higgs boson that has been searched for. This particular finding had a confidence level of 5 sigma. This is amazing and leaves very little room for error.


But here is where I believe the media should have taken this with a grain of salt or at least clearly defined that this is not necessarily "THE" Higgs boson instead of "a" Higgs boson. The reason why I say it may not be "THE" Higgs boson is simply because there are bosons that have multiple different forms. For example, the W boson has two different types: the W+ and the W- boson, which respectively denote a positively-charged and a negatively-charged W boson. We also know that different bosons mediate different particle interactions. They each have different properties. So when certain popular media sources release stories instantly declaim that they've found the Higgs boson, the entire search is over, and everybody can go home and stop arguing about it, you might be able to understand that this gets to me. While there is a fairly reasonable chance that this is the one possible form of Higgs boson that we need to complete the Standard Model of particles, there is still the possibility that this is an exotic form of Higgs boson, or that it isn't in the correct state of energy (the article does point out the fact that scientists were cautious to the fact that it was slightly lighter than what they predicted it would be), or even that *gasp* maybe it's not the Higgs boson?! For all we know (until the scientific community at CERN confirms it), this could be an entirely new type of boson! Do you remember the huge fiasco over the neutrinos that supposedly traveled faster than the speed of light? If you do, do you remember what they found was the cause of the groundbreaking announcement? The team of scientists didn't plug a fiber-optic cable all the way in. The whole debacle resulted in the head scientist overseeing the project stepping down without comment. Further experiments in multiple other labs confirmed that neutrinos still travel at the speed of light. A majority of the embarrassment over the experiment's faulty results must have been highly amplified by the media's coverage of it. I'm not against the media at all. I'd be a hypocrite if I said so. But when major news outlets burst out of the gate with a possible upheaval of an 100-year-old proven theory, an excitement from a community larger than the close-knit international particle physics community builds tension in the air. It's a let-down for not only the scientific community but for the general community when such a possibly-momentous event is undercut by such a (frankly) silly error.


So I'm not saying go out and harass the general media. I'm not trying to in this post. What I am saying, though, is take this with a grain of salt. The "definitive" headlines that some are proposing out there are not necessarily true. Appreciate it when an article acknowledges the skepticism and the room for other possibilities that should be there.


Alright, so let me hopefully clear up any preliminary questions about the Higgs boson. The importance of the Higgs boson is two-fold. All elementary particles at the moment fall under different classifications within something called the Standard Model. While it truly is a boring name, it really is integral to picking apart our universe down to the smallest observable objects. In this case it is what we call Elementary Particles.

Ignore the fact that it says the Higgs boson is yet to be confirmed. Actually, don't. Keep it in mind (as per above). But this is the Standard Model. It contains a classification of every known/observed smallest particle. So if you're wondering why a proton or neutron is not on this chart, it is because they are made up of quarks (u, d, c, s, t, b). A proton has a quark structure of uud (or two up quarks and one down quark). A neutron has the quark structure of udd (or one up quark and two down quarks). Every piece of matter that we know about consists of some combination of Elementary Particles from the Standard Model. So why is the Higgs boson left out of this perfect little box? Easy. Everything has mass, correct? Or, at least, everything that doesn't travel at the speed of light (i.e. neutrinos and photons) has mass, right? Right. Well, what is mass? Many would define it as the weight of a collection of atoms. This is the simplest way to put it, but it is not entirely correct. Weight is relative. Something weighs more in the presence of higher gravity. So let's get a little better definition. Mass is the density of a particle or collection of atoms in a "space". It doesn't "weigh" anything unless in a gravitational field. But it has some sort of density to it. This is much closer and generally, before the potential discovery of the Higgs boson, was the relatively precise way to define mass. However, if the Higgs boson is confirmed, it changes the whole definition. Why? Because when we throw around the term "density" that means that something has to be dense, or else it doesn't make sense! So the Higgs boson, as a force carrier, interacts with other particles in the "Higgs field". This interaction is supposedly what causes mass. If the Higgs boson is confirmed by these results (and not just "a" Higgs boson, remember?), then we have completed the standard model. We can explain all of the particles and interactions simply through this table (plus a slew of other complex equations of course). I am leaving out gravity specifically because as far as we know that could be an entirely new realm of physics, or it could be the density of Higgs boson interactions within the field somehow attracts other Higgs interactions or increases the likelihood of other Higgs interactions the closer particles get to the "Higgs-dense" object. Just an idea, I actually don't really know what I'm proposing...


So what does the Higgs boson mean for the universe in general? Well one important thing about the Higgs boson is that it is indiscriminating when it interacts with matter. Which for our purposes really doesn't mean much, but there are two things in the universe that concern the scientific community that we have not directly observed, and those are dark energy and dark matter. Dark matter is really important because it makes up such a large percentage of our universe! It really is an important focus issue for the scientific community simply because of the fact that 1) We cannot see or observe it directly as far as we know, and 2) The Higgs boson would be the particle that would interact with both "normal" matter (the matter that we are composed of and that we see everyday) and dark matter. As the first article puts it,

"It's like a city with two populations, each speaking a different language, and no translators or bilingual interpreters. The two groups of people go about their separate lives, never directly speaking with each other. Likewise, in our galaxy, dark matter and ordinary matter pass right through each other all the time.

The Higgs boson could be the bilingual particle we've been looking for."

So while this is an exciting and possibly ground-breaking discovery I will leave you with two thoughts. One is presented by the internet's nitpicking, trolling, flaming, and non-sequitur population that we all know and love (this just goes to show how much people that spend way too much time on the internet appear to pay attention, but really are just skimming):

(Note: This is more just because it's Patrick Stewart)

 The second is just a fun and friendly send-off for you to feel good about! As always, comments, questions, suggestions, ideas, gimmicks, rhetoric, happy thoughts, daydreams, nightdreams, and pleasantries are always welcome in the comments below! Or feel free to send an email to universalranking@gmail.com . As always, thank you to all who read this, and hopefully it gets you thinking!

--J

Can I have one?

Jumped The Gun! (Part 2)

Welcome back! Actually, I guess that sounds like it was more aimed towards me than you, so I apologize for that, but welcome back all the same. I'm sorry for the brief two-week hiatus as I ran around Europe with a few very good friends. Sadly I was not around to post when they discovered the Higgs Boson on July 4th, but once I finish with this post I will add a new one soon after with an update about the Higgs Boson and its importance (and the grain of salt we should be taking with the discovery). However, let us get into the nitty-gritty of today's (hopefully long-awaited) post!

If you will recall from a few weeks ago I posted concerning a new idea I had and one that I might want others to simply reflect upon or if they had any ideas of their own or comments on what I thought that they should feel free to do so! Also, if I might add here, there is no question or comment that sounds silly. I can assure you, that no matter what level you may or may not understand what I discuss here, if there is anything I can do to help you understand better, do not hesitate to ask in the comment section below! The purpose of this blog is to bring matters that are rarely discussed into the open and to attempt to help the less-scientifically-fanatic public understand. So if you feel like you don't want to ask a question because you deem it too rudimentary, trust me, I am sure that there is someone else reading this blog that understands it only on the exact same level that you do or even less. If you do feel like this is all way over your head, the same rule applies, with the addition that I wholeheartedly congratulate you for at least reading this and making an attempt to understand it.

Okay, so I realize that was a bit of a tangent but it has been on my mind for awhile and I thought that I should put it in (maybe I should add that to the description of the blog? Thoughts?). So let us cast our minds back to the previous post (you may want to open it up in a different window to help refer to). We have established the following concepts firmly (hopefully):

1. Creation-Annihilation
1. This is the concept that a photon (or packet of energy) can spontaneously become a pair of particles (usually an electron-positron for demonstrative/instructive purposes).
2. This process does happen and has been proven through the example of a Creation happening on the edge of a black hole where one particle is within the Event Horizon and therefore is trapped, leaving the other particle to fly away at the speed of light without bonding to anything. This creates Hawking Radiation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation). [Actually that picture on the page is really cool....I might have to change my cover photo.....]
3. The pair of particles, in most cases, are in such close proximity to each other that they immediately begin attracting each other through electromagnetism and contact each other again, resulting in a photon being created and the particle/antiparticle "disappearing" (Annihilation)
2. Electrons/Positrons in a magnetic field
1. As suggested above, electricity and magnetism are actually linked through the Electromagnetic Force (one of the four basic Forces). As such, an electron can be not only affected by an electric field, but also by a magnetic field (see the .gif from Part 1).
2. Considering a constant direction and strength of a magnetic field, an electron will actually curve in the exact opposite direction than a positron will.

Alright, so here's where we continue (finally, right?). A few weeks ago I was thinking about Hawking Radiation and the separability of electron-positron pairs resulting from Creation-Annihilation. I figured that if a black hole could separate these pairs of particles before the electromagnetic forces attract and bring them back together, shouldn't there be other possible, more localized methods to separating the particles? So I sat down to think about it, and messed around with certain ideas, and I eventually just arbitrarily calculated the rough attractive force between the two particles (given by F = (kQq)/r^2 . Don't worry about what it means). This is not a new thing and it is fairly easy to calculate (especially, for those who understand the equation, considering that it reduces basically to F = (kq^2)/r^2 . Ignoring the fact that r increases gradually and then decreases after the splitting force overcomes the attractive force. Also ignoring the fact that we don't really understand much about the splitting angle, the splitting force, or the splitting speed. I just calculated it with a very rough frame of error.). 

After the calculations, even with the frames of error, it is a huge number (i.e. a lot of force). The basic concept from here would be that I would have to find a way to overcome the attractive force just enough so that the particles while in that close proximity cannot attract each other. So as you might already be able to guess, I turned to magnetic fields! Well, actually, I turned to magnetic fields for all of 3 seconds simply because of the fact that to get a magnetic field to match the force at least equally would be HUGE (I decided for fun to try to figure out the magnetic field strength. It's even bigger and I'm sure that I made multiple mathematical substitutions that are not even remotely doable. I didn't even try to figure out the actual number. All I know is that there are multiple variables that are to the power of four and have factors of 10^16 in the variable itself. To give you an idea, from some of my substitutions with relativistic energy calculations the final magnetic field strength had an instance of the speed of light to the fourth (i.e. c^4) which is approximately 3*(10^8) m/s to the power of four. This roughly equals a number on the order of 8.1*(10^33) or 8 decillion!!!). My theory is this: If a Creation happens in a fantastically powerful magnetic field, it is possible for the particles' attractive forces to be overcome by the magnetic field and therefore be separated similar to the Creation happening on the edge of a black hole, as seen below:

This is a drawn simulation of a Creation happening within a magnetic field. Similar to the Feynman Diagram in Part 1, the first photon line and the dotted line as the diagram progresses to the right simulates an unchanged Creation-Annihilation. With the magnetic field (denoted by the "X" marks) of a particular strength, the particles can be diverted away from each other. (Please ignore the faded lines. Remnants from doing math on the other side of the page.) [Note: To all of you that know about Particle Physics, please excuse the directions of the electron and positron. I accidentally labelled the two paths backwards. I know that in this situation the electron should curve down and the positron should curve up. Forgive my grave mistake!]

SO WHAT IS THE USE FOR ALL OF THIS?!


Well actually, not much at the moment. Practically, without the use of superconducting magnets this would almost be impossible to accomplish. Also, it is not the easiest thing to nail down these Creations. They happen (as far as we know) on a very random basis. The most that we can do to increase the likelihood of these Creations is to manipulate the light beam that we use to attempt to "spawn" particle-antiparticle pairs. Making the photons in the light more energetic is one method (this is done by increasing the frequency of the light). For example, a blue light is more "energetic" than a red light, simply because the frequency of the light is greater (infrared is the least energetic light spectrum, while ultraviolet is the most energetic light spectrum). The greater abundance of energy makes the Creation (conversion from energy to matter) much easier and much more likely to occur. Another method is to make the light beam more intense. This does not, in fact, increase the energy of the photons. However, what it does do is make the Creation more likely to occur.

Let's put it this way to make it easier to understand. You have some fairly-weighted coin; let's say a quarter for demonstrative purposes. You have a 50% chance of getting Heads and a 50% chance of getting Tails. If you flip the coin once every 5 seconds, you will have a 50% chance of getting Heads and a 50% chance of getting Tails once every five seconds. But now take a second, equal quarter. Your four possible outcomes if you flip the coins simultaneously are (where H is Heads, T is Tails): HH, HT, TH, TT. If you flip the two coins simultaneously every 5 seconds, now you have a 25% chance of getting each possible combination. But let's say you only really care about getting a result of Heads. So now instead of you considering both Heads and Tails, you're now considering either whether you get a Heads or not. In the first situation, with only one coin, you have a 50% chance of getting a Heads every 5 seconds. But now when you look at the second situation, it's changed! Now out of four possible combinations, THREE of them result in you getting at least one Heads and only ONE result of you getting no Heads. So now the chance of you getting at least one Heads every 5 seconds jumps up to 75% chance. This pattern continues almost on an exponential level, where with three coins you have eight results (HHH, HHT, HTH, HTT, THH, THT, TTH, TTT). So your chances are now 82.5%! This increases more and more with every added coin.

So now let's consider the Creations again. Let's say that the coin is now a photon. There is some ridiculously small probability that it will cause a Creation and split into a particle and an antiparticle in a particular frame of time. You can say that for every "x" seconds, the photon will cause a Creation or it will not (heads and tails). You don't really care how many of each you have, or in what order, but what you really want is at least one Creation, if not more. So you start adding photons. Now you have two, or three, or five, or ten, or a hundred, or a million. Even though the probability for a creation is tiny, the more photons you have, the more "opportunities" there are for at least one photon to cause a Creation. Ideally you would want many more, but generally we wouldn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The main question that arises first from this is: "Well, we have things like lasers, blue flashlights, and LED lights that will make you practically blind, why don't we see this everyday?". There are two answers. First, you don't see this everyday simply because this happens on an extremely small level, definitely not visible to the naked eye. So don't expect to see electricity shooting out of your flashlight the next time you turn it on (although if you do I would recommend either getting yourself or your flashlight checked out....). The second answer is because air exists. Yes, it's a strange answer, but think about it. The likelihood that a stray electron or positron would simply miss every single atom of oxygen, nitrogen, etc. in our atmosphere is nonexistant. So if for any random reason a photon were to cause a Creation, the particle or antiparticle or both would either interact with each other or the atmosphere first before being even remotely measurable. The reason why we know these Creation-Annihilations actually exist is because we've created them in particle accelerators and we've observed the resultants from deep space, where the average atomic density is about 1 atom per cubic meter of space (or vacuum to be precise). So to even use magnetic fields on a light beam and expect results, this would have to be conducted in as close to a vacuum as possible.

The Possibilities Are.....Endless?


So let's take the situation where you have a high-intensity, high-energy light beam (most likely an ultraviolet laser) traveling through a superstrong magnetic field in as close to a perfect vacuum as possible. The most mundane application I can think of using this is to simply analyze the creation of different pairs of particles (electron-positron are the most common as they require relatively possibly the least energy). Theoretically anything can be created out of a Creation (as long as it is a Fermion [i.e. any combination of quarks, electrons, taus, and muons or any antiparticle thereof]), but the more mass involved in the particle-antiparticle, the more energy is required to cause such a Creation.

The most interesting idea I thought could be done with this, is if an object were placed such that the path of the positrons from the Creation were aimed at the object, it could be imagined that this light beam/supermagnet setup could initiate disintegration! Most atoms have a strong outer "valency" shell of electrons, which serve not only to repel the electron valency shells of other atoms, but also to "shield" the positive charge of the nucleus, which could attract the electrons in a valency shell of another atom. When a positron comes into contact with an electron, it is the same thing as an Annihilation. The electron-positron collision results in the two particles being "turned into" (usually) two photons, which then speed off in some unknown direction. If you have two atoms that are close to each other, the electrons in the outer shell keep the two atoms away from each other (or at least their respective nuclei). When you break down the shells, the positive charges of the nuclei start to repel each other much stronger than the electrons do. If you had a cluster of nuclei with no electrons, once you stopped constraining them, they would explode away from each other due to repulsive positive forces.

So think of this: Now you're directing a (hopeful) stream of positrons at a normal object, composed of normal atoms. When the positrons start hitting the shells of electrons, they break down. The nuclei of those atoms repel and break away. You essentially are letting the forces of the atoms themselves break the object apart. It would be similar to cutting diamond without actually putting any physical pressure on it. You could technically cut a straight line through the diamond (second hardest substance known to man, basically) and not put a hair of detectable physical pressure on it. If we could actually viably create a situation where this Creation-splitting effect created a stream of one type of particle or antiparticle, we could basically have a disintegration ray (sci-fi-esque, I know, but still....)!

As always, comments, questions (of any caliber), suggestions, complaints, short-orders, jokes, and rhetoric are more than welcome! I have now set up an email account for those of you who want to keep your questions private or if you aren't comfortable with asking openly on the account. You can email me at universalranking@gmail.com and I will answer you as fast as humanly possible. I swear that if I use your suggestion or question as a jumping-off point in a new post, I will not (unless otherwise stated) mention you directly or otherwise. You can retain complete anonymity. But as always, you can comment anonymously anyway, but if email is easier for you then by all means that is fine!

Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed it, and pass on the blog to those who would be interested!

-- J

EDIT: So, in the midst of researching and brushing up on a few theorems, I discovered the term Delbruck Scattering buried in a list of relevant terms to what I was searching for. It's a cool effect, and I'm somewhat relieved because it's not quite the same thing as what I discuss here. But if you've got a mind for Quantum Electrodynamics, I'd recommend looking into it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delbruck_scattering). 

Jumped The Gun! (Part One) [No Rhyme Intended] {Hope You're Not Offended}

Welcome back everyone! I've decided that in honor of last month's tenth post on this blog, I will introduce a new type of post here! Hopefully everyone enjoyed the last post and if you want me to analyze particular works, etc. feel free to let me know (comment box is below every post as always)! But I've had a somewhat crazy idea over the past few days and I feel that I should share it with everyone. So I will put it up here and see what you guys think (and of course I will explain everything as necessary as I go). Most likely this will be a two part post, as it's a big idea (it's even going to be *dunhdunhdunhhhhhhhhh* MULTIMEDIA!)! So let's begin shall we?

First, let me explain why I named this post "Jumped The Gun!". Approximately two days after I started thinking about this problem, I noticed an article on the Popular Science website (http://www.popsci.com) detailing a new weapon introduced by the military. It is based on the concept that a high-powered laser will ionize the air that it passes through, essentially making it a perfect electrical conduit. The high-powered laser is then immediately followed by a massive release of electrical charge, forming a highly controlled lightning bolt. The bolt's easiest path happens to be the perfect line of ionized air particles, and so the lightning follows the path that the laser took, striking whatever the laser beam ended up on. It uses the same natural principles as lightning, except that lightning follows a randomized pattern and more or less only by coincidence. While fairly impractical, it is a really cool idea, and yet it doesn't quite get to the heart of my idea and the principles it uses. Let me premise my post by saying that I know perfectly well that if my idea had any feasibility, someone else must have thought of it before and discarded it.

So what is the concept behind the problem? Well let's consider one of my previous posts, where I discussed particle-antiparticle creation-annihilation (http://universalranking.blogspot.com/2012/02/continuation-theory-on-dimensional.html). I never fully discussed where the creation comes from beyond "random energy" but there is actually one key point that I should clarify. When I said energy, I really meant small quantized packets of energy, also known as photons! So when I state that particle-antiparticle pairs are spontaneously created from packets of energy, I mean that actual photons spontaneously "turn into" bits of matter. One of the most common of these pairs is an electron and a positron. The positron is basically an antimatter counterpart of an electron. It has the same exact mass, and the same magnitude of charge, but the alignment of the quarks is exactly the opposite of that of the electron and therefore the direction of charge is exactly the opposite (positive). When a positron and an electron come into contact, they annihilate (as stated in the "Continuation" post) and create (usually) a pair of photons. The exceptions to that case include though the annihilation to a single photon, but usually this only happens when the creation comes from a low-energy photon (more on why that is in a bit).

We are going to assume for this post that there is a single photon creating an electron-positron pair that immediately annihilates to another single photon (for simplicity's sake). And now we get to the multimedia!
Cue Diagram 1!

Yes, it's a hand-drawn diagram (only the best for the people that actually read this blog!)!

So before you confuse yourself trying to decipher what this is, let me make it easier. This diagram is known as a Feynman diagram and is used to show the interactions of particles through time. One thing to immediately note is the "Time" axis along the top pointing to the right. This means that the particle is changing as time passes, not necessarily as it "moves to the right". That is pretty much the only really difficult concept to wrap your head around which is not necessarily thinking of the particle moving. Theoretically it could be completely still in space but it would still be diagrammed as above. So what does this diagram show? It shows a photon suddenly turning into an electron and a positron, which then a little later collide together, resulting in another photon. For those who want a little more information, the Electromagnetic Interaction Vertex Strength is how relatively strong or likely the reaction will be compared to the other three fundamental force reactions (Strong Force, Weak Force, and Gravity). So the strength/probability of this electromagnetic interaction is about 1/137th of that of the strongest type of interaction force (the Strong Force). To give some measure of comparison, the strength of gravity relative to the Strong Force is about 1/(10^39) or 1 over 1 with 39 zeros after it!

So back to the point. This diagram shows what actually can happen to a photon randomly, and it is the case I would like you to keep in mind (refer back to the diagram if it gets confusing at any point). One difficulty with this scenario is that the photon has to have enough energy to make this happen (in more technical terms, the Energy of the photon [given by E = h * f , or Energy = Planck's Constant * frequency] must be at least twice the rest mass of an electron for the interaction to occur). The spontaneous creation of an electron-positron pair is not definitively known as of the present, however the annihilation is simply due to the fact that the electron and the positron are attracted to each other intensely due to their opposing charges. They therefore collide fairly quickly after the point of creation due to their close proximity. The only known instances of this principle being violated was detailed in the previous post (when the creation occurred on the very edge of a black hole). The point of all this was to set up and demonstrate what can and does happen in real life and the basis for my idea!

So here's the other part to consider in the idea. Electrons (and positrons), as well as being affected by electric fields, are affected by magnetic fields! However, whereas electrons (and positrons) are attracted usually in straight lines by electric fields, magnetic fields affect electrons in different ways. In this case, a magnetic field going away from the viewer at a 90-degree angle to the path of the electron (or positron) forces the electron in a curve (and eventually in a full circle if the magnetic field is strong enough and large enough to encompass the circular path of the electron) such as in the following way:

The small pluses on the square indicate a magnetic field going away from the viewer. If the pluses were replaced by dots, that would indicate that the magnetic field was going towards the viewer, and consequently the path of the electron would curve in the other direction. The path of an electron in the opposite direction of magnetic field as shown above would accurately represent the path of a positron in the magnetic field shown above. In simpler terms, the path of an electron and the path of a positron are exactly the opposite in the same magnetic field.

Here is where part one of this post ends. If you can catch a glimmer of where I am going with these ideas, feel free to speculate below or ruminate on it by yourself! As always, if you have a comment, a question, a suggestion, or any digression, let me know below or on Facebook! I will be glad to field any of the above (bonus points for rhyming).

If you like the new style of post (me sharing random brainchildren) then definitely let me know! If you hate it, let me know as well! Comments and questions are always appreciated and help me to expound on what I need to or to delve into new and exciting implications!

And finally I have a challenge for each and every one of the people that actually read this post. It is as followed and not meant to be an annoying solicitation. The frequency of my updates generally relates to my readership. I am encouraged when I see a spike in page views and the more I see, the more I feel obligated to update more often. So here's your challenge if you're reading this. Go out and tell one (or more if you want) friend that you think would be interested in this kind of subject matter about this blog. Give them the link to the blog. If you want to help out even more, tell them to tell one (or more) of their friend(s)! The more the merrier (and the more posts)!

As always, thank you all who read this, and I will update with the second part of this post (and the actual meat of my crazy and probably already-discarded idea) once I return from my Eurotrip!

--J