And this, my friends, is why I’m still single! XD
I have to admit, whenever I’m in an Italian restaurant, I can’t help but think of this exact thing when I see the “antipasti” section of the menu. It’s anti pasta! Pasta’s arch nemesis! >D
Anyways, how bout a brief physics lesson about pasta and anti-pasta! Well, I guess technically it’s matter and anti-matter, but my way is better. So yeah, it’s actually a pretty elemental yet very perplexing concept of our natural world. Anti-matter is just regular matter but with the opposite charge. Easy enough huh? So protons are negative and electrons turn positive. These are actually created naturally under certain conditions and there’s even a belt of them around the Earth! They have even been observed as a product of thunder storms! Craziness!
So what’s so special about anti-matter? Well… nothing! It’s the same as your generic over the counter matter you use every day. Just has the charge flipped. Everything “seems” to work just fine and you could even have a, well, YOU made out of the stuff! In fact, the entire universe could be made out of it!
But uh… that’s kinda the catch and the reason why this stuff is so interesting. Cause when your pasta and anti-pasta touch, well, it goes all Time Cop and annihilates itself! We’re talking kaboom! And that’s where things get weird. Because there’s very little good reason for the whole of the universe to be made up of ordinary matter. Why is there no anti-matter universe? Why isn’t it 50/50? I’m not even going to try to touch that with a 10 foot spaghetti, so you’ll have to fathom that on your own. Though one of the researches currently running is to find out if it’s all just hiding out in the outer rim of the universe… cause maybe the universe is just an anti-pasta shell with a delicious nougat filling. Which would mesh up nicely with the whole Big Bang thing. Cause that would explain a lot.
That and it would make all them quantum peoples happy. Why? Well, remember that whole field theory thing I spoke about before? The one with the “virtual particles”? Well, this happens when matter or energy can be created on “borrowed time/energy”. On paper, the equation balances out, but the entirety of the mechanics is still pretty new, so why something can just blip in and out of existence is a mystery. But, when you look at the matter/anti-matter equation, what you find is the annihilation can cause a “virtual photon” that decays back into the original matter and anti-matter. Nifty stuff huh! That’s an overly simplistic version of it, but the basics are there. Like you can make some crazy particles different from the original matter in high-energy experiments.
I’ll only eat pasta made in the high energy magic building.
“would you like your pasta collided at near light speed, ma’am?”
gotta say it in a snooty waiter voice.
Maybe theres an anti-coffinshaker out there….
well if there is… we’ll have to get on our motorbikes, jump 10 sharks on fire in a collision course for a universe shattering high five!
I can see no end to all existence more fitting than that! XD
AntiCoffinshaker - A verbose Ice-cream salesman?
and sans-goatee if we go by StarTrek rules.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(nuclear_test)
This was about as potentially destructive as is possible considering they were placing bets on whether the nuclear reaction would start off a chain fusion reaction of the hydrogen in the atmosphere (into helium) which would essentially turn the entire planet into one large thermonuclear explosion. A lot of the experiments they do today with those colliders, each time they try a new one they say there is a one in ______ chance of destroying the universe lol. Regardless, go for it (but if you do blow up the universe/planet I’m coming after you).
lol! not a good thing when your scientists take bets on the survival of the planet…
for the most part, the experiments they do are relatively safe. even the super colliders people were all worried about. like that they’d make a black hole that’d suck in the planet. (which is bupkis) the really fun stuff they at least do far enough away from the masses to not be much of a threat. well… except for all that biowarefare/germ engineering stuff. I’m more worried about that causing trouble than a few matter/antimatter tests.
I dunno. I’m looking at the wikipedia picture, and i know that it’s suppose to be a flaming dome of destruction, but my eyes keep telling me that it’s this: http://www.wowhead.com/npc=2655#.
lol! you know you’ve played too much wowcraft when…
sigh… I still want to yell out “for the horde” whenever I see the word “hoard” or “horde” written down.
I read the second one as “Do your colanders and antipastas out in the middle of nowhere!”
lol! XD
Was anti-matter proven real? i didnt know that, though i could go and try to find out if its real by myself. i bet they lied about it. i bet they lied about the earth being floating on a void. i bet they actually lied about everything and Russia is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere and luxemburg is three times the size the Earth is claimed to be.
Coffin got a question, if a person where to have a time-stopping clock and then try to grab something, wouldnt it be like a 1000000 KM per second truck touching a mailbox? And what if a person that has a time-stopping clock dies while using it?
yup! not one of those sissy “theoretical particles” but real stuff! the actual mechanics are a bit hazy, but they’ve been producing the stuff for just a little while and even managed to trap some for a record breaking 16 minutes! didn’t know thunderstorms produced it though, that was kinda new to me.
hmm, well that is a good question! I think the problem lies in relativity (of perspectives, not the fail theory), so assuming that time works at a constant rate, then from the perspective of the object you’re grabbing, it’d have something coming at it really… really fast! So if you’re just slowing time, say, half speed, then you would be moving at twice the speed. That means your mass will be hitting with an exponential amount of force. However, if you STOP time, as in t=0, then, in theory, you’d be moving with infinite speed, with infinite force (if my math is correct)… which would mean you could Chuck Norris a roundhouse kick hole through the planet. I think… pretty sure that’s how it works…
This is assuming the time stop was relative, like, the normal world keeps moving and the time stopper is observing the universe from a stopped time perspective. So assuming that is true, then from our perspective, one moment we’d see Bob standing next to us saying “hey, check this out!” and instantly turned into pile of decayed matter, if even that.
Again, assuming a lot of things ya know…
Hey, do I see a lil Coff on the shirt there?
That’s the first time I hear about a rim of antimatter outside the rim of a galaxy, but it does make sense! Heck, you even used the comparison I wanted to use ya steal-y meanie ;P
ha! yeah! I seem to wear that in all my drawings of myself… and yet… I don’t actually have a coffin face shirt! an absolute atrocity!
supposedly there’s a little chunk of the stuff near the center of each galaxy too… though, that one is still being looked into. so heck, maybe there is a 50/50 split after all and we just don’t know it… but I guess the problem will be to make sure that the fancy planet with naked green super models is made of regular matter, cause I think landing a ship on an antimatter planet might have a bit of “turbulence”…
I don’t really understand why people asks “why is there no anti matter universe?” when the answer is obviously “there most likely is one. We cannot see it, but that is either because it’s so far away or because our instruments are too crude”. Just because we can’t see it with our current technology dun mean it doesn’t exist somewhere.
In basis, we have in have accepted that the sun does not revolve around earth and that we’re not at the centre of our own universe. And still, our scientific community behaves is as if we are at the lowest possible configuration, and that every other potential existence either simply doesn’t exist or that it revolves around us - the centre of our universe is not necessarily the centre of all existence.
To try to illustrate my point with a (somewhat far-fetched) thought experiment: If we compare the shape and position of our entire universe with that of atomic orbitals, then a vast majority of the people seems to believe that our universe have the shape and position of a 1s orbital. This might very well be so, but we have no proof of it. Our current understanding of the universe doesn’t limit the shape and position to the simplest form. Instead, our universe could just as well be the +x +y lobe of a 3dxy orbital, leaving room for not only one anti matter universe, but two of them (+x -y & -x +y); as well as a whole other normal matter universe on the far other side from us (-x -y). And this is while neglecting the potential existence of lower and higher configurations. And again, it could just as well be some other bizarre configuration.
And don’t get me wrong, I do know that the (rather slow and conservative) scientific methods we use works and currently is the best way to go (after all, I use it in my own research). It’s just that if we would let some of the more crazy ideas come into play, then maybe we would not be so surprised each time we get a new weird discovery (since we would have anticipated it) and maybe we would be able to accelerate our understanding even more.
As for the comic: Anti pasta is what you eat to create a negative volume in your stomach so you have room for both pasta and whatever you’ve ordered after that ~_^
As for the poll: Bring it on, b*****s – either we reach understanding or we die trying ;P
heh, very true! I agree though, that it’s probably just hiding out somewhere that we have yet to observe. I mean really, we’re basically just a bunch of psychotic apes tossing poo and calling it science. give it another million years and we’ll see some real science being done! well… if we live that long.
lol, funny you should bring that up since the general consensus now is that the universe is flat! XD better not fly your space ship off the edge!
see, that right there is why I don’t trust math! I know that’s bad, but you can come up with all kinds of crazy using numbers and figures. then again, maybe there are 2 other universes crammed in here too! an antimatter and a neutral one! not sure about the neutral one, but my gut says maybe (futurama ftw). but I guess you’re right. we do need a lot more crazy ideas! it’s when you start thinking inside the box that you’ve just stopped progress.
hmm, but can your stomach handle the pasta/anti-pasta reaction? guess that’s what after dinner mints are for…
lol! my thoughts exactly! you know, we only got a good 4-5 billion years till our sun goes kablewy, so the faster we figure out this whole universe stuff, the faster we can go and save our bacons!
Doesnt the word: “universe” refers to the enterity of existence? What you would suggest is that there is another dimensional plane that contains no matter. Then again, there might be creature living and moving around us in an entire ecosystem, but we cant percieve them due to our lack of the neccesary sensorial organs. also who knows?, There might be a galaxy made out ofsomething other than matter somewhere in the universe.
Also, how do scientists measure how old the other celestial bodies are and, most importantly, when they will cease to be? Astronomy has only been messuring the age of the universe for, say, 300 years, and there is little chance to do a carbon 14 test on the sun as far as im aware.
well… yes, but we tend to use the word “universe” to explain what is visible to us right now. I don’t think we really count parallel dimensions and whatnot… but, in theory, there could be intersections and parallels in something out of phase or shifted or just plane invisible to us and there could be even life in those little places. as far as we know, you can argue it on paper, but so far, there hasn’t been any good tests for this. (except now they’re looking for pockets of spontaneous microwave bubbles in space where they think the universe “branes” are colliding)
right, there could be a whole antimatter galaxy out there! or if that whole “dark matter” thing pans out, maybe even a whole world of dark matter people could be walking around. that stuff is kinda hard to pin down, so it will be a while before we can make any crazy claims with that.
well… they can look at the doppler effect, ya know, things moving away and all and figure out if it’s older or not. they also look for the background microwave energy for telling how old the whole thing is. and of course, remnants of stars, since we kinda know the life cycles. also they can look at the components of the stars, since they can tell what their composition is and certain elements decay over time or get created. but yeah… they got quite a few tools to count the rings.
as for when it will all end… well… if you check outTHIS COMIC I did a while back, I put in the actual doomsday predictions for the Earth and universe!
but in brief, in about 500 million to 1.5 billion years, the Earth won’t be able to support life because the Sun will be increasing in temperature gradually. in about 5 billion years, the Sun will go red giant and consume the planet! around the same time, our galaxy will collide with another, Andromeda, which will either squish us into another star, chuck us into a black whole, bombard us with debris, or just jettison us out into the cold dark space (as in, the dead space between galaxies). then, if the theories are correct, in 10 to the power of 100 years, the final spec of matter will be sucked into a black hole and the whole thing will die a cold lonely death for all time. well… that is, if it keeps expanding away from eachother. it could very well just double back on itself and I’m sure if half the black holes are antimatter and the others get all squished, that’d be enough to reboot the system. cause otherwise it’d be just a little depressing if the whole thing just went poof.
Actually, what “universe” includes depends on which definition you wish to use (as there are a few different ones); my bad for not telling which definition I was referring to (in everyday talk, “universe” usually refers to one of the more restricted definitions). The very broadest definition of universe is of course “everything” (which includes everything that ever have happened, everything that ever will happen, everything that never will happen, all other dimensions, all possible space-time continuum, all energy, all matter, all possible outcomes of all possible wave functions combined, etc). The problem with this definition is that it leaves very little room for any useful discussion since it includes everything. That is, if you wish to discuss parallel universes or anti matter universes, then they don’t exist per definition as they are already included in our universe and are not separate entities. We would need to rename it and call it to, say, “parallel space time continuum” instead of parallel universe.
I do claim that whichever of the more restricted definitions of “universe” one uses, my far-fetched thought experiment would hold. However, there is a possible exception if you define universe as “reality”. From our point of view, “reality” would include an anti matter version of our observable existence since we can see and create anti matter right here (and such definition would therefore render my point invalid), although I have no idea if a person made entirely of antimatter would agree, such person might interpret reality vastly different than us and technically therefore be living in a parallel reality made of antimatter.
The point I did try to make with the thought experiment was simply that even though we have come pretty far with science, we still lack a good self critical viewpoint and the scientific community is almost as conservative as any of the major religions. We more or less still believe that “the earth is flat”, we just expanded the horizon somewhat and included a handful other celestial bodies and a few extra dimensions ~_^.
Hehehe! :-D
I had similar thoughts (“anti-pasta”) too the first time I heard of antipasti.
does that mean great minds think alike?
cause otherwise it’s “birds of a feather flock together” and that means we’re probably both insane. XD
Fascinating. Though on the question you asked in the poll, I had a hard time pinning myself down to one answer.
To be fair, this sort of experimentation is pretty wild. As in like wild magic. Not terribly stable for all the sparkle and pizzazz one gets out of it.
While I think we should keep working on furthering science, learning and understanding I Also think that stuff like this tends to be… Well… Like I said… Unstable. (Three Mile Island anybody?)
Even with every Supposed precaution taken, it’s still anybody’s guess what might pop up unannounced until it hits CNN. So no matter Where you tinker around with it, there’s likely to be fall-out. Both figuratively and Literally.
So, uhm yeah, I’m on the fence about the whole thing. I Want to see Star Trek turn into “real life” but well, I’m not sure how the world would handle a RL “Captain Kirk” beebopping around the newly expanded ideas of the universe. Maybe Picard would be easier to tolerate but we’d all have to get through Kirk and Pike and the dancing nekked green women first…[/geekiness]
I guess that’s kind of the problem. I mean, we know what “should” happen by our calculations, but what “might” happen may be something we never even thought possible.
personally, I don’t care how many planets we need to blow up in the process… just as long as i get my hoverboard I’m happy. >)
P.S. Personally, I don’t get why you’re single myself. You’re intelligent (seem to be anyway), fair looking (at least, again, you Seem to be) and as I see it, the only draw-back you might have is being a cartoonist. But then, some folks wouldn’t hold that against you either I wouldn’t think.
But then, obviously, I guess I’m not a normal fem either. If one’s judging from my previous comment, I’m not really a very good judge of what’s considered “normal” or “desirable” I guess.
So there ya go. What would I know about it. [chuckles]
lol, why thank ya! that made my day! >D