Playing with Physics

“General, I have findings that I need to report.” The Professor rushed into the room in his characteristically disheveled demeanor. He was a professor of the most stereotypical appearance, with a balding head of chaotic white hair, thick glasses and a crevassed brow of penetrating wrinkles.

The General’s appearance was equally suited to his role. He sat tall and confident in his perfectly tailored uniform. His clean-cut and clean-shaven countenance stared with unblinking intensity.

The Professor continued, “I have conducted a number of experiments to explore the nature of our universe, and the results are quite intriguing. I believe that our world’s laws, at diminishing dimensions, become quantized. It’s as if our world is exists on a discontinuous fabric.”

The General sat unmoved.

“An example is a series of experiments with light. I can project an image through a lens and onto a wall. I have discovered a fascinating effect where the image loses definition, becoming blocky as a function of the size of the lens. With sufficiently small lenses, I can project an image back to original size but only as a single block with a color that is the average color of the original image.”

The General sat unmoved.

“Another example is what I call Chaos Limit Annihilation. In this experiment, I fill a box with objects of a brittle material. I then begin to agitate the box. The objects collide and shatter into ever-smaller pieces. I have discovered that there is a maximum number of pieces that can sustainably exist in the box. In fact these experiments have shown that, regardless of the sizes of the pieces, the number of pieces that may exist in the system always demonstrates this same maximum limit.”

Still the General was unmoved.

“The most striking example is one that I find the most fascinating. I have noticed that the Universal Hum that we had previously detected may be influenced by our actions. You recall this earlier discovery of the Hum. We found that external phenomena that we observe only ever occur on regular intervals. These external phenomena are no different from the events we observe on our world every day. The only difference is that these external events are not in any way instigated by our actions. For example, these include the appearance of things from outside our planetary perimeter. I discovered this when investigating the approach of the extraterritorial intruders. I call this appearance interval the Universal Hum. At first, the Hum interval appeared constant. But while running the Chaos Limit Annihilation experiments, I discovered something highly unanticipated. The Hum will speed up as the number of experiments was underway. In fact the relationship to time roughly follows a reciprocal function, with a period change that is roughly constant relative to the number of experiments in play. It’s as if there is some processing cycle of our universe going on between intervals of the Hum.”

The audience remained unchanged.

Then with an unprovoked suddenness, the General startlingly awakened. At that moment in the room appeared the world renowned, star pilot. The General, staring through the Professor as if he were not there, began to speak.

“Ace, you are our best pilot,” he said. “The Galacticons are breaching our planetary perimeter defenses and we need you to defend us.”

“Ace, please, you are our only hope,” the princess suddenly made her unexpected presence known as she chimed in.

“With a blaster and a prayer,”

“Insert Coin”

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