16 September 2008

Oh, no – does this make me a geek?

There's this guy called Jay Hinson. He's bright. Really bright. His PhD thesis was on the decay of the tau lepton into three charged pions and a tau neutrino. That's particle physics, people.

So Jay lets his mind wander one day and starts to think about "technology which allows subspace fields to 'reduce' the mass of a ship while still allowing for energy and momentum conservation".

Except when Jay says "ship", he means "space ship". And when he says "technology", he means "Star Trek".

"This," Jau writes, "led me to consider various other energy and momentum related questions concerning subspace and warp fields in general."

Like it does.

To read Jay's musings on this subject, all 17,236 words of it, click here.

Elsewhere – ie, back in the real world – you will find Jay's discussion of relativity and faster-than-light travel (it starts here).

He calls it an FAQ and, while I would quibble about his use of the word "frequently", it's actually a highly readable piece of work that had me thinking "Shit – I understand relativity, special and general!" at one point. Seriously. He made it make perfect sense to me. And I don't know nuthin about nuthin.

Someone needs to publish this guy. Just take out the Star Trek stuff first.

No comments: