I Read Stories: Quantum Diaper Punks
Quantum Diaper Punks by Stuart Buck in Expat Lit
I studied Physics when I was younger, to the extent that I have the accreditation to put BSc after my name on appropriate occasions (never, basically). It was not a universal experience of the students but many of us had moments when we found ourselves earnestly, urgently telling people about the implications of what we’d learned. I would like to take the opportunity to apologise to the people in the union bar for the two hours of their lives I spent explaining how the lightspeed limit is all that keeps us from a universe of madness and broken continuity; in part because this is better and more entertainingly illustrated by the film Event Horizon.
“if life is just a specific arrangement of atoms then in an infinite universe that particular arrangement will be almost identically replicated an almost infinite number of times.. that’s what infinity is. and if that’s the case, then why the hell should i bother taking my pants down when i need to go pee?”
Working through the mathematics of quantum mechanics to see the implications, how the quotidian, classical world is a mere façade over the underlying reality is another place where students of physics have their points of view challenged. If you maintained that moment, the change in perspective, the opening of the third eye, the revelation, that might make you a prophet or a madman. You might find religion (many physicists find themselves attracted to various strands of deism or to Daoism), form a cult or join one.
“by the end of the first week we had three recruits. the punks were expanding just like the universe.”
Look, I didn’t decide that taking my trousers off to go to the toilet was a waste of time in an infinite universe. I didn’t join/form a drug-fuelled violent cult living in a burned out warehouse. If there’s a touch of whispering craziness in my conscious mind that tells me that the precariousness of life in the early 21st century is a pale reflection of the soap-bubble ephemerality of what we think of as physical reality then I have it under control. Mostly, most of the time.
But what if I didn’t?
“she squeezed my balls and told me that 1.5 million mites live in my body. that those mites were made of the same thing that black holes were made of. “
Quantum Diaper Punks is what, maybe.
Read This: For a visceral
ride into the depths of joy on the other side of despair and surrender
Don’t Read This: So what
if we can’t comprehend the true nature of reality? So what? SO WHAT?
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