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!
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!
