Saturday, September 15, 2007

Ask a Theoretical Physicist | The New York Observer

Ask a Theoretical Physicist I 
by Jonathan Bines Published: August 21, 2007
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This article was published in the August 27, 2007, edition of The New York Observer.

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Anthony Russo

Dear Theoretical Physicist:

I met a terrific girl a few months ago, and things are starting to become serious. I like her very much, but she wants children quickly and I still don't feel ready. What should I do?

—Alexander F., East Village

Dear Alexander:

It might help to think of your girlfriend less as the potential mother of your child, and more as a swarming agglomeration of infinitesimal strings vibrating in 10, 11 or 26 dimensions. These strings would have length but not width or height, and they could either be closed, in which case they would look like squiggly ovals, or open, in which case they would look like shoelaces. The shoelaces would spin out "world sheets" through time, while ovals would make "world tubes"; and two world tubes could combine to form a single world tube, which would look like a pair of trousers!

Let me know what you decide.

—TP

P.S.: Don't worry about those other dimensions—they curled up into a tiny ball just after the Big Bang.

 

Dear Theoretical Physicist:

I am looking for an apartment in the West Village, SoHo, or TriBeCa. I live alone, and the most I can pay is $1,300. Is there any possibility of my finding anything?

—Vernon Q., Long Island City

Dear Vernon:

According to some interpretations of quantum mechanics, it is indeed possible, although extremely improbable, that an inexpensive studio or one-bedroom apartment could arise spontaneously in the one of the neighborhoods you mention. Unfortunately, such a living space would be extremely unstable, probably coming into existence for a few billionths of a second at most before decaying into more fundamental particles. And, in any case, it would probably be snapped up in the first billionth of a second by a friend of the broker.

—TP

 

Dear Theoretical Physicist:

My best friend is more "developed" than I am on top, and the guys pay way more attention to her, even though she's got the personality of a crouton. What is going on?

—Kimberly F., Upper East Side

Dear Kimberly:

One possible answer is that breasts are composed of some kind of superdense material, such as that found at the center of a collapsed star. Such a concentration of mass would have the effect of warping space-time in the vicinity of the breast, causing less massive objects, such as men, to gravitate towards it. This theory would also account for the fact that most women are not attracted to other women's breasts (due to the inertial mass of their own breasts), and we can speculate that lesbianism may be primarily a question of aberrant breast density. However, while the supermassive breast theory ( S.B.T.) does an adequate job of explaining the attraction phenomenon, it leaves certain questions unanswered, such as why the men who are attracted by the breasts are not then sucked into them and pulverized by their enormous gravity.

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