My Unified Theory

I’m reading a book about teleportation (I read them all, no subject is too abstruse) and it has some amazing things to say. (Well, it better).

Okay, here we go. If you go into a dark room, cut two slits in a piece of cardboard, and shine a bright light through them against a white background, what do you get? Well, you’re going to say “two slits of light on the white background.” And you’d be wrong! Turns out that, just as if you dropped two pebbles into a pond, the light waves that go through the slits interfere with each other, like ripples in water, forming troughs and peaks where they intersect. So instead of getting two slits of light, you get bands of dark and light where the light waves intersect!

But you knew that already. Trouble is, there are two theories about light — one is that it’s waves, but the other is that it’s particles. Yeah, you know your theory — a light particle is called a photon.

So (bear with me) when you shine a light through the two slits, literally sextillions of photons are going through at once. Now what if you could just reduce it to ONE photon? Well, guess what — they did. And it showed that when just one photon went through the two slits you still got the ripple pattern — yet the photon wasn’t divided in two! Thus, light waves. (The other half of the atom goes to a bar looking sad. Bartender says "What's wrong, buddy?" Atom says "I just lost a neutron." Bartender says "Are you sure?" Atom says, "Yeah, I'm positive!" Bartender says "Okay, then for you, no charge.")

Why am I telling you all this? Well, because I’m trying to develop a Unified Theory According to Me that explains not only teleportation, but also invisibility and time travel — all at the same time! Why, again, you ask, am I bothering, when hundreds, if not thousands of esteemed physicists before me have explored these very same questions yet not arrived at a theory that can account for all three phenomena?

I’m glad you asked! Well, as for teleportation, I want to find a way to beam one of Brigitte’s hot dogs directly to a plate on my lap in the bedroom so I don’t have to get up and miss a second of The Love Connection. What? you ask? The Love Connection? That went off the air decades ago!

Well, that’s precisely why I want to invent a time machine! Okay, so why invisibility? Well, I want to be able to sneak to the refrigerator undetected by Brigitte to grab myself another beer while I wait for the hot dog to be made and The Love Connection to come on.

So what progress have I made so far? Well, I’ve discovered that by cutting two slits in a National Enquirer and beaming Tiger Woods through them results in a whole bunch of sleazy-looking supermodels all hefting nine-irons!