Wednesday, April 28, 2010

science ninja

the other night i had a science ninja dream that i can only describe by showing you this picture of my toothpaste.


i wish more products were labeled so informatively. in fact, while brushing my teeth, i usually read this list over and over and think to myself "if only the components of the universe were so easily stated, their origins identified, and their purposes described!"

so in my dream i figured out how i could make such a list for the universe: by becoming a science ninja!! one of the more bizarre premises of quantum theory is that the act of watching something changes the reality of the situation: the observer affects the observed reality. but what if the observer is a ninja?!?!

obviously a science ninja could observe the universe without affecting it, my dreaming self surmised!

so in my dream, i dressed myself as a science ninja (i'll leave you to imagine that...) and sped off into the distant crevices of the universe to create my toothpaste list. as a science ninja, i was also clearly not hampered by the bothersome passage of time or slow travel speed, so i zoomed to any location i wished... and watched.


my first stop was to sit at the outskirts of a galaxy with an active nucleus and watch the life cycles of its central supermassive black hole! i had a special science ninja device which allowed me to jump back in time to when the galaxy was forming. i watched as really massive stars formed quickly, turned into black holes because they were too big to do anything else, and sank towards each other in a gravitational dance (yes, i had special science ninja glasses that allowed me to "see" black holes). they quickly collided to form a single, central massive black hole which then happily reacted with gas left over from the explosions of nearby former-stars that werent quite big enough to become black holes, and therefore supernova-d. soon, jets shot out of opposite sides of the black hole in long, narrow streams, only to putter out a bit later.

these are my leftover memories of a dream that was obviously more vivid and twisted, and not limited to my waking life intuition of how the universe could work.

i remember in my dream excitedly scribbling down a long list of "ingredients" which minimally included: dark matter, super massive black holes, life, worm holes (that was a fun dream-ride!), photons, and electrons. i wish i could remember the "where it comes from" and "what it does" columns of my dream list :(

anyway, it was a fun dream. thanks for the inspiration, toothpaste!

12 comments:

Peregrine said...

my work-related dreams are usually stress induced, and nowhere near as fun. I often wake up feeling like I just got home from work.

Jad said...

Great dream! Thanks for remembering/posting.

Vanessa said...

Damn! Awesome dream, I wish mine were more like that!

amydove said...

Funny! Though I feel somewhat obliged to point out that that is an incredibly geeky dream!

Big Mark 243 said...

Wonderful dream... I have misplace your box number... since I still don't have a credit card and this story was worthy of a tip or something to let you know how much I appreciate your blog!1

bleh said...

That sounds awesome.

StuntTrader said...

That's interesting, I had a vivid dream once, shortly after I had started a new relationship. It was in the form of a ticker-tape message in bright red moving capital letters with a very specific message.
I ignored it and wondered where it had come from, but later I wished I had taken the advice.
Listen to your dreams.
ST

Unknown said...

amy - i can never deny my geekiness, even in my dreams.

steve said...

Really beautiful idea, I hope to see this on all food / cosmetic labels in the future

Anonymous said...

Thanks, thanks for identifying the ingredient that makes me not like toothpaste, FENNEL? Gadzooks, deliver me from proctor and gamble.

Danmark said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
C W Magee said...

Where it comes from: "Natural Ore".

This could also be applied to just about every non-organic thing in your life.

And sodium monofluorophosphate comes from phosphoric acid, hydrofluoric acid, and lye. "Calcium Fluoride" is just the source of the hydrofluoric (its "natural ore", if you will).

So imagine if science was that misinformative...