[UA] Random thought thing.

[Doug Stalker]

Piotr Pogorzelski wrote:

> >I also know someone who invented a prototype
> propellentless engine that used
> >microwave radiaton and a wave guide to provide forward
> momentum - so if all goes
> >well I'll be able to tell my grandchildren not only did I
> know the inventor of
> >teh space-drive, but that I cut my toe on his first
> prototype because the %#&@
> >idiot left it in the middle of the common room at college.
>  (It included a lot
> >of sharp edges and the insides of a microwave oven -
> without any shielding)
>
> Woaw! You shared your room with a mad scientist?

He didn't go the the college, he just knew a few peopel and decided that
it would be a good place to leave the prototype.  He's lucky no-one
plugged it in - there is a very good reason why microwave ovens seal
everything inside a faraday cage.

> Did you
> know if he studied in I.O.U. after that?

NFI what happened to him.  I friend of mine can go one bettre - he knew
someone who actually sold his design for a warp engine to some country
in europe.  Not for much money - I think it may have been bought as a
curiosity/joke.  The inventer of that engine latter ended up in a mental
institution, where he was thrown out of a second floor window before he
left.

>
>
> By the way, and about mad scientists. It could be
> interesting to oppose mechanomancers with quantuumancer or
> such:

How would a quantuumancer work?  Perhaps it could be a GMC school, with
the devices only working when not being directly observed.  By leaving a
device unobserved for a period of time it begins to exist in all
eigenstates at once, and when the quantuummancer returns he has some
control over which one it collapses to.

There was a book that involved somehing like this;  I can't remember the
name, but I do remember that one day a spherical event horizon appeared
around the sun at twice the distance of neptunes orbit, and that objects
approaching it behave as if entering a black hole once they touch it.

The main character gained the ability to 'smear' himself accross
different eiganstates - he at once stange sat in a sealed room for a
while  with a ten digit combination lock, then tried a random
combination to open it.  There was only a 10^10 chance of him getting it
right but he tried all combinatiosn simultaniosly and then choose to
collapse the waveform to teh one where he got the combination right.
There was also some sort of time constarint - for more possabile choice
he had to spend longer 'smearing' himself accross the different quantum
states.



> i've got a friend who's studying astrophysics at
> university, and we share a lot of time talking about new
> advances in quantuum theories, chaos mathematics, stranges
> attractors...

I don't know anyone who studies it, but a number of my firend share an
interesting in this sort of fringe science and we have some very
interesting conversations.  :)

> Today's science is closer to "fringe science"
> every day. After all, quantuum theories tells us that
> matter does not exists, that time could run backward, that
> a object (well, a subatomic particle) could be in to
> different states, or two places, at the same moment,

I thought this extended to all objects, however it was only noticable on
a very small scale.  Or maybe you could use it to argue your way out of
speeding tickets:

"But officer, if you say I was doing exactly 78 kph then how do you know
wasn't in a 80 zone instead of teh 60 zone i appeared to be in?"


--
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