The Big Seminar

V. Gates, M. Roachcock, E. Kangaroo, and W.C. Gall

Institute for Tranquilizing Physics, Soporific University of New York


ABSTRACT: We provide a new model of the Big Bang based on a finite sized, dynamical, experimental system -- the Seminar. This model provides explanations for all observed cosmological phenomena.

Introduction

There is some difficulty in describing modern cosmology in a unifying way, rather than as an ad hoc aggregate of unmotivated assumptions. However, there is a close analog already known in nature: the Seminar. It provides all the features already expected from a cyclic model of the Universe, including:
  1. Big Crunch/Big Bang: At some point in time there is a compression of matter (people) into the seminar room; after some period there is an explosion of matter outward, accompanied by a "Bang" (applause). The amount of matter exiting from the Bang is almost [1] identical to that entering the Crunch.
  2. Horizon: The solution to the horizon problem is provided by the Seminar itself, during which contraction/expansion is slow and temperatures are high, and the "Universe" reaches a state of homogeneity from the rapid transmission across the small volume.
  3. Cyclicity: Seminars tend to meet regularly, on a weekly basis. (Those that meet twice a week correspond to a cosmological model with an asymmetric potential, with a different rolling period on each side.)
  4. String theory: The string motivation for this cosmological model also has an analog, as the seminar can be described as a process of colliding brains.
  5. Entropy: There is no problem with increase of entropy at each Crunch/Bang, since seminars carry no information.

Experimental parameters

Although the Seminar provides a relatively tight model for predictions, there are a few variables. One possible variable in the string picture is the number of brains colliding, as the speaker may engage several members of the audience simultaneously. In particular, if several of the brains align in their argument, we can reach a situation similar to the familiar stack of branes in AdS/CFT.

Another example is the level of seminar boredom:

  1. know what they're doing -- too well
  2. know what they're doing, but don't care
  3. don't know what they're doing
  4. don't know why they're doing
  5. don't know why you're there
  6. don't know where you are
  7. don't know who you are
  8. death [1]
This parameter corresponds to the cosmological constant, since it is directly related to the rate at which the Seminar travels.

Other parameters incude the amount of dark matter/energy, which is described by the lighting conditions in the room: More dark means more sluggish, since it's harder to read.

Sparticles

Another good test of this model is supersymmetry, because supersymmetry is a good test of everything. Not only can supersymmetry describe the Big Seminar, since supersymmetry is important in any model of cosmology, but the Big Seminar can be used to describe supersymmetry, since it is such a frequent seminar topic: This is a type of duality.

A good test of all these results from the Big Seminar would have been seminars at the Superconducting Supersymmetric Collider, but now we will have to wait for the Large Hadron Collider, assuming they can find some seminars to give on Large Hadrons.

SSC Seminars


Ronald Reagan Center for Physics
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Speaker: Sarah Anunciada
Title: Thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz
Place & Time: TBA

Speaker: G.P. Zarquon (to be confirmed)
Title: Empty professor
Place & Time: postponed

Spleen

Now for some technical details. (We would put these in appendices, but we always have so many other things at the end of our papers that no one would ever find them.) We use the metric -+...+:

D=4: -+++
D=3: -++
D=2: -+
D=1: -
Supersymmetry comes from superstring theory, but many people are abandoning string theory and all its compactifications because 2-manifolds allow too many folds [2]. (In fact, many have said that people who do strings sit on their branes.)

One advantage of string theory is that it kills all divergences of quantum gravity*:

(d/dt)bugs = 0

These divergences incude those of black holes, so string theory can finally answer the eternal question, "Do naked singularities have hair?" This resolution of tears in the spacetime continuum is due to the theorem

rip:sew::sow:reap

*Footntoe: When calculating in string theory, one must never forget to integrate over the SL(2)/July.

Glossaries

Self-aggrandizing adjectives are an important part of any paper. Whenever one of the points you want to make has an obvious deficiency, add one of these words to compensate. Put plenty in the Abstract, because people won't read a paper on merit alone. And don't forget to use them in the Introduction when referring to the papers of people whom you want to continue reading yours:

References

  1. R. Chandler, The Big Sleep.
  2. Mannie and Connie Fuld, Fuld Hall preprint.
  3. Trichi Zichichi, Erichi lecture notes.
  4. Clebsch and Clein Gordan, Your wave equation is missing a √2