Electricity. Never take it for
granted...

Good morning! Or whatever time zone you find yourselves in. In a job like
mine you have to appreciate all manner of time-related misunderstandings and
problems, and I'm not just talking about time travel! But yes, hello my
friends, and welcome to issue 9 of Ask Prof! Are we really that far ahead?
I'm trying to think of something special to do for next week's issue,
commemorating ten weeks of humorous babbling on my part, but have been
unsuccessful as yet. Do write to
me if you have any suggestions!

Before that though, I remember that last week
I said I'd tell you about electricity. Electricity is a truly interesting
subject, one of science's great discoveries, and has quite literally
brightened up people's lives for infinite millennia (we're talking in
Omniversal terms here). Luckily for all you readers out there, even Earth
scientists have discovered its uses by now. But if you've learnt the theory
of electricity from your Earth teachers, I'm afraid I have to dash your
hopes of wisdom, for their hypothesis is false!

Allow me to explain to anyone not knowledgeable in the ways of such
sciences the Earth theory of electricity: basically, electricity - as used
by households all over the world - is the movement of tiny particles called
electrons. These electrons have a negative charge. Their movement is what we
call a current. Through various complicated and mysterious processes, which
I was never able satisfactorily to explain without falling into fits of
laughter, it powers objects, gives them energy to do their job. Electricity
is also the force between charged particles, electrons being, as I said,
negative and protons being positive.

But alas, Earth sciences have not uncovered the entire truth. The reality
is truly shocking and sometimes quite disturbing. When we think of what we
humans (I say 'we' with a grimace) get up to in our lives, and then compare
it to the subatomic world's little escapades, we feel totally humbled. Deep
down beyond where the microscopes can go, beyond the possible reach of the
human eye is an entire other world! A world of jealousy, scandal and deceit,
a world of broken bonds and imperfect chemistry. The world of the
subatomic.

'No one would have believed in the first years of the twenty-first
century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by
intelligences lesser than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men
busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinised
and studied, perhaps almost as broadly as a man with a telescope might
scrutinise the permanent creatures that swarm and multiply on a planet...
Yet across the short distances of space, minds that are to our minds as ours
are to those of the people of San Beta, fools narrow and hot and
unsympathetic, regarded this earth with pitying eyes, and slowly and surely
drew their plans against us.' Chilling words from the great cybernovel
The War of the Particle Phases by H.G. Frells. They tell us a little
about this world of the subatomic, the different particles that inhabit this
world, and the way they have always been plotting against mankind for taking
them for granted. They never did like us.

But before I talk to you about the great plans they have for wiping out
us higher life forms, I must describe this other world for you. It's just
like ours really. If you think of the vast distances between planets, and
then think of our size, imagine what it would seem like to people who take
our atoms to be planets, and who see each atom as another planet, and see
the vast distances between them. Then think of their atoms and electrons,
and how small they must be. Incomprehensible, eh? But they're there!

Curiously enough, there is only one race down in the subatomic. Taking
the form of spheres they are, in fact, sentient particles, with the power to
control and shift all the other particles: electrons, protons, neutrons,
neutrinos (they can stop these solid if they want), kerons, everything.
Their lives have been the subject of some discussion in recent years, mainly
with equal talk about these soap operas we have on Earth. For though other
interplanetary scientists don't like to study Earth all that much, they have
found our interest in the perfectly normal goings-on in other people's lives
very curious. And the sheer amount of similarities between the lives of
people on-screen and the lives of these subatomic dwellers is truly
startling!

The emotions the subatomics carry reflect only the bad side of human
culture and, of course, the culture of many other races. They get angry far
too much, have fights - often resulting in the 'random' giving out of atoms
in radioactivity - and are generally a very mean lot. Quite sadly, they have
deduced how the chemistry at our level works, what with atoms ripping
electrons from each other, and have taken it to heart, ripping some
subatomics from partner subatomics very violently, resulting in ever more
scandal!

Now, back to electricity. All this commotion among the subatomics has led
us to believe in electron movement. The constant movement of them is, in fact,
a mere coincidence, as the subatomic people of this Universe have hitherto
not noticed they were doing us this great service, shifting them around. But
they have recently all discovered that they are merely lower forms of life,
and are really working for us, and this realisation brought with it a
terrible emotion of hatred towards us. They wanted us 'higher' life to pay,
to suffer for all the millennia we'd used them. Luckily, before they could
fully devise a plan to deceive us, a group of scientists working busily in
San Beta worked out a method of keeping them subservient, and so a disaster
has now been averted. I have also discovered other ways of fixing the
problem, but they involve the usage of parallel dimensions, and I don't
quite think that this entire Universe is ready for that yet.

On the same theme, I would like to stress that it has been conclusively
proven (through various technological methods that I'm afraid I may not
explain) that there are no higher life forms than us. I mean, think about
it: if these tiny, arrogant people believe the greatest objects in their
vicinity to be planets while the same objects are to us atoms, shouldn't it
be possible that what we believe to be planets are to some higher life form
merely atoms? One would think it highly probable. But, in this dimension at
least, there are no types of life on a higher scale. Believe me.

Now then, after that little factful ramble, how about I answer a few
letters for my readers?

Ah well, not much to say this week with regards to the amount of letters
here. But, as always, I urge you to write to
me!

What ho, Ming! The subject of satellites has, sadly enough for I find it
very interesting, fallen out of the limelight in the scientific community.
We know them, we've been there, done that, and we've even made an awful lot
of our own. However, this is because the scientific community is usually on
the lookout for new things, and let the special cases pass them by.

A number of planets in the GalaGroup of San Beta have incredibly
interesting moon systems. For example, the planet of Gagranchia in the
galaxy Ilsa Gamma (known especially for its curious range of spatial
anomalies) is the most regular planet known to be in existence. Around it
circle two moons, about a twentieth of its size. They are directly opposite
each other and move at the same speed around the planet. Around both of
those moons circle two other moons each, again in a regular fashion. Around
these four circle another two each, and around those two each. A completely
regular, clockwork pattern, by which the official time system of San Beta is
indeed calculated. But more of that at another date.

However, the highest number of moons for a planet is in fact forty-two,
by a thoroughly unorthodox coincidence. This number belongs to the planet of
Indimrik in the same galaxy, which is a planet entirely surrounded by a
shell of moons. Needles to say, the planet is very small and its moons very
large, but so is the nature of Ilsa Gamma!

A very large number of moons have produced life, but only in limited
form. Though many of these races have turned out to be very technologically
or spiritually advanced, none of them have strayed beyond the three-leg,
one-arm variety. And not completely unexplained either, but the main
biological theory behind it is too complicated to detail here. Thank you for
your letter!

Thank you for writing again, good doctor! Indeed, I will admit that using
the Schrödinger's Cat principal never gave perpetual results, as indeed I
explained a few issues ago when I undoubtedly stated they weren't used on a
wide basis. However, using this same principal without the poison doesn't
give us the argument of whether the cat is alive or dead, but whether it is
upside down or the right way up (remember the buttered toast effect). After
a few weeks though, we would know the cat was dead because it had to
die of starvation.

The theory of God's existence though is a right corker, and would be ripe
for some testing! I'm afraid I may not divulge my testing methods just now,
but I may have something for you next week. Similarly, I shall explain to
you my methods of refining perpetuity-based operations. I hope you can wait
a week! Thank you again!

And so we reach then end of another issue. Quite a goody, what? Now,
don't forget to write to me with any suggestions you may have for the style
of the main section next week, as it will be our tenth edition! Till then,
adios, as we don't at all say in the scientific community.

Yours with steaming brains,

- Professor Christopher Tonks

Minister for Science & Technology for the Alabaster House

GalaGroup Overseer to San Beta
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