My 2000th post critique. Nobel's Dynamite part 1. (1351)

[Ursa major]

I enjoyed reading that. Yes, there was a feel of times past to it, but I didn't mind at all.


Below are just a few suggestions.

“That’s the one. I don’t think they trust him to teach. He’s chasing some wild idea that’s apparently going to turn quantum physics on its head. But he’s independently wealthy and I believe he made some remarkable discoveries early in his career before shooting off down his little blind alley, so I guess they tolerate him.”

I thought no more of it until, a few days later, I was knocked off my feet as Professor Blake careened around a corridor bend, looking more like a rugby player than a professor of physics: head down over a huge pile of loose papers cradled in his arms and held in by his chin. Unlike me he was not a tall man and his head connected perfectly with my solar plexus. The result was a shower of confetti from the professor and silent, eye-popping gasps from me.

“I say, I’m dreadfully sorry. Are you alright?”

I couldn't even manage a wheeze. I’m sure my face was turning purple.

“Here, let me help you up.”

I gave a weak groan and vaguely flapped my arms as he started to tug under my armpits. “No…” I managed to gasp. “Okay… fine… just… minute.”

“I’m most terribly sorry; I was in such a hurry you see…” He scratched his head looking at the chaos of paper surrounding us, each page covered in illegible writing. Probably all his own. “I guess there’s a lesson in there.”

I smiled ruefully. “It’s alright, no harm done. Give me a sec and I’ll help you pick them up.” Bizarre, I thought. These sorts of incidents usually happen the other way round. I was beginning to understand Jerry’s likening him to a student.

Once he learnt I was a physics student he spent rest of the walk to his office merrily chattering away about his research like I was his personal post-grad assistant. All very flattering but most of it flew straight over my head. I was only a second year undergrad after all. But, damn, his enthusiasm was infectious and I couldn't help liking the man.

“Change? No. Impossible.” But his eyes twinkled. “What I believe I can do with the quantum field is slip out the back door so to speak. The probabilities remain the same but I shift the location they are directed at. Let us suppose the chances of finding that desk at its current location are… I don’t know, say a trillion to one on. Well, we don’t change that probability, just the location. So now the chances are a trillion to one on that it will be located ten metres to the right. So that is where it will now be; instantaneously! It’s like we've grabbed a tablecloth and given it a quick tug. Nothing has been physically done to the objects on the table but they are now sitting on a different part of the tablecloth.”

 

[Hex]

Yes I think that's exactly what I'm doing. I think it's something I have to practice at. I do believe I'm better than I was but maybe that just show how bad I used to be! I need to practice using different peoples voices - it's haaaaard

I struggle with this as well. I try to give my characters different voices but they often end up reading like I can't write English... We should start a workshop thread and practice with a paragraph to see how we can change it. What do you think?

 

[Vertigo]

Thanks for that Ursa. You have come up with a better solution to my "..." problem which I like a lot. And you have added the "on" to my odds that we were discussing earlier. Do you think that reads correctly now or do you think I should try and make it clearer?

Hex - that's not a bad idea. Said with some trepidation but I do need to practice that if I'm going to get any better.

 

[Ursa major]

I can make sense of it... in the sense that I know what the professor is trying to say, although it does come across like smoke and mirrors - or hand waving - particularly as the professor said earlier that the likelihood of an object being in a different location depends on the distance from its current one.

In fact, it looks like the solution to moving a desk 10 metres (already highly improbably) is to move the whole universe, save for the desk, 10 metres in the other direction. I hope the professor has access to a really hot cup of tea**....





** - To be fair, it seems, from the last paragraph, that the professor's technique will be able to generate plenty of "brownian motion".

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I'd third it my lot all end up much posher than I want

 

[Vertigo]

I can make sense of it... in the sense that I know what the professor is trying to say, although it does come across like smoke and mirrors - or hand waving - particularly as the professor said earlier that the likelihood of an object being in a different location depends on the distance from its current one.

In fact, it looks like the solution to moving a desk 10 metres (already highly improbably) is to move the whole universe, save for the desk, 10 metres in the other direction. I hope the professor has access to a really hot cup of tea**....

Hmm yes I think I need to try and get rid of that smoke and mirrors feel. However the problem is that when you read quantum physics text books that's exactly how it feels: smoke and mirrors.

The distances is a difficult one, but basically as soon as the distance travelled is significantly larger than inter atomic type distances the probablities climb very rapidly. Which is why we don't actually get to see this kind of bizarre behaviour (very often ).

It's interesting that you picked up on the idea of moving the whole universe because that is certainly how it seems and is exactly where the analogy of the table cloth falls down. I would actually like to try and develop this idea for a hypothetical quantum jump a little further. My idea is that the hypothetical quantum field (and I should stress that that is really the only hypothetical thing in this half at least) can "freeze" that instantaneous travelling through every point in the universe at the desired point. Since it's frozen at that position it must now be there and when the field is turned off that is where it is now most likely to be. More smoke and mirros see

Hey, who knows, maybe that's what happened to those Swiss neutrinos