Year's end near, will be off for 10 days or so.

I'm waiting to find out if I published my short story for 'Strange New Worlds Vol. VIII', which is a collection of 'Star Trek' short stories. Not sure if I'll get picked in even the 20 honorable mentions but we'll see.

Hoping to write up a summary of the past year, and to finish a couple of projects, such as my sister-in-laws wedding video.

Also thinking about Nemo Cove and whether I should try and move that project forward. Nemo Cove you ask? Check back in a week or two and you'll see more information.

Joel

Ticket To The Moon (Copyright E.L.O.) (sorry)

Remember the good old 1880's,
When things were so uncomplicated,
I wish I could go back there again,
And everything could be the same.

I've got a ticket to the moon,
I'll be leaving here any day soon,
Yeah, I've got a ticket to the moon,
But I'd rather see the sunrise, in your eyes.

Got a ticket to the moon,
I'll be rising high above the earth so soon,
And the tears I cry might turn into the rain,
That gently falls upon your window,
You'll never know.

Ticket to the moon
Fly, fly through a troubled sky
Up to a new world shining bright.

Flying high above,
Soaring madly through the mysteries that come,
Wondering sadly if the ways that led me here,
Could turn around and I would see you there,
standing there

Ticket to the moon,
Flight leaves here today from satellite 2,
As the minutes go by what shall I do,
I paid the fare but what more can I say,
It's just one way.

Ticket to the moon.

Who's Aldo Nabi?

Review of THE LIVING SWORD by Aldo Nadi

Book Review from "The Sword," Magazine of the British Amateur Fencing Assoc. October 1995, page 32-33.

THE LIVING SWORD Aldo Nadi, US$17.95 Laureate Press, P.O. Box 450597, Sunrise, FL 33345 US Tel. 800-946-2727

Reviewed by Malcolm Fare

Those of you who, in an idle moment, have wondered who was the best fencer ever can now read the autobiography of a strong candidate: Aldo Nadi.

Born in 1899, he was the son of a fencing master and younger brother of Nedo Nadi whose five gold medals (two individual and three team) in one Olympics (1920) is a record that will probably stand for all time. Like his brother, Aldo turned professional after the 1920 Olympics and so the record books forgot him. Yet for 12 years he challenged and defeated every champion, amateur or professional, who was prepared to fight him.

It is, of course, inconceivable in today's climate of intensely competitive sport that a fencer could remain undefeated at one weapon let alone all three. But in the days when there were relatively few competitions and training meant a few days practice before an event, good fencers could be equally adept at, any weapon.

Apart from the Italian professional championships, which he won at all three weapons for four consecutive years, Aldo Nadi did not normally submit to the rigors of competitions so we will I never know whether he had the stamina to stay the course of world championships and Olympics. But in a single encounter, he was unbeatable.

Two years after his last public defeat at the hands of the great Lucien Gaudin (see The Sword, April 1988), he arranged a return match (unscored) and made the last three hits. Afterwards Gaudin, who went on to win the 1928 Olympic foil and epee titles, refused to meet him again, saying, "No one will defeat Aldo Nadi in the next 20 years."

The following year he beat Rene Haussy, who was to be professional foil champion of France for 14 years, 14-9. Roger Ducret, 1924 Olympic foil champion and runner-up at epee and sabre, chose to take him on at epee and was crushed 12-5. Olympic foil silver medalist in 1920 and 1924 Phillipe Cattiau went down twice 10-4 and 14-8. Triple world epee champion Georges Buchard lost 12-5. The 6ft 6in tall double world foil champion Gulio Gaudini was destroyed 9-2.

In 1933, running out of fencers prepared to meet him, Nadi entered the most important foil tournament outside the world championships, open to amateurs and professionals. In the direct elimination final tableau he won his first fight 10-2, beat the 1931 world champion Lemoine 10-4 in the semis, and then just had the strength to overcome the French military champion Battesti 10-9 in the final. After that he decided never to take part in competitions again.

The only adversary he could never entice on to the piste was his legendary brother. But in 1935 Nedo agreed to a demonstration match that was billed as being "between the two greatest fencers in the world." Because their father would be watching, Nedo insisted that at the end of the bout neither should be able to claim superiority. Aldo reluctantly consented, but placed four hits in quick succession on his brother before allowing the bout to finish as agreed.

Nadi says little about how he achieved his remarkable victories. It is left to former pupil William Gaugler in a postscript to explain something of his technique. All his parries were executed from a central position, which he maintained reduced the distance a parry had to travel to deflect the incoming steel. And his attacks were deliberately made in the best protected lines, demoralizing his opponents by striking through their favourite parries.

Although written in 1955, the book has remained unpublished until Gaugler, its guardian, found a publisher prepared to make it available to the fencing public. And deservedly so, for it illuminates not only Nadi's extraordinary exploits but a lifestyle that has vanished for ever.

Not that Aldo Nadi comes across as any sort of sporting role model. Arrogant, vain and selfish, he was the playboy sportsman par excellence who gambled his way across Europe with a succession of beautiful women. For nine years he kept a suite at one of the best hotels in Paris. When he ran out of money, he arranged another lucrative match, needing only three or four a year to keep himself in luxury.

But in 1935 the clouds were gathering. With Mussolini in power and the risk of being called up to join the Italian army in Ethiopia, Aldo decided to leave for America. What a shock that was. Short of cash, he enlisted the help of Georgio Santelli, the leading professional in New York, and put on a gala display. To his distress the public showed little interest and he lost money.

After 15 years of earning a good living from giving a few exhibition matches a year, Nadi was faced with the brutal truth that to the Americans fencing was a non-event. With the war coming in Europe, he had little alternative but to settle down and teach fencing to survive.

In the hope of using his talents in Hollywood, he moved to California, but producers found him too critical and uncompromising. He dismissed the swashbuckling swordplay in "The Three Musketeers" and "Scaramouche" as ridiculous spectacles.

Nadi was equally contemptuous of American fencing in general and competition organizers in particular. Not surprisingly, he had little regard for the immediate post-war world champions, regarding D'Oriola as second rate on the basis of reports from three Italian friends.

Aldo Nadi's hero was Cyrano de Bergerac and like him he took a perverse pleasure in being disliked.

An interesting excerpt from a book on fencing...

From Aldo Nadi's On Fencing, The Sword -- Yesterday and Today The difference between the duelist's and the fencers psychology is best appreciated "on the ground"

In Europe, I had one exciting personal experience.

Although the reasons for the duel impress me now as not being worth the risks involved, they appeared to be most serious at the time. My provocateur was the excellent fencing critic of the most important Italian newspaper. He was in his early forties; I was twenty-four. He had fought five successful duels; I, none at all. Although not a champion, he had considerable knowledge of the sport. With thirteen years of successful competitive fencing behind me, I had just won my first professional championships of Italy in the three weapons without suffering a defeat.

Personal implications and reputations were therefore in the balance once our duel had been decided. My position was pretty tough. Were I to be defeated, my professional career would be seriously jeopardized. Should I kill or seriously wound my opponent, public opinion would unjustly react against me. I was on the spot. I had to wound not too severely a man who knew much more about dueling than I, and who was by no means a third-rate fencer--an almost impossible assignment in the excitement and self-preservation of a duel. Little wonder that I could hardly think of anything else during the night preceding the encounter.

The rendezvous was at the famous Milan race track of San Siro (The police always manage to know in advance where duels take place, but as a rule they are inclined to rush to the spot only when the whole thing is over. Nevertheless, the chosen ground is secluded.) We were to fight in the paddock. Arriving there shortly after dawn with my seconds, I remembered that only a few weeks before the place had cost me money. This time something else was involved.

The first thing you forget "on the ground" is your fencing superiority. Your sensibilities increase tremendously. As soon as you are stripped to the waist, the chilly morning makes you think: "Even if I come out of this in good shape, it wouldn't be a bit funny to die of pneumonia."

A few yards away, you notice that your adversary talks leisurely with his seconds. You recall that he is also a racing expert, and it seems to you that he couldn't behave any differently were he waiting for the morning training gallops. Since the war, however, you have never arisen so early--for gallops, or any other reason; moreover, this is your first duel. You are not at ease. Particularly when you see a couple of doctors in white shirts silently laying out a hideous assortment of surgical instruments upon a little table. "They may be for me in a few seconds"--and this though is definitely unpleasant, even if the birds are singing happily in a beautiful sky.

The four seconds are now measuring the ground. Both limits are marked with a pointed stick in the ground itself. Once on guard you may retreat about fifteen yards. if you overstep the limit behind you with both feet, you are disqualified--branded with cowardice for life. professional pride makes you decide instantly not to retreat an inch, no matter what.

Before putting on your street glove (dueling regulations) your seconds fasten a white silk handkerchief to your wrist. "What for?" "To protect the main arteries." You don't like the explanation.

You are now handed the same battered epee with which you have won so many different fights. Is it going to lose this one? Remembering that the old weapon has never borne defeat, you draw the rather optimistic conclusion that it must be lucky.

The extreme sensitiveness of the moment makes even the slight difference in the weight of the epee without the customary button on the tip very noticeable. The lightened and perfectly balanced blade suddenly makes you feel extra-confident. But such trust does not last: your eyes have fallen again upon that little table, and you cannot avoid a sensation reminiscent of nausea.

Then you look around. There is a small crowd of celebrated artists, famed writers and journalists, and great sportsmen. Also, several well-known fencing masters and amateurs. Among the masters you quickly detect the one who has trained your adversary. You could beat him all right, but you feel less sure about the pupil. The only member of your family present, a great fencer, appears to be terrified.

None of these people are supposed to be there. Believing this to be a strictly private affair, you do not fully approve of their presence. They all remain at a distance, but you can hear their whispers. it looks as though they were discussing some exceedingly important, mysterious, yet totally alien business. The scene reminds you of an assembly of conspirators singing sotto voce in an old-fashioned opera.

To break the heavy atmosphere, you turn to one of your seconds, and almost shout: "Had I known of such interest, I would have sold tickets!" it is partly braggadocio, partly they subconscious necessity of doing or saying something. As an echo to your words, you hear muffled laughter. You don't dislike that--it sounds encouraging.

There is no fuss, however. Everything proceeds smoothly efficiently and quickly. Now, even the birds sound expectant. Suddenly, the dropping of a surgical instrument by your own doctor makes a terrific clatter.

The director of the combat tells you most politely that everything is set. Your adversary is in front of you. in your thoughts you had lost track of him, and you are almost surprised to see him standing there. You don't look him in the eye as yet.

The doctors meticulously sterilize both weapons, and it is then, and only then, that you realize the other fellow too is armed with a blade exactly like your own. Despite its slender length, you know only too well that it is practically unbreakable. Positively unbreakable against your body! You cannot help looking at its fascinating point, and its needle sharpness reminds you that it can penetrate your flesh as easily as butter.

The shining blue reflections of the blade impress you still more ominously than its point. Suddenly you look up and see a pair of eyes glaring at you with defiance. They shine even more than the blade. They are bluer than the blue steel. The effective stare of the veteran. What can you do about it? Stare back, yes--but you know what you are, a novice....

While you try to listen to the last, short, sharp instructions of the director, hardly understanding any of them, you feel, oh, just for a little while, rather afraid. Of what? Difficult to tell. but the heart jumps up and down, fast and hard. maybe you are scared, after all.

Well, never mind the heart. let it jump. Not without a little effort, you succeed in pulling yourself together by taking a deep breath, actually whispering: "Just mind your own skin."

As a cue, the director speaks his last sentence:

"Gentlemen, on guard!"

These, and none other, are the words you were subconsciously waiting for. You hear and Understand them. Automatically, you execute the order. The birds no longer sing.

You have gone on guard thousands upon thousands of times before, but never was it like this. In competition, the good fencer leisurely watches his opponent for a few seconds before starting the slightest motion. Here you are by no means allowed to do so because your adversary immediately puts into execution a plan evidently well thought out in advance: surprise the youngster at the very beginning; take advantage of his lack of dueling and bear upon his nerves and morale. Get him at once. to succeed, and regardless of risks, the veteran attacks with all possible viciousness, letting forth guttural sounds. Although probably instinctive, these may have been intended to increase the daring and efficiency of the attack, and your own momentary confusion as well. but the plan hits a snag. for the vocal noises instead, work upon you as a wonderful reawakening to reality.

You have heard shouts under the mask before, and you have never paid the slightest attention to them. why even without mask, this man is like any other. He is armed with a weapon quite familiar to you, and there is no reason why he should beat you--none whatever. When these few seconds of uncertainty and uncontrollable fear and doubt are over, you counterattack, and touch, precisely where you wanted to touch--at the wrist, well through the glove and white silk. but during the violent action of your adversary, his blade snaps into yours, and its point whips into your forearm. you hardly feel anything--no pain anyway; but you know that after having touched him, you have been touched too. "Halt!" shrieks the director.

Caring not for your own wound, you immediately look at your opponent's wrist, and then up at his face. Why on earth does he look so pleased? Haven't you touched him first? Yes, but this is no mere competition. He has indeed every reason to be satisfied for having wounded you--supposedly a champion--even if he nicked you after you touched him.

Young man, you must never be touched. Otherwise, the blood now coming out of your arm may instead be spurting from your chest...

The doctors take care of both wounds. What?... they bandage your own and not the other?...Preposterous! you feel perfectly furious with everything and everyone--above all with yourself. Silently, your lips move with a curse. You know best, however, and you keep as quiet as in competition; but, as in competition, you are eager to go at it again--the sooner the better--and in a spirit, now, vastly different from the original start.

The air vibrates with a great deal of low-toned, confusing talk. To many people speak at once. You care so little about it all that you cannot even grasp the meaning of a single sentence. The iodine stings. but what are they talking about anyway? This is no opera stage, and the tempo of the orchestra is certainly not one for sotto voce curses. What are they waiting for? Well, yes you let your point touch the ground, as in the Salle d'Armes--but it has already been cleaned, young man! And why does he, your surgeon, look and act so strangely? Why, you just told him, the blade has been sterilized--what does it matter anyway, pretty soon it's going to be soiled again--red, not earthy, muddy brown--red--yes, all right, oh, let's go, for God's sake.

You are on guard again.

Fine.

Successive engagements produce more wounds. While these are being disinfected, and the blade elaborately sterilized each time, my seconds repeatedly suggest tat I accept proposals emanating from my adversary's seconds. "Shall we stop?"

My representatives were elder friends of long standing, expert amateur fencers, and knew me well. It was therefore easy for them to see that, in the first engagement, my professionally pride had been wounded far more severely than my flesh; that I intended to avenge it with ominous determination, and that my impatience was steadily mounting.

They were only performing their duty, however. Seconds have the moral responsibility of all that happens "on the ground." All of them are liable to imprisonment in the case of death. yet, reading my mind clearly, my supporters were proffering their requests in an almost apologetic tone. I did not even bother to answer them.

After the fourth engagement, they again insisted. One can hardly say that I lost my temper then, for it was gone long before. Following the first double touch, I mean double wound, my adversary had not remained perfectly silent; evidently he had hoped--ad did everyone but me--that the whole thing would stop then and there. it was now my turn to breach the strict dueling etiquette. Quietly, but firmly, I replied: "Stop annoying me, I am going to stay here until tomorrow morning." I was young.

Afterward I was told that at this point one of the spectators had muttered: "Now he is going to kill him." he was a veteran duelist and friend. he had not heard my words, but had seen my left forefinger resolutely pointed at the ground. My own doctor, a young scientist bearing an illustrious name in medicine, was white as a sheet and looked about ready to collapse. That's why he had acted so peculiarly after the first engagement. Now he was far too dazed to be of much help in case of real trouble. Disliking the idea entirely, he had finally agreed to assist a friend in need. After the duel, he warned me never again to request his services in similar circumstances.

Fortunately, my adversary's surgeon seemed at home. he was an expert at such jobs, and it was somewhat heartening to see him, sleeves rolled up, going about his duties in the most efficient manner.

Doctors are forbidden by law to attend such meetings, and they too are liable to heavy punishment. They are, however, given almost dictatorial authority, and as a rule duels are stopped upon their advice. Eventually, after examination and medication of the latest wound, they enunciate and countersign that one of duelists "...was thus in a condition of physical inferiority. Declining all responsibility for any further fighting, the doctors declared him unable to continue"--the usual formula. They know, moreover, that a serious operation cannot be performed properly with the limited equipment they have "on the ground," and that even if it were successful, the cold morning air would, in all probability, kill the patient. On the other hand, the doctors have to be careful before stating their indisputable decision, lest they offend the susceptibilities of either duelist by declaring an "inability to continue" when, actually, it does not exist yet (For all of these reasons the stiffness of the surgeons' fees is quite understandable. My own doctor refused to accept a cent--what a friend! Duels are expensive affairs, what with fencing masters' heavy fees, surgeons' fees, gifts to the seconds, traveling expenses, banquets, champagne, etc.)

Nothing of the kinds happened in this duel, but when they give the word, it becomes law, regardless of what anyone involved may think or say. At such a point no second would even dream of letting the duel proceed, and the whole business is over.

Now, at each wound, the surgeons' silent looks were only too eloquent. Clearly enough, they wanted the whole affair ended as soon as possible. Even the veteran was beginning to look worried. They had heard my earlier reply to my seconds, however, and my continuously adamant attitude prevented them from stopping the combat. I had been brought up with the idea that duels should be avoided, but, were I to have one, ti should be fought seriously. I had not come here for pin pricks. Everyone knew there were not serious wounds as yet, and it was my right to go on. we went on.

In such moments man can consciously lose all understanding of pity, generosity, and of the meaning of life itself. He knows that his seditious will may spell death for a fellow man whom he has no well-founded reasons, nor definite wish, to kill. Through somewhat silly codes of honor and more or less ridiculous regulations created by his kind alone, he arrogates to himself the right of murder. Where is that part of God he pretends, boasts, and almost scientifically asserts to exist within his own being? Uncheckable and unchecked, Mr. Hyde comes in.

So far the slippery pebbles of the paddock, upon which my street shoes (dueling regulations) could not find firm foothold, had prevented the possibility of any well-determined movement. I had succeeded in not retreating at all, and had limited my footwork to the short, strictly necessary motions of the contretemps, parry-ripostes and stop-thrusts. Fearing the undependability of the ground, I had not yet attacked.

Now it was a different story. The pebbles ad been pestering me far to long. it was high time to stop this nonsense. I wanted to lunge, and I would lunge.

My left foot went to work at once. Pawing and pushing sideways in the manner of a dog after a rabbit, it cleared away the little stones, and entrenched itself in the sticky ground underneath. Now I could go. But first, a rather vicious curiosity compelled me to look up at my adversary's face.

It was distorted, physically and morally. it displayed none of the defiance and self-control it had shown immediately before the fight. his glassy eyes appeared to be perfectly hypnotized by the point of my blade. he seemed confined in a world of fear of that point alone. A lowered vitality was barely sufficient to keep him on guard. All physical reserves were exhausted. He was in my hands. he could not escape. it was written all over him by the very blood which slowly but steadily was coming out in rivulets from his several wounds--not a chance. It was murder, plain murder--and the word itself blazed through my brain, dimming my eyesight for a second. But Mr. Hyde only grinned in his sureness of self. He would attack

Was it my though that flashed into my adversary's mind, or did he receive some other perfectly timed warning? No one can tell--not even he. The fact remains that I saw him get up from his guard in an entirely unexpected, nonconformist and most dramatic manner, disarm his right hand quickly, and proceed briskly toward me, hand outstretched, just as fencers do at the end of a bout. "Oh! I have had enough! Thank You!"

This was not at all the expression of a vanquished, dejected man. Rather, that of a man who had regained his civilized sobriety miraculously fast--a human being already far more virile than in his fighting position. naturally, I was thoroughly astounded; but when he reached me, his hand found another that shook it warmly.

The duel had lasted less than six minutes. "Enough," my adversary had said. Quite! the sun had melted the morning mist, and was now shining brilliantly.

My one wound was beginning to make itself felt. My valiant adversary appeared to be bleeding from everywhere. There were three wounds in his arm, two in almost the same spot, and three in his chest. how I reached his body without hurting him seriously is a mystery, or a miracle, which I have never been able to explain. That evening, he and I drank champagne together.

Fascinating, Very Thorough Family Name Website

Donna and David Clark are cousins, and they have done an amazing job compiling information on our different families. The amount of information on our Lovell side of the house was just stunning. There are pictures and information that I never even knew existed, and cousins and entire families we are related to that I never had known.

Thank you for such a fascinating and organized compilation.

Joel

Spooky Action At A Distance - Albert Einstein

August 09, 2004

Artist's rendition of an atom. Image credit: NSF

Essay by Mark Waldron

Once derided by Einstein as "spooky action at a distance", quantum entanglement could hold out the promise of a novel means of space propulsion, perhaps even making interstellar travel feasible.

Astrobiology Magazine -- In 2001, researchers at the University of Aarhus' Quantum Optics Center in Denmark successfully applied a phenomenon of physics known as quantum entanglement to two specimens of cesium measuring in the trillions of atoms apiece, transferring the quantum state of one group of atoms to the other. Such a transfer is called "quantum teleportation," though it is hardly teleportation of the Star Trek variety.

The success in Denmark was noteworthy due to the scale of the experiment; previously the quantum states of only a handful of atoms at a time had been successfully entangled. In addition to whole atoms, there have also been multiple quantum teleportations of laser beams beginning with a successful experiment in such teleportation conducted by the Australian National University in 2002.

At present, the primary application of quantum teleportation is viewed as being the development of quantum computing, in which the logic gates of a computer processor are integrated at the atomic level and the logic state of one of the processor's bits would be denoted by the quantum state of an individual atom. (Such a representation of computer logic can be applied to computer's memory as well, creating, in effect, quantum RAM.) In addition, a field of quantum cryptography is being developed from the ability to teleport laser beams, which are capable of carrying information. A teleported laser beam that conveys data would provide an ultrasecure, essentially unbreakable means of encoding sensitive information.

This author would like to propose a third (and even a fourth) application of quantum teleportation, an application with implications at least as far-reaching as the two mentioned above: propulsion. It should be possible to apply quantum teleportation to the problem of deep-space propulsion; not only is such an application possible, but, if implemented, would revolutionize space travel, even to the point of making interstellar travel (both manned and unmanned) truly feasible for the first time. Interestingly, the initial steps of applying teleportation as a propulsion method can be taken using present-day technology.

In brief, the idea is to apply quantum entanglement to ion propulsion. An ion drive system is a form of rocket propulsion which uses a stream of charged particles, or ions, as a rocket exhaust. Ion drives typically yield far lower thrust-to-weight ratios than traditional chemical rockets, but because of their much slower fuel burn rate they can gradually accelerate a spacecraft to speeds that no chemical rocket can reach.

Ion propulsion was used on NASA's highly successful Deep Space 1 probe, in the form of a solar-electric drive, that is, an ion drive in which solar panels provide the electrical power that is used to excite the fuel material to produce the ion stream that propels the craft. Interestingly, cesium is one of the materials that has been used as a fuel in ion rockets.

While quantum entanglement and quantum teleportation experiments have to date been confined to entangled specimens of materials within the same laboratory, there is no theoretical limitation on how great a distance quantum entanglement can operate across. In other words, once two groups of atoms have been entangled, that entanglement would still be in effect were one of the entangled specimens moved to the other side of the earth.or the solar system.

Therefore, were two specimens of cesium (to take one example; other materials would also work) to be entangled on earth, then one of the specimens lofted into space, exciting the earthbound cesium sample to produce ions would result in the space-traveling cesium sample becoming energetically excited and producing ions like its earthbound counterpart. A resulting ion stream, produced without the benefit (or hindrance, for that matter) of any form of internal engine system onboard the spacecraft, could propel the craft through space. It would be a kind of engineless drive system, which I am calling the teleportation drive. The actual engine and, even more importantly, its power source-a nuclear reactor, a solar array, or other form of power generation-would remain on earth along with the earthbound, entangled fuel sample.

The benefits of a teleportation drive are most apparent when one considers the various forms of nuclear-electric propulsion that are currently in vogue among NASA researchers. A nuclear-electric drive is a form of ion drive which uses a nuclear reactor to produce the electricity needed to generate its ion exhaust stream.

Because of the far higher power levels a nuclear reactor can yield versus solar power, the nuclear-electric drive has risen to the forefront of NASA's ion drive design options in the last few years; being the centerpiece of its Project Prometheus, a long-range research effort into nuclear propulsion systems for spacecraft. For example, the space agency's Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) project, an offshoot of Project Prometheus, is to be powered by a nuclear-electric drive system.

JIMO will require a 100-foot boom section to separate the craft's instrument payload from its nuclear reactor; large radiator fins will also be mounted on the reactor section to dissipate excess heat generated by the drive. These two requirements-physical separation of the drive from the rest of the craft and radiator fins for heat dissipation-are two distinctive hallmarks of traditional nuclear-driven propulsion system designs.

From the standpoint of a government-funded space agency, there are also political drawbacks to placing a nuclear reactor in space. With a teleportation drive, there are no radiator fins or separator sections needed on the spacecraft; furthermore, the negative political issues surrounding nuclear space propulsion systems vanish. These, however, are all secondary benefits, as important as they are. The primary benefit of the teleportation drive is that it effectively removes all limitations on how much power can be generated to propel the spacecraft.

The need for a high-yield yet compact power source has been the bane of nuclear propulsion designs in the past; it is, for instance, a major technical barrier to seeing the realization of NASA's VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) drive, under development at the Johnson Space Center in Houston under the direction of Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz. Because the power source of a teleportation drive is earthbound, it can be arbitrarily large.

A very large nuclear reactor-which now of course does not need to be flown into space-can provide the power for propelling a very small spacecraft. Such a craft could enjoy a very high thrust-to-weight ratio, potentially greater than that of chemical rockets, with obvious benefits in terms of maximum attainable speed when combined with the teleportation drive's inherently high fuel efficiency (high specific impulse, in rocketry parlance).

The new thrust levels attainable by a teleportation drive might also allow for the craft to take off directly from the earth's surface, without the need for chemical rockets to place it in space, something never before attainable with any form of ion drive. Finally, in the past only two forms of power source have been put forward for ion drives: solar and one or another form of nuclear power.

Since a teleportation drive's power source remains earthbound, any method of generating electricity can be applied to power the drive, including hydroelectric power (imagine Hoover Dam generating the power for a deep space probe's engine). There is also an economy of scale that applies to the earthbound power source in that the same source can be used to excite multiple entangled fuel specimens: the same plant can therefore be used to accelerate multiple spacecraft.

There is another propulsion application for quantum entanglement which, while probably requiring more R&D investment than the teleportation drive, would have even greater (as in, several orders of magnitude greater) speed benefits for a spacecraft: applying quantum entanglement to produce the first viable photon drive.

A photon drive system uses nothing but a beam of photons (a beam of light if the photons fall in the frequency spectrum of visible light) to propel a spacecraft. The photon drive is a theoretical possibility that has been talked about for decades but has never been practical due to the immense power requirements it would take for such a drive to generate sufficient thrust to propel a spacecraft.

An example of the simplest photon drive imaginable has been given in the past: if a flashlight were to be turned on in space and left there by an astronaut, its light beam would provide a miniscule amount of thrust to the flashlight, but not nearly enough to accelerate it to any noteworthy speed before the battery burned out. A photon drive requires essentially no fuel, only power. In other words, a photon drive has an extremely high specific impulse but a very low thrust-to-weight ratio.

The great advantage to a photon drive is that if its power requirements were to be overcome, a photon drive system could eventually accelerate a spacecraft up to very high speeds-even, theoretically, close to the speed of light. However, both nuclear fission and nuclear fusion fall short in terms of generating the necessary power, at least from a reactor small enough to be realistically carried onboard a spacecraft.

A matter-antimatter reaction of a sufficient size could generate the required power, but antimatter is exquisitely expensive to produce at the time of this writing, and containment and manipulation technologies for it are still in early stages of development. Thus, a photon drive powered by matter-antimatter reaction is currently not a viable option. There is another option.

Applying quantum teleportation to a photon drive (to produce what I am dubbing the telephotonic drive) would remove the one great engineering obstacle (i.e., power generation) to producing a viable photon drive system. Recall from earlier in this article that laser beams (i.e., concentrated streams of photons) have been successfully teleported.

Without knowing it, the researchers who accomplished this feat created a basic telephotonic drive in the course of their experiments. In the case of a telephotonic drive powerful enough to propel a spacecraft, earthbound electric plants (nuclear or otherwise) would generate the power for a laser beam which would then be teleported to a spacecraft.

While even a dedicated nuclear power plant may not generate sufficient power to create a laser powerful enough to realistically provide propulsion for a spacecraft, there is no reason why a single spacecraft would need to be powered by a single entangled laser beam; multiple power plants, perhaps widely spread geographically over the earth's surface, could generate multiple laser beams which would then be teleported to adjacent "cells" to the rear of the spacecraft, producing an array of high-power laser beams that would collectively propel the craft...potentially to near the speed of light. Incidentally, since entanglement information is itself conveyed (either by laser or radio waves) at the speed of light, and since even a telephotonic drive could never, according to relativity theory, propel a craft up to the speed of light, a spacecraft propelled by a telephotonic drive could never "outrun" its lasers' required entanglement information.

A variation on the telephotonic drive concept involves using entangled lasers, generated on the earth's surface, to create a laser fusion drive. The idea behind the laser fusion drive (which, like the photon drive, has been talked about for years but has never been developed) is that pellets of frozen hydrogen fired out of the rear of a spacecraft like a machine gun are individually struck by powerful laser beams, igniting each one in an individual fusion reaction; the resulting series of energy bursts push the craft forward.

There is an engineering obstacle in creating lasers powerful enough to fuse the hydrogen pellets; as in the case of the telephotonic drive, teleporting entangled laser beams from earthbound power plants to the spacecraft would overcome this obstacle. While an entangled laser fusion drive would not accelerate a spacecraft to the speeds attainable by a telephotonic drive, or even a teleportation drive, I suspect that it is more immediately realizable from a practical engineering standpoint than either of those propulsion concepts.

The first step, of course, towards implementing any of these drive schemes is to test them on the ground. As stated before, the theory of the telephotonic drive has, in effect, already been proven; it only needs scaling up (though vastly so) in order to become a viable propulsion method. The successful entanglement of lasers also proves the conceptual soundness of the entangled laser fusion drive.

The teleportation drive could be proven, in concept, for relatively little cost or resources. There are commercially available small ion rockets designed for use as maneuvering thrusters on satellites and space probes.

An experiment to prove the theoretical soundness of the teleportation drive would involve taking one of these commercial thrusters and entangling its fuel to another specimen of the same element. If, upon activation of the thruster, the entangled second specimen generated an ion stream, the theory would be proven. Such an experiment is well within the resources of even small government or university physics laboratories.

Spacecraft propulsion is therefore a third practical application of quantum teleportation, in addition to quantum computing and quantum cryptography. There is, however, a fourth application, one which deserves its own treatment in a separate paper but which I will briefly introduce here because of its relevance to the propulsion systems outlined above. That application is wireless power transmission.

NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy have, over the last three decades, studied various concepts for generating electric power in space and then beaming it (via microwave in most design concepts) to the earth's surface for public use. In the late 1970s the DoE, under the Carter Administration, studied the possibility of orbiting large satellites that would collect solar energy and beam it to earth.

The idea was unviable due to the immense size of the solar arrays involved (on the order of tens of square kilometers). There is also a problem presented by beaming energy to earth in this manner, as such a beam would have a tendency to diffract in the earth's atmosphere.

However, aided by advances in solar cell technology, much smaller solar arrays could today be placed in orbit around the sun, perhaps within the orbit of Mercury (naturally the arrays would need to be designed to withstand intensive bombardment by heat and radiation; the upside would be that the proximity to the sun would also allow for greater power collection).

A resulting microwave beam generated with the energy collected could be quantum-teleported directly to the earth's surface. Aside from the obvious immediate benefits of such an efficient power generation system, these satellites could also provide the power input for a telephotonic or entangled laser fusion drive. Thus quantum teleportation could provide an "end-to-end solution" for propelling a craft up to near-light speeds.

Einstein was uncomfortable with the idea of quantum entanglement, referring to it as "spooky action at a distance". By applying quantum teleportation to deep-space propulsion, that element of distance may be measurable in light-years.

Vonage IP Telephone is COOOOL

It works fantastic, and it's only costing me $14.99 a month, and it's working via software on my notebook. Bye, Bye $BC.

Web Digital Video is BACK!

Thanks to Dr. Phil! His help was most fortuitous!

Update for June & July

Sorry no posts, though I doubt anyone is following this blog. :) Here is what's new:

New construction is almost done, we were able to use the deck the other nice, weather was pleasant and breezy, had a nice barbecue (without my burning the side of the house this time). I'll post pictures when I get a chance.

Might be able to afford the lawyer to start my lawsuit against UPS/UPSStore soon.

I have some major sales opportunities that are just hanging out there...c'mon, c'mon Purchase Orders!

We went camping over the July 4th weekend at River Bend campground. Fairly fun place, the kids didn't want to leave. We stayed in one of their RV trailers instead of tenting it or using the storage sheds (cabins?). :)

Might have my server back soon.


Regards,

Joel

Granville Shaw, sharpshooting Sheriff, Louisiana. A Great, Great, Great Uncle.
by Joel

Jack "Pushmataha" Casey, my Grandfather.
by Joel

News - I'm ashamed to say it, but I got scammed.

I had created an advertisement on Craigslist.org, AFTER I failed to find a buyer on ebay, to sell my video camera equipment. I had decided that since I wasn't using the equipment in any profitable way I should sell it while it still held a lot of it's original value. Of course, being able to catch up on a couple of mortgage payments was a big plus.

I had been contacted by 'John Webb' who said he saw my ad on craigslist.

He called me from 510-467-4462 (a number which conveniently became no longer in service, reverse lookup tells me: "We did not find a listing for the phone number you entered. The phone number "(510) 467-4462" is a Okld Frtville, CA based phone number and the registered carrier is Time Warner Telecom Of California, L.p. dditional information for this number is not available."

He indicated that he had been 'burned' by internet transactions before and would not pay in advance, I suggested an escrow account and he said it wasn't necessary, that from talking to me felt that we could do business. If I hadn't been in a hurry to sell my equipment (had two back mortgage payments to contend with), I would have insisted on payment in advance or waited until I had a local buyer with cash, but stupidly agreed to use COD via UPS (his suggestion that UPS has COD Guaranteed Funds). Of course, the reality which i found out after the fact is tha UPS doesn't guarantee anything and their insurance, which I paid for, doesn't cover anything. Note these links which describe their policy, which plays nicely into the scammers plans, because it gives you a false sense of security:

Click here to read this cleverly hidden document on UPS website which tells you that basically the insurance doesn't cover anything.

Click here to read about their so called guaranteed funds COD.

NOTE: I currently am pursuing legal action against ups/ups store because I am contending that they should have delivered to the address, not to the individual waiting outside the appartment. The individual that resides there would have denied expecting a package which probably would have tipped off the driver. It was too much to ask that the driver question the cheezy looking 'bank draft' from the TrustMark bank - these people must love their tongue in cheek cleverness - a 'Mark' is a victim of a con, who usually get's to be a victim because of the 'trust' they establish.

The address which the package was shipped to I did a reverse lookup on whitepages.com and I called the # listed. The lady there confirmed that she was unit B. I asked her if she knew anyone with the name of ther person who had signed for my shipment, she said 'I don't know any guy named Marshall'. So either she was just someone picked out whose address someone could use to wait for UPS and intercept my delivery or she was working with them, but I suspect that the address was just some poor schmoe who they figured they could wait in front of for UPS to gift them with $7000 of video equipment.

The checks I finally received on 5/27/2004 was suspcious looking, so I called directory assistance in San Francisco, CA and they could not give me a number for that bank, "TrustMark Bank". I talked to my bank branch (JP Morgan Chase in Milford, CT) when I made the deposit and related my concerns, the teller placed it under a scanner and told me that it looked good. The funds were deposited, and within a few days the bank undeposited the money and took out the larger amount ($3216.71) which caused my mortgage payments to bounce, and the remaining amount came out on 6/8/2004 for $1065.78. So far, I am out $4282.49, which specifically was to have been my asking price of $3900 plus shipping and insurance charges. Of course, other damages are happening to me such as Insufficient fund charges, attorney fees - if I can every afford their retainer, and time I missed from work to deal with this mess.

I learned of the problem I was facing some ten days or so AFTER the bank took the money back out of my account - by a letter which included the counterfeit bank draft from chase. They didn't even call me. I did not notice that my accounts shortfall of $3200 was due to this process because I had expected a similar amount to come out from my mortgage.

I contacted my bank, the local police, filed a report with them, the FBI and I of course, contacted UPS and UPS Store and they are categorically refusing to even file a claim, so I'm having to see about sueing them.

Then I did some searching and ha! on the same craigslist.org forum where I had advertised my equipment, these cocky con-artists advertised a setup that was painfully identical to my own. They did so anomynously but when I contacted craigslist.org admin they recognized them as a bogus group that had been scamming their patrons - so yeah, this has got to be my equipment. They gave me the aol email address and I quickly found the same ad on their 'instant' free website, with another throwaway cell phone. So hopefully law enforcment and justice will prevail and they will bust these yahoo's, but I suspect I'm on my own here.

I've tracked their IP's, I'm albe to look at their website right now, but I can't call them without possibly tipping them off.

All in all, a very lousy situation. Financial disaster, very demoralizing. But we'll see. I will get my equipment back, just watch and see. "John Webb" I'm watching for you, your life is going to get very complicated.

Joel

The Clue Train Manifesto

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies... This is awesome.

http://www.cluetrain.com/book/95-theses.html

The Lovell Journal Website Finally Created

It took me the better part of scraps of time over a....hmm...two years??? to work on it, but I created a personal website finally. The link is above. Feel free to comment on it. When I am finished, it will have a LOT of information about family, friends, historical profiles (several of which are ancestors or relatives), stories, artwork, photo albums galore, and eventually, movies. The latter will be last because it is quite time consuming to edit them, compress them. Time, though, is precious, and this is about the lowest on my list of low priorities.

I have to wonder though, if the Lovell Journal is not original enough - I mean, everyone has a something Journal site or blog. I suppose however, that since I've been tinkering with this websites since the world wide wait was just a scrap of unsupported experiments, and most people were on BBS's that I can grandfather the name as being original. :)

Travel, travel and more travel.

I'm off again. Have appointment in New York and Deleware this week. Likely taking the train to Grand Central, subways to customer location, then to Penn station to take a train to our corporate hq. Tommorrow we are going to Newark, DE and it's just tooooo far to try and get there and back in one day, so I'm going to NJ after my morning appointment in NYC tommorrow.

What do I do? This might help...

http://ate.shorturl.com

It is kind of hard to explain. I'm a Storage Consultant, and no...not Westy Storage, or U-Haul, but as in storage area network (SAN) guru at large. Want to buy a few TB of disk storage for your MP3 collection? :)

The Week For Tracking Down Old Friends...

Google is an interesting tool. Every once in a long while, I'd get to thinking about old friends and wonder what in...and where in the world they had ended up. So I'd google them. Today I tracked down a buddy of mine from Oregon, Guy Schamp, and last week another friend from eastern Oregon who ended up somewhere in Washington. (It's his link above).

In FACT, it's because Brian Underhill had a blog that I thought, oh...cool. And he writes just like he talks and thinks, so it's kind of like visiting, but without having to worry about catching his cold that he went ON and ON about in his blog. ;-)

So thanks to Google for finding old friends and thanks to Brian to finding my way into BLOGGING.

Of course, I have to wonder who out there might be tracking ME down via Google. By the way...I'm NOT the essayist in NYC who faints on sidewalks, nor am I the rodeo guy. If it's games and storage technology odds are you've found the right Joel Lovell.

Joel

Largest thing in the universe...14 times more energetic than the combined energies of...everything else we've ever found...We have no idea what it is.

I found a very interesting article in Popular Science, about 'the 10th deminsion'. Fascinating stuff about the more 'out there' theories (and facts) of the physical universe. Here is the article...

JOURNEY TO THE 10TH DEMINSION

Physics can't find the biggest thing in the known universe, so it's looking beyond our paltry three dimensions. Michael Moyer enters the zone of insanely hard mathematics, translates what he finds into plain English, and makes it back alive.


by Michael Moyer
March 2004


di · men · sion n1: a measure in one direction 2: the number of variables needed to locate a particle 3: a property of space, or the space-time continuum, related to extension in a direction.

If the following seems ridiculous, far-fetched or just outright outlandish to you, rest assured: It is. It will probably hurt your brain, as it has hurt mine, and as it most definitely hurts the brains of those who come up with this stuff for a living. The following asks you to accept ideas that are counter to the fundamental basis of our experience, the framework through which we comprehend everything from setting down a coffee cup to the arc of a home run as it sails into the upper deck. The basic point of what follows -- and by the way, what follows is not fanciful provocation but has been worked into contemporary consciousness by the brainiest physicists alive today -- is that everything that you have ever experienced has in some small but significant way been an illusion. Why? Because everything you have ever experienced you have understood as happening in three dimensions of space -- up-down, left-right and front-back. Yet this is not how things happen. Things happen in more than three dimensions of space; to see them in only three is to succumb to a trick that the universe is constantly playing on us.

Space as you know it is a lie. What follows is an approximation of the truth, or at least of various conceptions of the truth. There is no one model of the extra dimensions in the universe, no one statement of fact that all physicists can agree on and create in their computers. Alas, things are not that simple. There are at least two and possibly three completely different theories of what these extra dimensions should look like. And in each of these theories, the specific form of the extra dimensions -- their shape, whether it be Gehry-esque or nail-straight -- is unknown. But let's not let that intimidate us. Let's get started.

Type of possible space #1 : A 10-dimensional universe made up of the normal three dimensions of space, plus one of time, plus six-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifolds located at every point in normal three-dimensional space.

Excellent question #1: What the hell is a Calabi-Yau manifold?

Attempted answer #1: It is arguably impossible to imagine what a Calabi-Yau manifold is, because it has six dimensions. But let's try anyway. A Calabi-Yau manifold looks kind of like a balled-up piece of paper, except it's one whose curves and twists and turns are intricate and Möbius-like, looping back over and around themselves with clear disdain for Euclidean geometry. A Calabi-Yau manifold knows no straight lines. I try to imagine myself inside one of these manifolds: I think it's probably much like a fun house, mirrors everywhere deflecting your gaze in every which direction, so that at any time you could be looking straight ahead and see, for instance, your back. Except it's not quite that -- there are no mirrors in a Calabi-Yau manifold, there is only space itself. So while you can still look forward and see your back, you could also, theoretically, throw a baseball at it, only to feel the little missile smacking your spine two seconds later. That baseball might have traveled up and around, roller-coaster-like, through six dimensions, eventually ending up at your back. A Calabi-Yau manifold is a strange thing indeed.


To reiterate: I'm not making this up. I am only attempting to report to you, dear reader, what I have heard smart people say, and what I have read in scientific papers and heard at conferences, and to report it in a way that you and I might be able to get our heads around it all. My attempts will necessarily be futile and inaccurate, because I write in English.

When scientists talk about extra dimensions, they actively avoid the use of English, tied as it is to our everyday experience of space and time and reality. English is by its very nature misleading, imprecise. So they use the language of math, whose concepts and terms are easily generalized into any number of dimensions or spaces or inconceivable, unphysical situations.

Consider how mathematicians think about the difference between a circle and a sphere. To a mathematician, a sphere and a circle are essentially the same thing, a collection of all the points that lie equidistant from a single point. (Think about this for a moment: If you took a piece of paper, then marked a point on the piece of paper with a dot, then marked all those places on the paper that are exactly, say, 1 inch away from the dot, you'd have a circle. Same thing with a sphere, but you'd have to mark all the points in three dimensions.) Mathematicians call circles 1-spheres, as creating them requires only a one-dimensional line, properly curved. Mathematicians call actual spheres 2-spheres, as creating them requires a two-dimensional surface. To mathematicians, the distinction between a 1-sphere and a 2-sphere is insignificant. They prefer to study n-spheres, spheres that can have any number of dimensions you like. No matter that we cannot imagine what even a 3-sphere would look like, sitting as it would in four-dimensional space. No matter that we cannot describe its appearance in English, or Japanese or Latin. Mathematics describes it with precision, and mathematics is the only language that counts. ( In general, an n-sphere of radius 1 is described by the equation { x ∈ Rn+1 | d(x,0) = 1} )

I learned this when I took a graduate-level mathematics course from Brian Greene, the Columbia University physicist who has done a very nice job popularizing string theory, the theory that requires our universe to be made of 10 dimensions. (Actually, recent developments in string theory suggest that there may be yet another dimension, for a total of 11, and that this new extra dimension is invisible because it is "curled up" into an infinite number of tiny loops. But to avoid further brain pain, let's stick with 10.) At the time I took the class, I was working toward a master's degree in the philosophical foundations of physics. This course was by far the most difficult one I have ever taken. After Week 3, I understood very little of what was going on. Yet the dimension stuff, that was Week 2, I think. Anyway, the course was this year-long journey through the world of differential geometry, which, as far as I could tell, should have been named abstract geometry, concerned as it was with the properties of surfaces and spaces of things in ndimensions. (Remember, nhere can be any whole number you wish -- 2, 5 or 12,497.) The culmination of this course, which paused only once for a quiet moment of repose somewhere around Week 8 when Professor Greene revealed to us that we had just derived the fundamental equation of general relativity (who knew?!), was an introduction to the basics of string theory.

Now, recently I've been busy with the day-to-day of magazine work. My string theory, if I could ever claim to have had any string theory, is a bit rusty. But when I dipped back in, I was lucky to find a Virgil to guide me through the various levels of theoretical-physics hell, someone informative and protective who understands both my fascination and my confusion with the whole enterprise. His name is Subdoh Patil (call him Sub), and he's a graduate student studying string theory at Brown University. He invited me to what I understand to be the eighth circle of hell, full of the astrologers and the diviners, otherwise known as the Second Northeast String Cosmology Workshop. Here, in a lecture room at Columbia University, wise men spoke of the ways that string theory and cosmology -- the study of the universe -- may intersect. While I learned much from Sub's break-time translations of what was going on, I was heartened to find that he himself occasionally didn't get it. The field is too broad, too rich for any one person to grasp it all.

And why wouldn't it be? The reason we were at a workshop on string cosmology was that string theory carries with it great hope for both particle physics -- the study of the very small -- and cosmology. Both fields are beset with problems, "problems" here meaning deep chasms of ignorance in our understanding of the physical world. Both fields have been challenged by recent discoveries we don't understand. And both fields hope that string theory -- which explicitly requires the existence of 10 dimensions for the math to work -- will provide a way out of this mess.


The big problem : It's not that modern physics doesn't work, or isn't true or accurate. In just about every case anyone could conceive, the causal and statistical explanations provided by physics are bulletproof. Physics predicts that time should occasionally slow down? We do the experiment and find that, lo, time does slow down, and by just the right amount. Physics tells us that distant particles can instantaneously affect one another? Nearly fifty years later, we develop technology sufficiently advanced to take a look, and yes, particles behave in just that way. Modern physics is capable of revealing the intricate details of worlds whose existence we never would have suspected had not physics offered up strategies for observing and understanding them. Take, for example, the vacuum of deep space. According to modern particle physics, it is not empty at all. It swirls with innumerable subatomic particles constantly popping into and out of existence, eternally borrowing their short life span from the uncertainty embedded in quantum mechanics. And recent experiments have shown this new and unexpected reality to exist. Modern physics is the most powerful tool for understanding the universe ever conceived.

And yet it is wrong .

Well, that may be overstating it a bit. Theoretical physics is wrong in a few seemingly minor, carefully selected cases. Something called the magnetic moment of the muon (don't ask) is off by 0.00005 percent. And the predicted and experimental values of another thing, called sin 2θW (pronounced "sine squared theta W," though again, not really worth the effort), differ by 1 percent.

Oh, and there is another anomaly, one that is not so little. In fact, in terms of total energy, this thing, whatever it is, is the largest thing in the universe, about 14 times more energetic than the combined energies of all the stars and galaxies and black holes and protons and electrons and everything else we've ever found or thought was out there. In time it could grow strong enough to rip apart all the basic constituents of matter in the universe. We have no idea what it is.

It's not that people haven't taken stabs at determining what this stuff -- most popularly called dark energy, as it is energetic and mysterious -- could be. Yet these stabs are ludicrously wrong. How wrong?

Let Tbe the theoretical magnitude of dark energy.
Let Ebe the experimental value of dark energy.
If the theorists were right, then Tshould = E.
Yet T≠E.
T=Ex 10 120 .

(10 120 =1,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000)

There is really no good metaphor to help us grasp this degree of absolute wrongness. One may search far and wide for even semicommon objects and experiences that differ by 120 orders of magnitude. One will fail. It is greater than the difference between the volume of a drop of water and the volume of all Earth's oceans, innumerable billions of times over. It is greater than the difference between the size of a proton and the size of the observable universe. It's so wrong that it makes one think there must be a stupid error in the calculation somewhere -- someone forgot to carry a 1 and now we're left with this ridiculous result. But no, many have checked the math (though I haven't personally done so), and the embarrassing difference between what our theories predict and how the universe actually behaves obstinately remains.

(Actually, physicists prefer to call their theories "incomplete," rather than "wrong," as they are pretty sure that these theories can adequately describe and explain 99.999999 percent of everything in the universe. There's just that teensy little 0.000001 percent that can't be explained. Yet when smart people are trying to fix this "missing" 0.000001 percent by inventing completely new structures of space and time, telling us that we live in a universe with six or four or two extra dimensions that are out there but that we just can't see , that the universe may not be made out of the stuff that we thought it was made of but out of little strings instead, that there's some mystical Borgian antigravitational force out there that's more powerful than everything in the entire known universe 14 times over , then it seems to me, dear reader, that these problems are more pernicious than anyone is letting on. That is not tacking an extra bedroom onto an otherwise sound house. That is razing the foundation and starting all over again, possibly in another state where the tax laws are better.)

But if current physical theories don't cut it, and string theory still sounds a bit insane, perhaps we should try something completely different.


Type of possible space #2 : The universe as we know it is merely a three-dimensional brane suspended in a four-dimensional bulk.
Excellent question #2 : What the hell is a brane?
Attempted answer #2 : Here is the Powerpoint version of everything you need to know about branes:

· You live on a brane.
· A brane is like a membrane.
· Imagine the skin that forms on your soup when it gets cold. A brane is like that.
· A brane is some sort of lower-dimensional thing (the 2-D skin) sitting in a higher-dimensional space (your 3-D soup).
· Brane theory says our 3-D world is really just a brane.
· Our brane sits in a 4-D space called the bulk.
· Like so much congealed fat, we are prevented from escaping the brane and going into the higher-dimensional soup.
· Only gravity is allowed to do that.

This theory -- generally referred to as brane theory -- was devised in 1998, which is pretty recent by theoretical-physics standards (people have been noodling with various forms of string theory for about 30 years now). Three guys get the credit for coming up with it, one of whom -- Nima Arkani-Hamed -- was a 25-year-old fresh out of Berkeley with a Ph.D. He is now a professor in the physics department at Harvard. Smart guy. He and his cohorts Savas Dimopoulos and Gia Dvali had been working on a problem that had confounded big thinkers for, oh, a few decades, when they suddenly realized that all they had to do to get us out of it was to invent another dimension! Voilà!

The problem that had been confounding all of these smart people for so long (and continues to confound them; did I mention that none of what I'm describing has yet been supported by a shred of experimental evidence?) was this: Gravity is weak.
Objection #1 : That's silly. Gravity is the strongest thing around -- it's what moves planets and clusters of thousands of galaxies, not to mention that it's what keeps us pinned to the ground.
Rebuttal #1 : When you compare it to the other forces -- say, the electromagnetic force -- gravity is incommensurably less powerful. Take for example a simple refrigerator magnet. Think about the forces acting on it as it pins a photo to the fridge. There's the combined gravitational force of the entire Earth pulling the magnet down to the ground, and the magnetic attraction of a little strip of iron anchoring it to the fridge. Those few grams of magnetic material win; not even a planet-size helping of gravity is enough to overcome its intrinsic weakness.
Objection #2 : OK, so gravity is weak. But that's just the way it is; physicists can't do anything to change gravity's strength. All they can do -- all they're supposed to do -- is describe it.
Rebuttal #2 : Correct, sort of. There can be many ways to accurately describe something in nature. Yet there is only one way in which the thing in nature actually works, one physical process that determines how things happen, one Truth (big T) of the universe. Right now, particle physicists have a way to describe the workings of gravity. And while they think this description is useful -- it accurately predicts the outcomes of experiments and the like -- they do not think that it reflects the true physical processes that govern the universe.

The world according to the current theory of particle physics seems very ad hoc, in that it must treat the weakness of gravity with great care, it must introduce new assumptions and fine-tune all the parameters it can in order to replicate the weakness of gravity. Everything else works fine; gravity is the oddball of the particle family.

Unfortunately, to go any further -- to describe exactly how modern particle physics treats gravity, and henceforth the difficulty of coming up with a reason for why it should be so much different from the other forces, requires a little refresher course on the state of particle physics today. The current model, which has become so well tested and generally accepted that everyone just refers to it as the standard model, was the major accomplishment of physics in the second half of the 20th century. And everyone believes it is accurate, though no one believes it is True, and the person to replace it will probably be the 21st century's Einstein.


Unfortunate but essential aside summarizing the present state of particle physics:

The standard model describes how everything in the subatomic world works. It is the ultimate (for now) and most general (again, for now) extension of quantum mechanics. It is basically a listing of all the fundamental particles and a set of rules governing how those particles interact. And how do they interact?

Particles interact by exchanging particles with other particles. For example, an electron exerts a force on another electron by shooting a little photon (a particle of light) out to the other electron, which the second electron catches and responds to. The preferred anthropomorphism is that particles "communicate" forces using "mediating" particles, like photons. This is what the process looks like in my head:



As you can clearly see, the two electrons "communicate" by tossing the basketball-like photon back and forth to each other. This tossing pushes the electrons apart, which agrees with what we see in the world -- negatively charged electrons repel one other. With particles other than electrons, the net effect can be attraction, not repulsion, but the principle remains the same. This is the essential point necessary to understand the rest of this stuff: A force -- any force -- is caused by things throwing particles at other things. The more particles that are thrown (and caught), the stronger the force will be.

OK, so where does gravity fit into all this? Just treat it like any other force -- gravity is caused by massive particles throwing "gravitons," attractive particles, at each other. These gravitons work to pull massive particles closer together. Simple as that. (Aside within the aside: You may have caught wind of another theory of gravity called general relativity. A fellow named Einstein came up with it almost 100 years ago. Conceptually, it could not be any more different from the standard model. General relativity explains gravity by invoking the warping of space-time; the standard model explains it and everything else by invoking the exchange of subatomic particles. Problems happen when we try to put the two theories together, when we try to describe things that are both very massive and very small, like black holes. Problems like mathematical inconsistencies, zeroes in denominators, nonsensical results. String theory has been developed at least in part to avoid these problems and combine quantum mechanics with general relativity, using a new structure of space-time and all that stuff I talked about a few pages ago.)

End of aside .

Now it is finally possible to understand why gravity's weakness is such a pressing problem. Within the standard model, there is a symmetry between the graviton and the other force-carrying particles. They share a common conceptual description. This common description implies that the forces the particles produce should also be similar, in both character (for example, the theory correctly predicts that the strength of both the electromagnetic and gravitational force diminishes with distance) and in magnitude. Yet, as we have seen, gravity is much weaker than every other force. And so we are left with the question: What makes gravity so special?

Enter brane theory. Recall that brane theory postulated that we are trapped in our three-dimensional world, which is itself floating in a higher-dimensional space. We cannot travel into this higher-dimensional space. In fact, nothing we know of can travel into it -- not electrons, or quarks, or exotic muons -- except for the graviton. It alone can journey into the higher dimension. And as gravitons spread out into that extra dimension, there are fewer here to do the work of pulling heavy things together. As we learned earlier, a force -- any force -- is the result of particles throwing particles at other particles. When there are fewer particles being caught, that force gets weaker. According to brane theory, we lose gravitons out into the fourth dimension. The result: Gravity is weak.

Please imagine that you are a graviton. I admit, I haven't given you much to go on about what it would be like to be the carrier of the gravitational force. This is because I have no idea what it would be like, either. Gravitons, like photons, do not possess the property known as mass. They weigh nothing. Because of this, they travel at the speed of light. And according to Einstein's other theory of relativity (the special one), anything traveling at the speed of light does not experience the sensation of the passage of time. I find this difficult to imagine, as I am imbued with the quality of mass, and thus ineligible, according to Einstein, to travel at the speed of light. But bear with me.

So you are this graviton moving along through the universe at the speed of light, except the universe, to you, is bigger than it seems to a nongravitational particle. Not wider or higher or longer, but fundamentally bigger. In addition to the three directions your fellow particles can move in, you can move in another direction, in the direction of the fourth dimension.

Now, there is some discussion about just how large this extra dimension has to be, and what it must look like. Here are a couple of options:
1) The extra dimension is small and round, though not nearly as small as the truly minuscule dimensions associated with string theory. It can be up to about 1 millimeter long. One millimeter in particle physics is to us like the distance between here and the nearest quasar. It is magnificently large. For this reason, brane theory was originally called the theory of large extra dimensions (the theory, like our sphere earlier, is general, and can describe any number of extra dimensions you wish). Each extra dimension is curled up in a circle, so if you were a graviton, you would be able to move in this circular direction at every point in space, while still moving in a straight line through the three dimensions we all know.
2) The extra dimension is infinite. We are all very familiar with infinite dimensions. In fact, the regular dimensions we move around in every day are infinite. Theoretically, we could choose a direction -- let's say "up" -- and move in that direction forever, never coming back to the same place, never reaching an end. When Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum -- she of Harvard, he of Johns Hopkins -- first proposed the possibility of an infinite fourth dimension back in 1999, it was the first time anyone had taken seriously the possibility that an extra dimension doesn't have to be tiny to be invisible. If only gravitons can escape into the extra dimension, then it could be perfectly straight and infinite and we'd never know. This proposal has the advantage of an extra dimension that looks just like the dimensions we know very well. Except that only gravity experiences it.

There's a third option, but it's fundamentally different from the two options above. Notice how those two require only one extra dimension. (Some variations of these theories feature two or three, but they only require one.) This is because gravity needs only enough extra space-time fabric to dissipate and grow weak. Whatever intricate particulate structure you wish to lay on top of this fabric -- whether it be string theory or another option called supersymmetry or something else entirely -- is just gravy.

But this third option is more of a combination of string and brane theory, a way to integrate the major ideas in one big package. In this scenario, there are two extra dimensions, both of them small and straight and finite, which lead us to a parallel universe.

Hear me out on this one. Remember how string theory required us to live in a 10-dimensional universe? Well, imagine that instead of living in a four- dimensional space (three plus one of time) and having the extra six dimensions curled up into balls so small we have no hope of ever directly observing them, there are two four-dimensional spaces: ours and a different one hanging out not too far away from ours. A two-dimensional surface connects these two branes (remember, a brane is the thing we are trapped on), which gives you 4 + 4 + 2 = 10 dimensions. This implies that there is another, mirror brane located as little as a millimeter or so away from us at all times, but which we can never reach, because we are not gravitons. This is the sort of thing that the string theorists come up with and think not "how manifestly ridiculous," but -- and I'm paraphrasing here -- "wicked awesome!" It does make the math work, however, even if it breaks our brains.


What I have been describing is really a trip, to put it mildly. These theories ride the very edge of human understanding. No one yet knows if any of them are true, because no one has figured out how to conclusively test them against the firm foundation of the physical world. They are still too ethereal, too vague, too ill-defined. But these theories will ultimately become clearer both to the people who are devising them and to us. The search is on for a True theory of the universe. And the way things are going, that theory will describe a universe that we will completely understand yet still not be able to imagine.


Michael Moyer is the senior associate editor of this magazine .

A Few Notes on a dream. Isn't that what Blogs are for? :)

Dreamed about bayou's again. Bridget and I were in dress clothes and had stopped to look at some swampy area, must have been Lake Arther, LA. I could smell it, hear it, and in the dream was thinking that I missed it, snakes and alligators and all. Of course, there was an old, creaky set of warf boards and pilings. I was stepping across them and boards were old, rotten. Some were not much more than piles of old boards bowed down and dipping almost into the water. Precarious, but I wasn't worried. I could see that the water was only a few inches deep there, with coffee colored mud, snakes and turtles. So as I was standing there in my suit, at the end of this old creaky warf, thinking about the old houseboat or cajun boathouse or cabin that used to be there (no place real that I know of in my waking memories); I noticed a big old grandaddy of an alligator was snoozing under the part of the warf I had just walked over that had dipped down. He wasn't snoozing any longer and the boards had shifted and moved and were falling. I ran over the boards and as any number of tv and movie characters have done used the old gator as a stepping stone to get to the higher part of the old dock and to higher ground. Unlike a movie though, the gator just went and found a less bothersome resting place.

Don't know why I dream things like that. Challenges, never afraid, regardless of what they are about I don't consider them nightmares.

Blog Up and Running...Now to get the personal site up...

A blog is born...