Brewster Rockit by Tim Rickard for October 11, 2009

I like the last two theories.

Well, Marg, I think that second one has some merit.

ejcapulet, you’re right, it does have merit.

If Brewster was religious, he’d believe in the string cheese theory. It’s not scientific because it assumes bovine intervention.

The universe is a ball of string that’s become unraveled and God is cat.

Don’t string me along…

Nope the universe is a yo-yo string and we keep going up and down

Marchman if that’s true then Tommy Smothers is a leader of the true nature of God.

Dr. Mel is wrong! String theory is the theory of particles that make up quarks. Quarks are the particles that make up protons, electrons, and neutrons. He said “one type of vibration may produce an electron” Wrong!… Does anybody care?

rdh288, I do. Edcole, you should be ashamed of yourself, I’m glad I wasn’t drinking anything when I read it! And dicer, yes, that would explain a lot. God is Cat. It’s all so clear now….

The can and string theory: The universe is a can and string and communicates with itself when it can, but mostly with crank calls.

I prefer the Kite Theory to the 11 dimensional M theory… Charlie Brown, where are you when we need you?!

rdh288: Yes! Yes! Yes! Today’s strip makes me soooo angry!

Sorry, rdh288 and jtpozenel, but Dr. Mel is right. The electron is a lepton, which, like the quark, is a fundamental particle.

All the universe is strings, and someone out there is a-pickin’ and a-grinnin’.

SherlockWatson’s right, the universe is a country-western song.

And country-western songs tell it like it is!

To expand on an earlier post, Dr. Mel had it right. This is from The Elegant Universe on PBS Nova website: “The electron is a string vibrating one way, the up-quark is a string vibrating another way, and so on.” From the website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/everything.html

The best thing about string theory is that it’s both unproven and unprovable. The same PBS Nova show that Dr. Mel quotes also observes that it’s impossible to construct an experiment that would actually prove the theory, which is why some scientists say it’s not really science but philosophy. That makes it the perfect scientific theory–on the one hand, it gives a model that seems to correctly describe the things we actually CAN observe, but the underlying theory is untestable and therefore allows an eternity of argument…

Good point, puddleglum 1066.

bleeep, where is Schrodinger’s cat when you need him?

rdh288 is correct. You can split an electron into spinons and halons.

No, he’s not. Spinons and holons (not halons) are not quarks.

I’d never let myself be tied down to this kind of theory.

In the last nn years or so, chemistry has become physics, and physics has become metaphysics.

I signed-up for a physics major, because metaphysics wasn’t in the catalog. Then for electronics, to feed myself until it would be.

Unfortunately (for some people’s worldviews anyway), natural science has supernatural implications. BIG ones. For that matter, it doesn’t matter what field you’re in - you’ll run head-on into metaphysical implications sooner or later.

Much depends on what you mean by “proof”. The only way we have of deciding between worldviews (scientific or otherwise) is Occam’s Razor, which is more than “proof” enough. But humans have a real aversion to following Occam’s Razor where it leads…because it leads in a very specific and ultimately inevitable direction which most humans don’t like very much.

Rakkav, you didn’t mention that all too many humans try to bend Occam’s razor before they ever try to use it, which not only makes their logic faulty, but also really ticks Occam off whenever he tries to shave.

People don’t want to use Occam’s Razor because it will cut the strings and string theory would just fall apart. Or fall down like Pinocchio did when his strings were cut.

Brewster looks like his old self in this strip.

Yet another thing I do not comprehend.