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Letter: Letters: Spiders in the bath

Published 3 October 1992

From SIMON INGATE

Imagine that there is a parallel universe, one of many, in which the
spiders are physicists and baths do not exist. These spiders have discovered
a way in which to transform small areas of space time and tag a ride on
a superstring. This gives them the ability to transcend the reality barrier
and cross over into our version of normality.

What they have managed to do is far beyond our current capabilities
and it is unfortunate that they have little knowledge of the behaviour of
nine-dimensional superstrings to which small parts of three-dimensional
space have been fused. They are after all only allowed a small research
budget.

The object that we choose to call a bath in Einstein/Hawking space
is in reality a strange attractor that, because of its shape, focuses disturbances
in the space-time continuum in such a way that these hybrid strings appear
in mid-air some 50 centimetres above the rim; somewhere towards the head
end. This focusing is a near instantaneous event, which due to its thermodynamic
instability causes the space-time-superstring fusion to become severed.
The spider materialises and falls into the bottom of the bath.

Simon Ingate Southampton

Issue no. 1841 published 3 October 1992

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