Unparalleled

Any theoretical physicist--or, I don't know, "Star Trek" writer--will tell you that the universe we inhabit is just one of a presumably infinite number of parallel universes: alternate realities that exist more or less ""out of sync" with our own.  These universes are "there"--or maybe "here"--but not perceptible or reachable by us.  Anyway, in theory, anything that could possibly happen in this universe does happen in one or more of these alternate universes.  So if, for example, you go to a shopping center and, looking for a parking spot, turn left in the lot, then--in some other universe or universes--you actually turn right.  In our universe, you arrive at work at 9:03 AM; in another, at 8:57; and in still another at 9:00--or at 11:14 because you decided to stop over at the apartment of your mistress (which in that universe you have) for a quickie.

The more you think about this kind of thing, the more your mind begins to reel.  Because once you start considering the things that could change, you start to realize that the list of potential changes is, literally, endless--because in an infinite number of universes, literally anything can happen--and some would argue that every possibility must be true somewhere.  Thus, not only is there a universe where I weigh five pounds more than I do here, but there is also one where I weigh five pounds less--and one where I am the fattest human being on the planet!  And so are you!  You live in New York?  OK.  But in universe B you live in New Jersey--as hard as that may be to accept--and in another, somehow, you've ended up in the Seychelles!  Even though, in this universe, you don't even know where the Seychelles are!

In some universes, the Colonists lost the Revolutionary War with England, in some the South defeated the North, and in some Hitler won World War II.  And if that's not disturbing enough, consider this: In some universe, you are Hitler!

I wonder if there is some parallel universe wherein parallel universes don't exist.

OK, time for a nap.

Physical Miscellany

My understanding--and admittedly it is a limited understanding--is that the reason, on a physical level--literally on the level of physics--that people can't walk through walls (or that any solid objects can't pass through each other) is because of the negatively charged electrons that spin around the outside of the atoms that make up . . . everything.  Thus, when you bump into a wall, what's really happening is the electrons in you are banging into the electrons of the wall, and the "like" charges repel.  This, if accurately described, is elementary physics.

What I find interesting is that, if this description IS true, it suggests that--in what would surely be a one in a googolplex occurence--if all of a person's atoms lined up JUST right in relation to the atoms of a wall, then that person could, indeed, walk right through said wall.  Which I think would be really cool.

That is all.

Well, So Much for THAT

A group of physicists in Hong Kong has conclusively concluded that time travel is impossible.  This has something to do with the fact that a photon can not travel faster than the speed of light.  Somehow, the fact that nothing (or "nothing") can travel faster than the speed of light (or "warp one") eradicates the very possibility of time travel.

We don't pretend to understand any of this.  Frankly, we still can't understand why it is physically impossible for anything to travel faster than the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second (give or take).  Why can there NOT be something that travels at, say, 186,001 miles per second (give or take).  What if someone strapped a teeny tiny rocket to the back of a photon?  Wouldn't THAT make it go faster? 

And check out the approval rating of Congress: THAT's certainly streaking downward at faster than lightspeed! (Ba-dum-bump!)

Here at Solipsist HQ, we refuse to throw up our hands and despair at the possibility of time travel.  As for the physicists' declaration, just remember: The world was flat until it wasn't.  The atom couldn't be split until it was.  We'll see you in the future.

Solipsistography
"Great Scott! Time Travel Appears to Be Impossible"