Experiment

Precautionary Notification from the European Theoretical Physics Research Project

This is a precautionary notification only.  No actual emergency is known to exist at this particular time.  If that changes, we will make every attempt to warn you in a timely manner, although given the nature of the contingency, that may or may not be possible.

As you already know from previous news releases, the European Theoretical Physics Research Project is planning to conduct experiments with its newly designed space-time warp generator.  This exciting new research project is the most ambitious pure research program ever undertaken, and if successful, will expand the frontiers of non-utilitarian knowledge vastly beyond anything ever achieved in the past.

Of course, that is a mighty big “if,” as they say in North America.

The downside is that, since nothing like this has ever before been attempted, there are inevitably certain risks to be factored in to our considerations. Not the least of these risks involves the fact that the space-time warp generator might potentially disrupt the universal space-time coordinate field unification property of the universe as a whole.  In layman’s language, this means that the darn thing might blow up the entire universe.

But please be assured that we have minimized this risk to its absolute lowest possible level.  We estimate the chance of a disastrous result at a mere twenty percent.  Of course that is only an estimate.  The chances that the estimate is wrong are significant.

In order to further reduce that risk, we are requesting that all sources of electromagnetic transmissions should be turned off at their source at noon (GMT) on the date of the experiment.  No one should read anything of significance into the choice of date.  It is based upon contractual obligations and training projections only.  And even though the training has fallen seriously behind schedule, the contractual obligations are inalterable, and therefore the activation of the space-time warp generator will proceed on that date, regardless of how well trained the technicians are at that time.

Sources of electromagnetic transmissions that need to be turned off (on that date) include, but are not limited to, household appliances, televisions and radios, computers and bio-neurological sources such as brain waves.  Of course, we do not expect you to turn off your brain (why, that would be ridiculous!) but it would be advisable to minimize attempting to solve any difficult mental problems that require strenuous thought during that time frame.

 

It should be noted that pacemakers pose a serious risk to the safety of the experiment.

It is by no means assured that preventive measures will in any way reduce the anticipated risk, but then again, it can’t hurt to err on the safe side.

Please pay no heed to the alarmists who have criticized this experiment as unnecessary and fraught with risk of universal disaster.  True, they make a sound and reasonable case, but then again, the church refused to peer through Galileo’s telescope, so there.

Other critics have charged that our scientists and staff are inexperienced, and that they are incompetent to safely carry out such an experiment.  Again, their case is sound and reasonable, but so was Isaac Newton’s contention that gravity is some kind of mysterious force that can act at a distance.  What a moron he was.

Finally, some extremists of the radical socialist/capitalist fringe group have threatened to use force to prevent the experiment from being carried out.  Their case is neither sound nor reasonable, and we remind them that the space-time warp generator has already been assembled and is fully operational except for final safety checks.  Any attempt to preempt or abort the experiment will simply result in us pressing the big red button as soon as there is any suspicion of an attempted intrusion into our facility.  In that case, anything that goes wrong will be your fault, and we will be legally absolved of any responsibility for whatever happens to the universe.  So sue us.

As we stand upon this threshold of unprecedented achievement, we look forward with eager anticipation to the results.  Whatever they may be, we will have opened a new chapter in the history of scientific achievement, the frontiers of knowledge, having stood upon the shoulders of great minds, boldly going where no man has gone before, we hold these truths to be self evident, a rolling stone gathers no moss, and to be or not to be.

Signed,

European Theoretical Physics Research Project Members