Anyone curious about the mechanics of Kevyn’s time-travel adventure needs to read this unsolicited piece of fanmail that arrived not half an hour ago…
Ok I have the rough estimates.. sort of Galileo's equations of gravity compared to Einstein+Superstring.
Ok the issue is that the Galaxy and its related dark matter dropped out of the rest of the universe. This allows for bounding of the 3 main dimensions and the 5? string dimensions, but most importantly the time dimension. The walls of the time are when the anomaly started in the panel that said oops (or something like that long ago), and the other end is when the entire micro-universe destroys itself.
The bounding allows for a near infinite quantum wave state. It is not infinite because then the Andromeda gate would not work at all. And time would be fixed.. as per the writeup of Oedipus and Cassandra.. they would know they were doomed but couldnt do anything about it. Instead the Andromeda gate allows for a quantum tunnelling to micro-universises that allow for Schroedingers cat to break out of his cage (so in this case the cats are a bunch of marines with guns who are really peeved that there is a bottle of cyanide. I hope Dr Schroedinger's life insurance is paid up.)
Anyway. The fact is that the quantum tunneling allows for multiple waves to form. As long as they are short lived and do not overly disrupt the master wave then the universe doesnt do a smack down on it. That is how the universe allowed for the additional mass from the second probe. There is a leakage of energy out, but not too much to cause the quantum wave to collapse to a null state. Now Petey using the gate to multiply himself over and over again in 10 minute bursts would cause the wave to collapse rapidly as seen in todays comic. Schlock and Kevyn cause a similar effect by causing the wave to start leaking out of the near infinite wave guide. This effectively causes the gate to wink out as space around it hits null. [The funny thing is I was working this out last night before I saw todays comic and said 'AHA! It works!'
This doesnt mean that Kevyn will be successful in re-writing history. The universe may hit a null state still (but what fun is that). It does mean that the hard-physics still works.
Now to work on how to use the micro-tunneling through dark-matter to get past the current teraport blocks.
--
SJ
an unspecified National Laboratory
What can I say? My readers are waaay smarter than I am.
–Howard
I hope this doesn’t result in anyone getting their security clearance lowered…
More likely RAISED.
Anyone who reads that who would have the lack of humor required to drop the clearance DOWN would also have the lack of humor to take it seriously and decide that the author might have a practical theoretical basis for time travel. Subsequently both the original writer and Howard would find themselves locked in Cheyenne Mountain in a thinktank next to SG-1.
Re: More likely RAISED.
On the other hand, this (hypothetically) low humour-quotient person would also wonder about the trustworthiness of leaking possible government secrets to a public forum. So, yeah, I hope, for his sake, Howard doesn’t find himself locked inside Cheyenne Mountain next to one of his fans.
*disclaimer*
This is not a comment on the sociability of Howard’s fans, but on the desirability of freedom of motion.
well, unless there’s something the US government isn’t telling us about dark matter universes, warp gates and teraporting, i think said person is safe 🙂
I know of nothing the US government knows about dark matter universes, warp gates, and teraporting!
I don’t know of anything the UN or the former USSR knows about them, either!
Honest!
That you and your readers can and do make commentary on your comic like this regularly is one of the things I love best about it! =)
Well OBVIOUSLY.
This is intuitively obvious to the casual observer. The details are left for the student to work out. This will be on the exam, so please study.
Re: Well OBVIOUSLY.
Please find my answer in the margin of this livejournal
Re: Well OBVIOUSLY.
Drat! And here I have my default set to view="mine", so I can only see my marginal notes, not yours.
Re: Well OBVIOUSLY.
Casual? or Causal?
BW
SJ? Sounds suspiciously like Steve Jackson to me.
I knew it! The Illumanati National Laboratory off of Oltorf!
You see, this is exactly the sort of thing that attracted me most to Schlock in the first place. Stuff which makes one think! Excellent!
Speak for yourself. I’m curious to know what they are going to do now they’ve gone back in time. When I wonder why it works my teeth ache.
Funnily enough all I can think about at the moment is that Elf will still have those huge prosthetics…if of course the story goes to that particular “stage” of the overall set.
I’m confuzzled but content.
Y’know Elf’s prosthetics were the exact same thing I thought of when this whole time travel thing became apparent, and it made me sad. I don’t like big honkin’ feet on my cute petite lieutenants. I like Elf being, well Elf.
True but if she hadn’t got the feet….and prosthetics don’t sweat so they shouldn’t honk, except perhaps slightly of light oil….
Pranger would have banged the three of them, Elf, Schlock and Tagon with that first grenade…