In the news today - some stuff I talked about on Monday! The crazy awesome supercollider that some French people built underneath a chocolate factory/bordello (it's on the Swiss-French border, surely that's what it's underneath) is up and running!
Fig. A
They hope that by smashing particles together at near the speed of light, we can learn more about dark energy, dark matter, particles called Higgs bosons (the "God particle") that may or not give other particles mass, and other dimensions.
Yes! Other dimensions. The last time we definitively added a dimension was Einstein's addition of time to the standard three that make up physical space. It's time (ha!) for some more.
Unfortunately, these will probably be dimensions that exert previously unknown or unexplained influences on our universe, changing the very nature of our understanding of physics. Still cool, but not as cool as the kind of other dimensions where you fall through a rip in space/time and discover a world exactly like our own, except the British won the revolutionary war, men still wear fedoras, the Colonies are governed by Prime Minister Dan Quayle, and Justin Timberlake is a televangelist. The kind where you can tell people who were good in our world are now evil, because they have beards (see Fig. A).
So, here's to other dimensions! And may you some day find a world where Eddie Murphy movies are still good, where bands of child ninjas protect the innocent and prey upon criminals, and where dinosaurs still roam the earth!
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