For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
We have all heard this. Most of us have been made to recite it at some point during our education. Many of you will have used it, either expressly or without knowing to justify some action you take in response to something or someone else.
As I write this it is a rainy and dreary day in April. We have only had one single day of actual spring weather. I have been binge watching my “Andromeda” DVD collection. During the first season they introduce the concept of a White Hole. I must admit my geek side was unfamiliar with this concept. Recently I did a search to find the link presented here. If you take it down to simple terms mere mortals use, a White Hole is the opposite of a Black Hole. A Black Hole which becomes unbounded in time and space grows in size to consume the universe. All light, time, mass and energy become trapped inside of the black hole. The White Hole is, in theory, a big bang, spewing light, energy, time and mass into a universe from some physically impossible place.
While most things on Wikipedia I distrust immensely, I did like the assertion that a White Hole is the past of an unbounded Black Hole. Two sides of the same coin whose thickness is determined by time.
Science fiction writers have explored this concept from various angles and directions. By now, even if you only watch movies instead of reading, you are familiar with the concepts of multiple universes and quantum time-lines. Anyone who has watched the various “Men in Black” installments came across the aliens living in locker C-18
And of course the one where we are living in our own train locker.
People who have read the “Wheel of Time” series by Robert Jordan are familiar with the ancient evil entities using virtual pockets of time, cut off from our reality, as laboratories to run experiments. If something vicious happened the pocket could just be done away with. Alternate time-lines and realities within the same universe has also been a staple of science fiction exploration. It seems to also be one which keeps shows on the air a while. Check out “Sliders” if you don’t believe me.
A few years ago I was working on a project at an advertising/marketing company. Me and another old timer, along with several young-ins were trying to white board a solution to a problem. We were writing various things on the board and shooting them down. I had never worked with this guy before this project, but, we fell into the grove instantly. It’s a design session. Only the strongest of the children survive. All of a sudden one of the twenty-somethings piped up
“Hey guys. It’s getting too negative in here, I’m leaving.”
Colleges have failed our children. Trigger words and coddling do not turn out IT professionals. The problems with Facebook are a direct result of a failed higher education system and businesses trying to follow that model.
The memory of this scene collided with multiple events in my current reality. With electricity we have a positive and negative pole, even with batteries. You’ve all seen the little + and – symbols. They aren’t just there to idiot proof the insertion of batteries into a device.
All fiction which attracts an audience has some basis in fact. Anyone watching today’s “news” shows should also be realizing fiction which has absolutely no basis in fact but presented as “journalism” attracts an audience as well.
One thing which has been nagging at the back of my mind is this concept of negative energy. Oh, I don’t mean the kind touchy-feely young-ins and “cosmic awareness” hippies of the past talk about. I mean negative energy, the exact opposite of energy, such that if a quantity of energy encounters its exact negative, the two create a null field which is unable to ever hold a charge of any kind again. Some may prefer to call this anti-energy, but negative energy will work better for the common man familiar with a battery or a magnet.
While this may sound like some thought coming from a mind that had its cheese slip off the cracker, I would like to point out that talk of antimatter once got people the hairy eyeball as well. Now we produce and study antimatter.
Assuming we one day use a super collider or some other tool to manufacturer negative (anti-) energy, how would you contain it? We generate electricity and trap it within insulated wire sending it all around the country to power our homes and toys, but how would you trap anti-energy? Would you let it create some limited in size null fields then use some industrialized process to shape those fields into containers much like Mason jars? Whatever the container was it would have to be something which is unable to accept a charge of any kind.
How would you preserve your negative energy sample? We trap small quantities of our electricity inside of batteries, but, these batteries slowly lose containment over time and temperature. Who hasn’t known someone foolish enough to buy an Apple iPhone, charge it completely, then step outside in a ten below wind chill and watch the battery monitor go to zero almost instantly? Would your negative energy container gain storage capacity when frozen? If hot positive energy containers lose it when cold, then negative energy containers should gain it?
Now we get to the real question. What kind of weapon would negative energy be? We’ve all seen the movies with high energy weapons shooting bright beams of light making things blow up. Would your negative energy beam cause it to implode or would it simply drain all energy from the ship and life forms within then take some kind of viscous form in space.
Both science and science fiction have played with various forms of weapons which kill all living things while doing no physical damage themselves. You’ve all heard of chemical and biological weapons. Chemical weapons were used heavily during World War I. Biological came around as a proposed end to the Cold War nuclear annihilation. After all, what good is a planet where all infrastructure and green spaces have been destroyed? Many countries, and sometimes just rich crazy people, pursued the concept of a deadly pathogen which required a cure only they had. Something which could spread by both air and touch. Something which could be released in an enemy nation and would look like a natural pandemic as it wiped out the population. Then you could move in, disarm all of the nukes, and colonize this shiny new country.
Sadly, such a scenario is more believable today than during the Cold War. Pandemics are becoming quite common and drug companies have no interest in pursuing one-and-done drugs to cure such things.
If you could create frozen negative energy, what would you make it do?
