Oh, come over, then! Um, I mean, if it's OK to ask, what is your field?

I'm a psychologist, but the parts of my work that have to do with genetic epidemiology and cognitive science sometimes border on your systems stuff. When they do, I get a headache. I like my nice, simple, deterministic models. I don't look forward to the effort of learning a whole new way of thinking, but that's where things are going, so I suppose I will have to.

"Okay, we have snow, we have bitter cold. We can call this Winter thing over with and move on to Spring."

It's those Canadians with their coldon particle emitters again.

I was actually thinking about coldon particles the other day. A coldon particle would have to be the same as a photon of heat energy, but with negative heat. So you'd fire your coldon particle emitter, and you'd instantly gain heat as the coldon particles left. Then when the coldons hit their target, the target would lose heat energy as the coldons were absorbed.

And, if you assume that a physical object cannot have negative heat energy, and if the target was already at absolute zero, then the coldon particle emitter wouldn't work. (eta: assuming that they can't bounce off and go hit something else.) So, say you fire your CPE at a planet that's one light-hour away. You would instantly gain heat, and one hour later the target planet would lose heat. Exept, if the beings on the target planet would put up a shield of absolute zero matter, then when you fire the CPE you'd instantly know that one hour later your attack would fail. So your CPE would be able to detect an event in the future.

The cool thing is that a coldon particle would behave exactly like a regular photon of heat energy that was traveling backwards in time.

Hey Rick, my whole family is whack. You want em?

For research purposes of course.

So you'd fire your coldon particle emitter, and you'd instantly gain heat as the coldon particles left. Then when the coldons hit their target, the target would lose heat energy as the coldons were absorbed.

And we'd be able to use it to explain multiplication of negatives by negatives!

a shield of absolute zero matter

I've always thought absolute zero would be like ice-nine. Don't you think?

Ever since T-day I've had an absolutely ravenous appetite. It's 10:45 and I'm starving. I'm trying to hold out until noon.

Tom, I've been the same way. Good luck to you. This week I'm feeling a tad desperate (formal holiday outfit to fit into on Saturday) so I'll be drinking as much hot tea as necessary to keep me away from the vast amounts of holiday junk food in the office.

The cool thing is that a coldon particle would behave exactly like a regular photon of heat energy that was traveling backwards in time.

Very interesting , tommy.

Don't you think?

I don't think of it as contagious.

Now I have to go to my happy place of the Alias episode where Vaughn is a naughty priest.

Bless.

The cool thing is that a coldon particle would behave exactly like a regular photon of heat energy that was traveling backwards in time.

So, we can have time travel, but only if we bundle up really warm?

Well, a coldon particle emitter would in essense be a time machine that could reach in to the future, grab radiant heat energy and pull it back into the present. So, just a very narrow, specific time machine.

I love my board full of geeks.

Rick, will that be the Internet, or will it be another global network?

I called and asked because, ok, I was drinking at the time I had this discussion. The original idea was a separate network, but there was some concern that the innovations paid for by the government should benefit everyone. So at this point there is a separate research-based backbone, codenamed Abilene, that is being developed out of my university, and a broader Internet 2 initiative that is supposed to interface with, and influence, the existing internet. It's run out of U. Michigan.

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