How I Almost Won a Nobel Prize

I believe I have invented something like superconductivity at room temperature.

For decades, scientists have known that some materials, cooled to something near absolute zero (0 °K, or -273 °C) provide no resistance to a current. It has to do with the pairing of electrons, or turnips or something, at that temperature. If left undisturbed, a current at extremely low temperature will go on just about forever. There is no resistance.

Our home here i the Twin Cities has a lawn that completely encircles the house. It is a corner lot, which means that, on two sides, our yard abuts neighbors; upwind neighbors. Not just upwind: up dandelion-wind!

They are principled neighbors. One refuses to use chemicals unless they taste good, or the doctor prescribes them, and the other refuses to spray anything that can be mowed down, regularly, every month, usually.

Because we have planted wildflowers, I have to be careful about weed killers, since wildflowers are weeds, so I attack the dandelions with a hand tool.

I have discovered this: if I start at the front yard, clipping dandelion roots down deep, and work my way all around the yard, back to the front, again, there will be precisely as many dandelions smiling at me as when I began.

It goes on forever! From here until eternity, I can keep going around the house, nothing impeding me, nothing slowing down or speeding up, as happy as an angel singing, "I'll be a sunbeam for Jesus", forever. At room temperature!

It is a definition of eternity! Of ineffability!

I would take time off to nominate myself for a Nobel Prize, but that would upset the equilibrium, and nobody ever got a Nobel Prize for losing to dandelions.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

Nice to Run Into You Again

We do not see things in enormous time-frames. We human beings are fairly new at figuring things out for ourselves. For instance, some people today still think of the earth as a newly created thing, perhaps ten thousand years old. Earth is actually about four-and-a-half billion years old. That is to say, the earth is 450,000 times older than the Adam and Eve story, and the universe is three times older than that! I recall first hearing that continents were slowly drifting around the earth, and that there quite likely had been several times when the continents were squeezed together. But people could stand on the edge of their own continents, and not see Africa or Asia getting closer. It took at least fifty years to figure things out. We called our continent something special. But sure enough, there have been numerous times during several-billion year history of the earth, when supercontinents formed, and eventually drifted off. ...

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...

SmokeSound

Search This Blog