Would a perfect world have turkeys?

Trust me.  Juuuuuust trust me.

Twelve seconds to the moon

I know this will be two posts on astrophysics in a row, but after Everything Is Muted's post here, I can't leave space alone.  Plus, as she's the only one who reads my blog, I figure there won't be any complaints.  I decided I can't respond to her post directly, as I essentially agree with her basic idea and thus feel I couldn't add anything worthwhile to the dialogue.  Therefore, I've decided to continue the spirit of the conversation by pursuing the idea with which I ended my last post.

DISCLAIMER: At this point we are moving into the realm of complete hypothesis, speculation, and perhaps even sheer fantasy.  We ended with the problems of traveling near the speed of light, which is desirable for obvious reasons (read: Wookiee co-pilots).  To restate simply, traveling very close to the speed of light causes time to slow for the traveler while it runs normally for those of us left on Earth.  Thus, even traveling to the center of our Milky Way Galaxy in a mere eight years ship time would mean 30,000 years on Earth.

The word "galaxy" derives from the Greek galaxias, literally meaning "Milky Way."

The way we're going to overcome this problem is by using the fourth dimension.  I know, I know, but I'm actually not making this up.  You may have heard talk of the fourth dimension as being one of time.  That's not what we're talking about here.  We're talking about an actual fourth physical dimension.  So how does this all work, exactly?  Well, as much as I wish I could just point to it, we humans are unfortunately trapped in our three-dimensional world.

To try to understand it, then, let's take a step back.  Let's borrow Neil deGrasse Tyson's example of an ant walking along the edge of an opened newspaper.  Pretend the ant exists only in two dimensions, that is, length and width.  Obviously, the ant has height, as well as the ever so slim height of the newspaper, but let's just imagine.  If we, looking down on this flat world, wanted to help the ant travel from one edge of the paper to the other without having to walk all the way across, we could do so by introducing a third dimension.  That is, we could simply fold the pages up together, allowing the ant to move to the other page before setting them back down.  The ant has seemingly jumped from one side of the newspaper to the other in an exceedingly short period of time.  Most importantly, the ant, only able to perceive the two dimensions that define his existence, doesn't realize he's just traveled through the third dimension.

Clear as mud, right?  Let's just assume you know what I'm talking about and forge ahead, back to our three-dimensional world.  We know, thanks to Edwin "That Telescope Guy" Hubble, that the universe is expanding at a certain rate.  Think of this expanding universe as an open newspaper.  As it expands, it also curves.  This curvature of spacetime acts as the fold of the newspaper as it doubles back on itself.  This fold allows the possibility of a wormhole.  A wormhole is essentially a shortcut linking the two folds of space time, allowing you to travel from one side to the other faster than the speed of light, just like the ant was able to quickly "jump" from one side of the newspaper to the other.

This wormhole is visualized in three dimensions, but you get the idea.

STINGING REJOINDER: Hold on, there, space boy.  Special relativity says that nothing but light can travel at the speed of light.  Well, yes.  Going through the wormhole near the speed of light lets us reach a distant point in the universe faster than the time it would have taken light to reach it going around the fold.  Picture going through the tunnel versus following the red line in the diagram above.  Any light traveling through the wormhole with us still reaches the other side faster than we ever will.  Thus, special relativity is satisfied, and it doesn't take us tens or hundreds of thousands of Earth years to catch happy hour at the Mos Eisley Cantina (play it again, boys!).

Unfortunately, while relativistic physics allows for the existence of wormholes, there's no actual... er... evidence that they do.  That's not particularly unsurprising, as people far smarter than me are fairly certain that any possible wormholes would be extremely unstable and collapse in a matter of seconds.  So basically, utilizing this method would require us to figure out how to create and manipulate stable wormholes through the fourth dimension.  Simple, right?

MISGUIDED OPTIMISM: But hey, anything's possible.

From the fourth dimensional wormhole of Ivan Zissou

dictated but not read

cth

One voice in the cosmic fugue

I've been watching the Cosmos again with my soft-spoken and funky cool friend, Carl Sagan.  If you've never seen Cosmos, stop what you're doing right now and watch it immediately.  I'll be here 13 hours from now when you get back.  Having just watched the mind-bending episode on space travel and its relationship to time, I felt compelled to ponder the endless possibilities.

The concept of deep-space travel seems to be intrinsically compelling to us wee humans.  Maybe it's the prospect of new and unknown worlds.  Maybe it's because we like to go fast.  Or maybe, like George Mallory famously declared when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, we want to explore the universe "because it's there."  Regardless of the reasoning, there's no denying that the idea of space travel is pretty wicked awesome.  UNANTICIPATED PESSIMISM: That's what makes it so unfortunate that the barriers to realizing this potential are so great.

The fundamental problem of deep-space travel is special relativity.  Thanks, Einstein.  OVERSIMPLIFICATION: In my never-having-taken-a-physics-class layman's understanding, special relativity basically states that all motion is relative, but that the speed of light (the c in E=mc²) is a constant against which all motion may be compared.  Furthermore, nothing (except light, of course) can travel at the speed of light.  You can travel at 99.999999% the speed of light, but you will never reach that asymptotic value.

Further complicating this whole situation is the fact that, as you approach closer and closer to the speed of light, weird stuff starts to happen.  The wavelengths of light become either shorter or longer, meaning that everything coming toward you turns blue and everything moving away turns red.  You get very skinny in the direction you're traveling.  This is not a product of perception, mind you, you actually get physically skinnier.

The biggest problem that special relativity introduces to us, however, is that as you approach the speed of light, your mass becomes heavier and heavier.  Why is this a problem?  Because it means that you'll need exponentially more and more massive amounts of energy to sustain your speed as it increases.  So where are we going to get this massive energy source?  Not sure.  Maybe nuclear fission.  More likely nuclear fusion.  Maybe some magical solution we haven't even conceived of yet.

SUDDEN DIGRESSION: Am I crazy, or do Carl Sagan, Neil Diamond, and Michigan State head football coach Mark Dantonio look like brothers?  Cousins, at the very least.

CONTINUATION: So, okay.  Let's just assume we find a magical power source that enables us to  travel up to 99.9999% the speed of light.  Woohoo!  We did it!  Let's break out the space colonies and Death Stars and blue-headed aliens, right?  Well, not quite.  Sorry, Han.

 Somebody just told Han a parsec is a unit of distance, not time.

Remember that weird stuff that happens as you approach the speed of light?  Well, the weirdest thing is a concept called time dilation.  Essentially, if you travel fast enough, time slows down.  Whu-whu-whu-whuuuuuut?  That's right, folks.  You actually age more slowly if you are traveling at the speed of light.  Sounds great, right?  The ultimate anti-aging cream.  Yes and no.  Say we could build a machine to take us to the center of the galaxy in only eight years ship time.  In Earth time, we would be traveling for some time on the order of 30,000 years.  The question at this point becomes the relative value of traveling through deep space, given the very real possibility that civilization as we know it would be long gone by the time of any potential return.

Is that it, then?  Are we forever doomed to linger in this boring old solar system?  (jk, Jupiter, keep doing what you're doing!)  Not necessarily.  So what is an alternative that might let us circumvent these apparently debilitating obstacles?  Where do we go from here?  Simple.

CLIFFHANGER: We go to the fourth dimension.

From the interstellar starship of Ivan Zissou

dictated but not read

cth

The "That Other Guy" Series: Vol. I

Today we introduce a new feature to The Life Despotic, something I'm calling the "That Other Guy" Series.  Now to those of you that might point out the pretentiousness of plugging something as "new" on a one day-old blog, I must kindly say good day, sir.  Having rid ourselves of any potential naysayers, let's return to the task at hand.

The "That Other Guy" Series has a simple aim: to highlight those great figures of the past who, deservedly or otherwise, have been surpassed in the popular consciousness by one or more of their partners or contemporaries.  This series is sure to be a fruitful intellectual pursuit and reader favorite.  As with any new thing, however, the beginning is a delicate time.  To that end, I knew the first "Other Guy" would have to be quite the heavy-hitter, as it were.  One man immediately came to mind.  The "Other Guy" of all "Other Guys," the original "Other Guy," the "Other Guy" that inspired later "Other Guys" like Art Garfunkel.  That man?

Friedrich Engels.

G

Get out of the way, Marx, we're trying to see Engels.

Now, if you're saying "who?" right now, boy is this the post for you!  Any good student of history knows the value of a detailed biography in appreciating the contributions of any great figure.  However, as the only thing I was ever a good student of was the Cobra Kai dojo, I think it would be a lot more fun to simply conjure Engels' biography from the pastel-colored recesses of my imagination.  CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE: Good students of history may exit the train here.  Otherwise, all aboard for the absurd!

Friedrich "Abdul-Jabbar" Engels was born to Charles and Caroline Engels Wilder in a rustic log cabin in rural Minnesota.  A precocious young lad, Abdul-Jabber (a nickname he earned during his playing days at the University of Zurich) displayed both a startlingly powerful intellect and a disdain for all things cute and fluffy from an early age.  Unsurprisingly, the latter trait led to frequent clashes with his caring father's penchant for giving moralistic summaries at the end of each episode.  Thus it was little surprise when, upon reaching the age of six, Engels packed his bags and set out on his own, famously declaring he'd "had enough of that man's damn speeches."

In need of a stronger authority to attend to his development, Engels naturally elected to be raised by wolves.  It was here, enduring a spartan upbringing at the paws of the She-Wolf Coco, that Engels would meet his longtime foe and sometime euchre partner, Karl Marx.  SPOILER ALERT: Marx steals Engels' ideas and becomes famous.  Marx, recognizing Engels' vast superiority in all things including beard-growing, immediately hitched himself to Engels' wagon.

Proof.

That's not a metaphor, mind you.  Engels literally towed Marx the 6,000 miles to Brussels.  Lazy bones.  Anyways, it was on this journey that Engels derived and penned his Communist Manifesto.  If you read the spoilers earlier, you know the unfortunate ending to this tragic tale.  Marx takes the credit, gets the girl, and goes on to superstardom as Steve Guttenberg's lovable sidekick Moses Hightower in the Police Academy series.  Meanwhile, Engels is forever relegated to "Other Guy" status.

But if the world has forgotten you, Friedrich "Abdul-Jabbar" Engels, the good readers of The Life Despotic have not.  We salute your achievements in, among other fields, political theorizing, archery, equestrian, and breakdancing (FUN FACT: Engels served as choreographer on Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo).  As the pater familias of the extended "Other Guy" family, we heartily welcome and honor you as the first inductee to the "That Other Guy" Hall of Fame.  Way to go, sport!

From the virtual desk of Ivan Zissou

dictated but not read

cth

And now for something completely different...

This is my first attempt at a blog post on my first attempt at a blog.  I'm unaccustomed to writing to myself, which I presume will constitute the majority of my audience, so we'll just see what comes of it.  I've conceived this blog as an efficient means to keep interested parties informed of my exploits and whereabouts in the next academic year as I pursue a Fulbright grant in Russia.  FULL DISCLOSURE: This idea is mainly born out of my laziness and not wanting to take the time to write out 20+ emails every week.  Think of this as your one-stop shop for all things Dusty-in-Russia™.

**Now with free shipping!  Optional rewards program coming soon!**

While this blog will primarily be a vehicle for me to record my struggle to sow the seeds of revolution promote cross-cultural understanding in rural Russia, depending on my level of:

     1) Boredom;

     2) Internet access;

     and C) Freedom from prison and/or Siberian gulag,

the blog could feature such diverse and sure-to-be-thrilling material as: lessons in Russian and English grammar, movie reviews, literary criticism, discussions of spacetime and the possible ramifications of blackholes on said phenomenon, haiku poetry, international fútbol commentary, philosophical ramblings, exclusive interviews with long-dead historical figures, nonsensical lists like this one, viewer mail specials, inane trivia challenges, and so, so, so much more.

If that doesn't pique your interest, it means you've still too many brain cells.  I've found a very effective cure for this unfortunate malady is to stand squarely facing the nearest wall and steadily strike one's forehead upon it.  I find it especially effective if done to the rhythm of "Staying Alive" by the Bee Gees, but I'm sure there are other good ones out there.  Don't be afraid to share your favorites!

SEGUE: Speaking of sharing, if you do plan on following my blog I'd encourage you to sign up for a Blogger™ account in case you ever care to comment on a post.  Doing so would also put you in a position to take part in the aforementioned viewer mail specials and inane trivia challenges (the latter may include authentic Russian trinkets as prizes!).  Don't miss out on the chance of a Tuesday afternoon lifetime!

From the virtual desk of Ivan Zissou

dictated but not read
cth