Dialogue I

Once upon the time it really happened.

Me: What do you think, Mr. Everett’s follower, when  are your teachings going to be taught in most schools?

Him: Later in this century, I am sure.

Me: In which Everett branch will this be, sear?

Him: In the averaged majority of them all!

Me: Really? In the averaged majority? Won’t this average mainly be shaped by the most radioactive post nuclear war branches, since they so quickly reproduce?

Him, already branched away.

You can use this handy logical entrapment for those people just about every time you meet one of them. Have fun!

Actually, your job will usually already be done after the second question. Not everyone of them will try to escape through the “averaged whatever”, but branch away from the debate right there. They preach the splitting of the whole Universe every time something quantum occurs. Which is about many times every nano second. They say the Universe divides like a bacteria, only much, much faster. They call the “petri dish” Multiverse and every bacteria an “Everett branch”, dividing further. No branch is special, all are of an equal status.  In some of the branches the Roman Empire is still alive and well. In most, there are no humans. And so on and on.

Still, they hope to teach this in every school inside THIS world, later in the 21st century. They already do it in some.

Comets, Asteroids and H bombs

I’d like to point to a frequent mistake made by many celebrity physics professors, who keep telling us this on the Discovery Channel,  National Geographic Channel, and other broadcast channels.  It’s more ignorance than a mistake. Doesn’t really matter that many movie directors in Hollywood agree with them.

They say God forbid smashing an incoming asteroid with a big nuclear bomb! That the parts of a broken asteroid are even more dangerous. That many more pieces will be hitting us, better to leave it in one big chunk.

Well, this is baloney. Maybe if we decided to detonate very near our planet. In which case no method would work anyway. But if we destroy the asteroid far away from us, many years and many billion kilometers before the scheduled impact, then it poses no danger whatsoever.

The gravity center of the asteroid could still meet us here. But it will be an empty center made of cold interplanetary vacuum from which all the pieces will have already escaped. This is called the Conservation of Momentum. It would be incredibly hard to keep a smaller piece of the exploded asteroid in the old orbit. Of the original rock merely a bunch of spin off trajectories, less dangerous than the average asteroid would remain.

You can imagine the Halley comet splitting into only two smaller parts because of an internal explosion. Let’s say that before the explosion, Haley is 10 years from smashing into Mars. The two orbits after dividing will both be very different from the old one. Neither one will hit Mars. The same holds for any number of parts an explosion could make.

Next time, just send a big H bomb toward the incoming comet! Don’t worry about small pieces, they will be million of miles away.