#afhcreports

[eightlivs]

24 February 2022

Wow.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it.

Look, in my defense, they did say I could lay off some of the reports as we ramped up construction. Don’t want some intrepid teenager building one of these things in their backyard, do we?

Actually, I take that back. Plenty of people have built them. Not a dual-beam collider, mind you - but you can totally build a mini particle collider in your garage, if you’re clever enough. They’re called fusors. Basically: a highly negatively charged grid on the inside, surrounded by a grounded grid on the outside, then suck out as much of the air as you can, and tadaa! You’ve built yourself a particle collider.

Sort of. It won’t break the laws of physics or prove a bunch of shit, but it does look cool. They’ve been nicknamed “a star in a jar.” Just don’t... you know. Electrocute yourself or something. That much electrical potential is enough to blast you across the room.

But anyway. I’m getting off topic.

Construction on the collider has reached a point where we’re dimensioning the beam pipe for... drumroll please!

THIS FUCKING THING!

See? SEE? Had to block out some of the specifications, but still! This is just the first page of a whole report on the tolerances, but it’s the inner tracker barrel of the sensor! They JUST finished all the panels on the sensor recently, and we’ve got to slot it in. Turns out the tolerance is off by a bit - well, you can’t see it on the sheet there, it just shows some of the general dimensions. But the tolerance is 0.5mm and it was supposed to be 0.3mm. You wouldn’t think that would make a big difference, but when you’re aiming at something 0.000000175mm wide, it’s the relative size of, like, twenty football fields. Or more. I’m not running the numbers on that.

But we’re not called engineers for nothing. We’re making it work.

Just so you know, this sensor is what picked up signs from other universes first. It’s similar to the CMS sensor - it’s a solenoid magnet on the outside, then you’ve got a gazillion layers of things ending with the silicon tracker barrel on the inside. Kind of a general-purpose, jack-of-all-trades sensor, y’know? Partly why we picked that to mount on the collider beam pipes rather than further back in the housing.

But anyway. Maybe I’ll sneak a photo. Just of the inner tracker barrel. It looks almost like some sort of abstract phone background.

We’ll see.

Footnotes: Wow. It has really been a while. I can’t make any promises about posting, but I’ve been in a very write-y mood lately, and that coupled with a new job promotion for engineering just made me want to stick a toe in the water again here.

You’ll likely notice another post (or a few, depending) go up dated previous to this one - I don’t remember if I ever mentioned, but I plan to backdate a few posts to update what Liv’s been doing this whole time and to keep the plot rolling.

Anyway, the usual science notes! Fusors are a thing - they are typically two spherical grids of wire, one inside the other, with the inner one charged to a VERY high negative potential and the outer one grounded. If you place a strong glass around them, then vacuum out almost all the air, the remaining particles get pulled in toward the negatively-charged grid, where they will usually miss the grid wiring and accelerate toward the center to smash into other particles that have been pulled in as well. Quite a few people have made them at home, but it’s NOWHERE NEAR as quick or easy as Liv makes it sound - it involves perilous levels of electricity and very strong vacuums capable of shattering the fusor’s glass housing rather explosively. So... yeah. Don’t try that for your next science experiment.

The solenoid sensor is one I’ve mentioned plenty of times before - CERN’s Compact Muon Solenoid is my favorite of all the Large Hadron Collider sensors! It’s incredibly useful in particle physics, and also very pretty. It’s the one that discovered the Higgs boson particle.

Finally, the software I used to make that collider wireframe and the mock engineering title block in the image is a 3D CAD software called DesignSpark Mechanical. It’s a free program and it’s quite useful! I’ve been modeling various things - including the collider - for fun for a few weeks now.

[eightlivs]

11 November 2020

So, gravity.

If you’ll recall, the speed of light is different here. That has a lot of gravitational implications. So, I’m re-learning about gravity.

Easy way to do that is larger-scale than quantum physics, so I’m going macro! We’re talking PLANETS, orbital mechanics, black holes.

Oh, shit, I need to check lensing effects here. If the speed of light is different, they might look a bit different compared to back home. Oh, but I’d have to model back home, wouldn’t I - well, I could, but that would take a while.

Okay. No. Orbital mechanics.

Orbital mechanics are fucking bizarre. It’s kind of reassuring to see orbital mechanics are just as fucked-up here as back home. Shit like firing thrusters to move you forward technically slows you down instead of speeding you up because it increases your orbit and orbits further away are technically slower.

Yeah, I know. It’s really fucking counterintuitive.

Believe it or not, that game - what’s it called? Kerbal Space Program - has some pretty realistic mechanics for a literal video game.

So, yeah. Playing video games for science. What of it?

Believe it or not, it helped get the basics down before I jumped into a more in-depth simulator. (Plus, it was fun. Who says science can’t be fun.)

If you remember, gravity is a fundamental force. Have I covered those? Gravity, electromagnetism, strong force, and weak force. (Strong force holds atoms together, weak force plays a part in radioactivity.) Anyway.

Observing it will give me a clearer idea of how the mechanics in this universe are different. Using simulators is a good way to do that, because the existing formulas and numbers are already built in there without me having to recreate it with a ton of experiments. And it just gives me a better idea of what’s going on, like, visually.

Okay. What I’ve found is that while the speeds and numbers are a tad different, the basic concepts are still there, and thank FUCK for that, too. The collider relies on gravity to do its punch-through-dimensions little party trick, and I only know how that works in MY universe.

But if they’re similar, I can make this work. Right?

Yeah. I can totally make it work.

Footnotes: Hey, all. It’s, uh, been a hot minute, hasn’t it. Long story short, my health - mental, physical, etc. - has not been doing well. I’ve been exceedingly stressed about everything, and even this blog became stressful because I felt like I had to update it on SOME sort of schedule, even if it was irregular.

So I took a break. But I’m missing the science, and to be honest, researching all the stuff that goes into this blog makes me feel less stressed. (Yes, researching quantum physics is stress relief, apparently.) So... I’m back. I think. I’m going to back-date some of the posts to make up for the gap, so the next few posts will have a way earlier date on the title. Don’t worry about it.

And now: the science! Gravitational lensing looks like the COOLEST shit ever. It’s where light is bent by gravity. It’s REALLY noticeable around black holes. Also, the four fundamental forces! Those are the only fundamental forces in the universe, as far as we know. They’re carried by “bosons” whose existence is way too complicated for me to explain in a footnote.

Orbital mechanics are truly some of the most fucked physics I’ve encountered, and I’m a person who researches quantum physics and colliders for shits and giggles.

And finally, last but not least, Kerbal Space Program. It has actually gotten a lot of attention (even from NASA) for being a not-totally-but-still-weirdly-accurate simulator, despite being populated by little goofy cartoon green aliens.

[eightlivs]

25 July 2020

Oh, do NOT get me wrong, I would LOVE to regale you with tales of how we’re already machining pieces for the collider and we’ve got things ordered and we’re starting construction and we’ve gotten a TON of stuff done while I’ve been out -

But no.

Guess what this chick has been doing? For THREE MONTHS?

RE-LEARNING FUCKING AUTO.CAD.

Why, why, WHY can’t they just use Solid.Works. Why. We’ve used Solid.Works for YEARS.

Well, apparently NOT, the other-universe version of Alchemax uses AUTO.CAD. And not even the CAD software I remember, oh no, it’s some weird pseudo-command-line shit that I’m having to memorize.

And we can’t use the software I’ve BEEN using up ‘til now because fucking formatting and something else about not having a commercial license for it, blah blah, so we’ve got to take all the stuff I’ve been doing and convert it.

So everyone ELSE is off modeling and altering pieces that I originally drafted and designed, while I get to sit in a computer lab and watch fucking TRAINING VIDEOS and try not to throw things at people.

(Didn’t work. Adrien has to go change clothes and my coffee’s all over the floor.)

You know what? Fuck this. I’ve been staring at a screen for so long my eyeballs are going to roll out of my damn skull. I could use a good run out into the trees. It’s late enough that maybe I’ll get to see some stars.

-

I’m back. Oh, that’s much better. Jumping fifty-foot birch trees with octopus arms? Whoo, that never gets old! You know my best initial propelled speed so far is nearly 90 mph? It’s WAY faster in a swing or a dive - 90 mph is jumping from a standstill. That’s limited by me, by the way, not the prosthetics. I’m still working up to it, okay? You do realize a jump from standstill to 90 mph means 0-90 mph in less than a second, right? That’s like 4 g’s.

And if you don’t know, G’s are g-forces, which is basically “how much times the Earth’s gravity is this acceleration.” Trained humans, like pilots, can wear suits and flex muscles to let them withstand about 9 g’s, but the rest of us puny humans can withstand about 5 g’s (not comfortably, but you’d manage it). That’s the equivalent of roughly 0 to 110 mph in one second.

Not bad, eh?

Oh. I ran into the new Spider-Man, y’know. He’s still so... small.

Still, he’s a fast little shit. I’ll have another bruise on my jaw tomorrow. (Why is it always my jaw?)

I hadn’t seen him for a while. Guess it was too much to hope he was gone.

Ah well. All in good time.

I’m in a much better mood. Time to go home for the day.

Footnotes: Hi everyone! I’m back! I’ve moved, I no longer have the flu or whatever (not COVID, don’t worry), I nailed what I hope is a more stable income source... things are winding down in my personal life... Holy hell, has the past three months been QUITE something.

Anyway! Notes as usual: SolidWorks and AutoCAD are both actual CAD softwares used in engineering - they’re basically highly precise modeling programs. I’ve actually used both - I prefer SolidWorks, but meh. My current job uses something entirely different - one called Terramodel, which does work off a sort of custom command line type of interface - and it’s bloody annoying to learn, so I share Liv’s annoyance there.

Liv’s jump speed is limited by the fact that humans are squishy and don’t accelerate very solidly. Fastest acceleration a non-trained human could likely withstand is indeed about 5 g’s before all sorts of weird stuff starts happening - most notably, you pass out because there’s very little blood going to your head. That link has a lot of info about G-forces! The calculations are pretty easy, too - you can even google “G-force conversion” and a calculator will probably pop up.

Quick edit: Apparently the trees outside Alchemax are birch trees, not pines, as I previously said! Thank you to an arborist anon who took the time to point that out!

[eightlivs]

24 August 2020

I’m getting the hang of that CAD program. Fucking command line bullshit. Give me macros instead and I’ll be happy.

Anyway, now that I can actually do some PROPER work, we’re getting busy checking and re-checking things before we order or machine the more customized parts, which means a lot of simulation testing and triple-checking our work.

That’s not the most important thing right now, though.

I just finished something that I’ve been working on for a while, and right as my beam time request got put through at Brookhaven, no less. (I put in a beam time request for another collider to run an experiment for me. Ended up not going with SLAC. Turns out I had some strings left to pull at Brookhaven’s laboratory, and hey, all the better, because their collider is better suited for this kind of work.)

Oh, it feels good to be running experiments again. Even if they are a pain in the ass sometimes.

Anyway, a quick rundown, since this IS technically a report log: I’m simulating my OWN collider with a computer program called an event generator, while comparing the simulations to real results. Check this out:

That’s a graph showing how many photons were found at a given energy for the first simulation.

But you know what I’m realizing? I’m going to need a monumental amount of testing to get anywhere, and - well, I’ve got to do it all by myself.

This is... um. This is going to take a long time. Last time, setting up and analyzing runs enough to get new information wasn’t even something we’d gotten to yet, and that’s with an entire COMPANY at my disposal. Unless I’m ridiculously lucky, this may take years even AFTER THE COLLIDER IS BUILT.

I don’t want that. Fuck. Fuck. I’m tired of this. It’s one fucking thing after another, isn’t it. Windows and Linux workarounds, C++, MC formats not working, more MC formats not working, more workarounds, python not working, compilers not working, incorrect variables, run after run after run of incorrect programming, fucking VERTICAL DATA instead of HORIZONTAL like FORMAT YOUR SHIT RIGHT PLEASE, and collider bullshit, and collider setbacks and - I JUST - FUCK.

...okay.

Okay. Hmm.

It’s fine, all right? I’ve just been programming for too long. My eyeballs feel like they’re going to roll out of my skull. The amount of work that it takes just to program, analyze, troubleshoot, and reprogram a single event generator run is not small, okay? We’re talking hours or days PER RUN. And, I mean, it kind of sucks that I can’t tell anybody about this - they’d think I was bonkers. It makes you feel kind of weird, knowing you’ve only known anybody on the whole planet for a period of less than two years.

But, you know, back to the grind. I’ve got more work to do. Catch you all later.

Oh, before I sign off, I’m updating my experiment record - it’s that little link at the right, under the OFFLINE status. The one I just finished working on is tests 12A-D - yes, 12, it’s taken me twelve groups of runs to get this fucking thing right.

I’m going home.

Footnotes: Oh wow. Okay. It may not look like it, but I’ve been working on this since APRIL. That graph up there? That’s not something I found or made up. It’s an actual graph of results from a real simulation run with an actual collision simulator.

One of my fave things about this blog is that it’s based on REAL science, and it’s challenged me to learn new things. I knew Liv was going to have to start doing collision experiments at some point, and I naively ignored the fact that she’d be getting, you know, RESULTS - until I had the idea to simulate them myself. So I installed the program over the course of a week or two - it’s not very user-friendly in a non-programmer type of way - and I’ve been experimenting with it on and off since April. I ran Liv’s final test results last night, which is what you see up there. One thing: I cannot claim any of these results are actually sensible; I am, after all, literally self-taught, and I am not actually a physicist!

Pretty cool, huh. The program I’m using is called PYTHIA - it’s what is called a Monte Carlo event generator. Each particle interaction result is called an “event,” and Monte Carlo refers to a mathematical method of using algorithms and random sampling to get results. It’s really useful in this instance because there’s a level of probability-guessing that has to be done when figuring out what a particle - or particles - will do. Particles are very all-over-the-place little things, so randomness helps simulate that.

Brookhaven National Laboratory is a real thing! They’re based in NY and they have a collider called the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC. RHIC results in some really GORGEOUS photos, like the one here.

[eightlivs]

EXPERIMENT LOG: Using simulators to examine meta-universal differences in standard particle physics, tests 12A-D.

Project Summary: First run of tests to simulate and compare collisions from different universes. This was honestly more of a calibration run to test whether I was doing the right thing with the right settings, so on. Inconclusive results.

VIEW PROJECT?

START LOG

Corresponding personal log: 24 August 2020

Personal Notes: I’ve been working on this since April. It’s a little disheartening to know I can’t even check my own results - I don’t have access to a collider in my universe to double-check what I’m doing, so I’m piloting blindfolded. And because this isn’t my universe, it’s been obstacle after obstacle. I’ve had to do workaround after workaround to get this working on my personal computer - turns out Windows don’t like to run Linux programs! - and I had to TEACH myself C++, then do more workarounds because my command terminal kept throwing a fit. I hope - I really really hope - that this is just a steep learning curve.

Methods: So there’s really only one simulator I can use, because it’s the only one that would run on my personal computer. Took me a week to get the bloody thing set up. Turns out Windows doesn’t like running Linux programs.

But anyway, it should allow me to simulate colliders as well as play with some of the physics laws, once I’m good enough with programming it. It’s already taken me months to properly learn how to program it in the first place, because it’s written in C++, not FORTRAN like I’m used to. (I don’t know if that’s a universe difference or not, because the website lists the iteration before this one as being written with FORTRAN. Despite the difference being years, it could be an update I missed.)

Experiment consists of four runs total.

Run 1: Attempted simulation of my own collider.

Run 2: Collision experiment carried out at Brookhaven’s RHIC.

Run 3: Simulation of the above collision experiment (for comparison).

Run 4: Simulation of my collider, with an attempted adjustment to account for speed of light differences.

Run 5: Simulation of above collision experiment, with an attempt adjustment to account for speed of light differences.

Results: Inconclusive. Honestly, I was expecting them to look far less similar, but I guess that was optimistic thinking. They’re all similar runs - as similar as I can make them, minus the simulation of mine.

I’m going to focus on photon energy right now - I’ll get to analyzing the others later. If the speed of light is different, I’m curious about the differences in light that exist here, so yeah. I’m focusing on photons, since they’re basically light.

Analysis: Honestly, every run looks almost identical. Ugh.

As far as similarity, I expected the real experiment and its simulation to be the closest, because they’re literally the same experiment, one run on a computer and the other run in real life, but no, they aren’t. Either that means there’s more wobble room in this universe than I thought, or I’ve set something wrong on my simulation. They’re dissimilar enough to make me suspicious.

What I find really interesting is that the two closest to each other are the real experiment and the lightspeed-adjusted simulation. That doesn’t completely make sense, because PYTHIA has the numerical speed of light built into it, but... Interesting. This also indicates I may have something wrong with my simulation, because light-adjusted stuff shouldn’t be particularly similar to anything real right now, so I’ll need to keep an eye on that.

Outside of that, I don’t know what that means. I may need to get another beam time request in to compare to.

Least-similar was the simulation of my own collider and run 5, one of the lightspeed-adjusted experiments. At least THAT makes sense - simulated versions of my own collider and a wrong-lightspeed alternate universe collider SHOULD be pretty different.

The rest of it is really inconclusive. Hopefully analyzing more data will yield better results.

ATTACHED: ADDENDUM 12

END LOG

Footnotes: Everything simulated here was done with PYTHIA. Please see References for more information. For more footnotes, please see Liv’s corresponding personal log HERE.

[eightlivs]

how much time do you think you have? if the other you is working on the same problem simultaneously, perhaps she's resolving it quicker due to the time dilation. also, opinions on may parker?

Oh.

Oh.

I didn’t even THINK of that. Of COURSE another me is probably working on the same problem! Parallel universes being what they are, she’s probably figured out she’s not in her own universe by now, since parallel universes “close” (not physically, but in nature) to each other tend to have grand similarity across the entire universe, or so we think (and that’s loosely supported by the fact that throwing something into the beam line produces multiple similar parallel versions of said thing instead of spawning random shit throughout time).

And hers IS moving... well.. is it moving faster? Hold on, I’ve got to check my graphs.

Okay. The date from my original universe is behind this one. If anything, the universe I’m in right now is moving “faster,” but this is also multiversal hyperdimensional physics we’re talking about, so who the hell knows.

Oh, oh, but maybe I can get a message through! Things tend to get pulled to their home universes if you’ve got it set right - that’s another phenomena we discovered when sending in our initial RTG probes, and yet another thing the collider discovered that fucking nobody is ever going to hear about because everybody thinks I’m a crackpot - so I’ll bet you I could take a sample of my own universe matter and use it to “aim” a message into the beam. With any luck, it’ll get thrown into my original universe! Oh, man, I could have communication with her! With another ME! 

And to answer your other question -

...

Complicated.

Footnotes: I don’t usually put footnotes on answered questions, but I’ll make an exception here!

The idea of parallel universes being organized in some fashion is something that exists canonically in Spiderverse and Marvel (I mean, they’re numbered - plus in the first collider test in the movie, they’ve even got the different universe icons posed at differing distances, which I like to think implies they can gauge how “far” the universe is), although there’s no proof that they’re grouped sensically. However, parallel universes being organized to any degree is not really a real thing - outside of philosophy, I guess? I dunno.

Liv’s graphs, if you’re interested. The distance between the two graphs is the number of days’ difference between the two universes - roughly.

Also, Liv references RTG probes - ohhh, honestly, I’m just waiting for a chance to talk more about those probe tests, but for now, enjoy Liv talking about how she threw highly-radioactive material into a high-energy particle beam going at near-lightspeed!

[eightlivs]

22 April 2020

The collider teardown is DONE. Nearly fifteen months of work on this fucking thing and we haven’t even BUILT anything yet.

I’ve been REALLY busy, though. Speed of light being different kind of implies a LOT of other things are different, too. Or - well - the light speed thing might be gravitational, but look, I’m not fucking Roemer, okay?

You want to hear something weird about gravity?

So... There’s four fundamental forces in quantum mechanics. Gravity, electromagnetism, and two others that are called the “weak force” and “strong force.” (Weak force causes radioactive decay while strong force holds atomic nuclei together.)

Gravity’s powerful, right? I mean, it moves PLANETS.

NOPE! It’s deadass the weakest one by, like, a SEPTILLION. You’ve got three values around the same magnitude, and then one that’s a SEPTILLION off. Why? Nobody fucking knows.

This is called the hierarchy problem (or part of it, at least). Been pestering the fuck out of physicists for decades. It’s one of the big things my collider was supposed to investigate, actually. It DID investigate it and even PROVED some stuff about it before it got, you know, blown the fuck up, and I got blamed for it, now can’t officially publish the research, yadda yadda. Spiders are assholes. What’s new.

One solution to the hierarchy problem is suggesting another aspect of space outside of what we can access. Literally, a direction TOTALLY outside of “up/down left/right forward/backward.”

Where is that direction? Oh, you know. Another dimension.

“Wait a minute, other dimensions?” you say? Hm, it’s almost like I had an actual scientific vision in mind when building this collider instead of pulling it out of my mad-scientist ass! And not “dimensions” as in “parallel universe.” No. The universes are all separated BY this extra dimension. Floating in it.

ANYWAY, if you’ve got extra dimensions going on, then... you can kind of think about it as if what we see of gravity is only part of the total.

Breaking that down mathematically requires quantifying how many extra dimensions there are, and how big. They’re not INFINITE.

In my original universe, the math checked out with 1 large extra dimension, accounting for size. But in this one, TWO are required, or the math just... doesn’t make any sense. At all. The collider shouldn’t even WORK with only one extra dimension in this universe.

But the two universes are supposed to be separated by the SAME single extra-dimensional space, according to literally every other theory I know.

In short: what the fuck.

Anyway, I know this is already a long report, but one more thing: that bizarreness that you get with gravity if there’s extra dimensions? It lets you make micro black holes in colliders. Basically: you get a micro black hole in a collider? Congrats! You’ve got experimental proof that large extra dimensions exist!

AND GUESS WHAT.

Actually, hold on. Where the fuck is it. I know I saved it. FUCK. How do I get the picture off my glasses?

THERE. THERE IT IS. THERE. THAT’S A FUCKING MICRO BLACK HOLE. IN MY COLLIDER. I mean, it was BUILT to MAKE micro black holes. I fucking PROVED extra dimensions exist, you assholes, and NOBODY WILL LET ME - JUST - I put half my LIFE into this. LET ME FUCKING PUBLISH IT.

In summary, that original collider was a fucking gorgeous piece of work and it didn’t deserve what it got.

Footnotes: Okay! Yay quantum mechanics! The four fundamental forces in quantum mechanics are indeed what Liv lists off here. The hierarchy problem IS an actual thing, too, and it’s quite fascinating.

Quite possibly my favorite thing so far, though, is that the large extra dimensions theory? THAT’S REAL. That’s an ACTUAL potential solution to the hierarchy problem, and CERN’s LHC has even looked for micro black holes as evidence! Honestly, depending on which version you subscribe to, you could have up to 26 different dimensions. Standard M-theory supports about 11.

Lastly, that picture is of a decay of a micro black hole in Liv’s collider - or, well, in her universe it is. Here, it’s just something I sketched out very quickly, HEAVILY based off of some of CERN’s simulations of what a micro black hole might look like! Mine probably wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny, but, you know. It looks cool.

Also, Liv’s “Roemer” reference is to a Danish astronomer who was the first to measure the speed of light by measuring eclipses. Dude had pretty clever technique.

[eightlivs]

02 January 2020

So it’s been one year since this report log got started. That’s weird to think about, huh.

Happy New Year’s.

But that’s not the important stuff. About those tests I’ve been running.

Thorough testing indicates that some of these items have similar properties, like melting point, density, or conductivity, but their chemical structure appears to be skewed or mirrored in some cases. While mirroring in chemistry is a pretty well-known phenomenon (fun fact: the Latin terms used for “this side” and “other side” when describing organic molecules with different orientations are “cis” and “trans,” same root “cis/transgender” comes from), the “skewed” aspect - like the sensor pieces being made of SiO4 instead of SiO2 - is NOT a known thing. Whatever I’m dealing with is outside the normal scope of this universe’s chemistry.

What I’m really confused about is the fact that nearly everything on the collider seems to be affected. I’ve only found two parts that haven’t been affected so far. Some of it is mild - not every time a molecule is mirrored is going to make it behave totally differently, for example - but there’s a LOT of parts to the collider, so it’s entirely possible there’s just more I haven’t tested. The likelihood of me happening to pick a majority of only parts affected by this phenomenon, however, is extremely low.

So. I’ve got a collider which is likely almost entirely affected, including prototypes and past collider pieces, which leads me to conclude that this event either transcended time, or I’m completely wrong about all of this.

Does this mean the entire collider was like this before the explosion? Actually, probably, considering Adrien staunchly insisted that the copper and SiO2/SiO4 sensors were the same as they’d always been.

But... wait. That would mean it’s affected more than just the collider - it’s affected Adrien himself.

Okay. That’s kind of freaky.

...I’ll put more thought to it. I just have to try to fix my glasses again first. I tried resetting it, and you know what it says now? January 10th. After I reset it. Ugh.

[eightlivs]

10 January 2020

I fucked up

[eightlivs]

15 January 2020

Okay, okay. Not to be a dramatic bitch about it but fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this.

I had a realization, that last post, and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on it.

The only thing whose material is behaving the way I remember is me. Freaky. Even my clothes I wore on the day the collider exploded - that’s very important when I was wearing those, I’ll get to that later - because, well, I did more tests. Simple one, but interesting. The cotton on my suit doesn’t react with the superglue I bought. It just sits there, cold. My other clothes react fine with it, though.

Everything around me is different. At first I thought it was the collider, but it’s more than just that. Almost half of all I test has some minute difference. Even the damn Mass Effect game is different. I tried replaying it, and... Nothing major, just the hanar being mint-green instead of that pink color, but still. (Also, no, it’s not a glitch. I double-checked it with a ton of videos and screenshots and online sources.)

The laws of physics are different. The acceleration due to Earth’s gravity is different. The laws of chemistry are different. I bet even astrophysics’ laws are different. Hold on, I gotta google something.

Nope, Schwarzchild radius formula is the same. Whatever. WAIT.

THE FUCKING SPEED OF LIGHT IS DIFFERENT. WHAT THE FUCK. It’s only off by less than 300 feet, but that’s almost fucking 300 feet. Light is a constant of the universe. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. Do you have ANY idea the implications that could have in particle work?

Even particle physics is different. Fuck.

The only thing that seems reliably the same is me.

So. To get back to my point, what does that does that mean if I’m the only thing that isn’t different?

It means I’M the outlier. I’M the one thing that’s different. ME. I’M the odd one out.

And if even the laws of physics are different... well, that encompasses everything. Everything about where I am is different. Everything about how things work is different.

Meaning... I’m not where I thought I was.

You know what this means? This place I’m in right now?

This isn’t my universe.

And not just that. Judging by my clothing experiment, I’ve been here since the collider exploded.

Footnotes: In which Liv fails to not be dramatic, swears a lot, and tries to set fire to her clothes with glue! Fun fact, cotton plus cyanoacrylates/superglue causes a chemical reaction which gives off heat. It can cause burns, smoke, and even fire, if the conditions are right. This doesn’t mean your jeans will explode if you drop a bit on your clothes on accident, but you SHOULD be pretty careful! The official data sheet for cyanoacrylates even says not to wear cotton clothing while working with it. Yikes.

The speed of light is indeed about 299792458m/s. People usually round that to 300000000, or 3x10^8.

[eightlivs]

13 March 2020

LUMINOSITY.

Magnesium luminosity differences gave me an idea. In my chemical testing, I tested burning magnesium. And magnesium burns at a different brightness here. That’s interesting.

Particle accelerators can give you all sorts of information about the universe, and my field IS all about particle physics, yeah? So why stray from it?

I’m going back to basics.

Luminosity is where I got the idea from. Luminosity is the term people sometimes use to refer to a sort of “collision rate” inside a collider; basically, it’s how many times a particle smashes into another particle. A collider like CERN’s LHC has a rate of somewhere in the ballpark of 10^34 collisions per second per cm^2. My own collider had a collision rate a couple ticks higher than that, because what we were trying to do was create micro black holes, not just smash things together. That meant we needed a lot of stuff smashing into each other.

But here’s the catch: energy level measurements like electron-volts (tera-electron-volts is TeV, giga-electron-volts is GeV, so on - my collider ran at 9.4 TeV, by the way) are only reliable so far as they’re named in the same way. My collider in this universe may say it runs at 9.4 TeV, but who am I to say that means the exact same thing? It may mean something a bit different.

If I can get luminosity ratings (and more) for multiple other colliders in this universe, that in combination with the TeV measure might really help me as far as the collider rebuild goes. I’ll need to calibrate everything I’m used to into something that works in THIS universe, so I need as much data as I can get my hands on. I may be able to deduce something about how particle physics works here, as well as how particle colliders work in this universe. More findings, better conclusions.

In other news... I haven’t told anyone about the universe realization yet. This blog is public, but nobody from the lab bothers to read it. I’m pretty sure they’d really think the stress had gotten to me.

But - well... I’m fine. I’m fine, don’t worry.

I’ve just got to put my mind to it and keep going.

Footnotes: Luminosity is a weird concept, because you’d think it has to do with... well, you know, luminosity, not collision rates. But if you really think about it, it’s kind of related, given that each collision gives off a burst of energy, hence “luminosity.” Just my thoughts.

Liv’s collider runs at 9.4 TeV - it was meant to run much higher, more in the range of 15 TeV or so, but it was never finished being built. 9.4 TeV is technically a hair under the hypothetical level for micro black holes to be created, but hey, it’s a different universe. There’s probably different rules there. Plus, science is just weird.

One electron-volt is the kinetic energy gained by one electron accelerating from one single volt in a vacuum. So... a volt propels the electron, yeah? An electron-volt is how much “motion power,” of a sort, that one single volt gives that electron while the whole system is in a vacuum. More here.

[eightlivs]

29 December 2019

Not all the data is in yet, but…

The new samples I’ve tested are all wrong.

All of them.

ALL OF THEM.

I don’t get it! I don’t!

I’ve compared multiple pieces of the collider to the closest I can get to the manufacturer’s pieces, and they’re all the SAME. It’s like the entire collider’s existence got screwed up.

Can that happen? That would involve some really complicated time-line fuckery.

I’m starting to get a little freaked, everyone. I mean - uh - I’ve got it all under control. It’s fine. Moderately. I can handle this.

This is going to sound paranoid, but I’m going to broadly test parts on the collider now. Down to the wiring. I mean, why not? There’s clearly something weird going on here, and it’s bigger than I thought, and if it’s...

Shit. If it’s affecting the entire collider, then it’s majorly going to affect my rebuild of the entire thing. This... this could seriously fuck it up.

Oh, no.

I’ve got more testing to do. I’ll update later.

[eightlivs]

27 December 2019

All right, with all the bullshit that’s happened lately, this is probably where most people would start groaning that they give up or some shit, but I’m just getting pissed.

Following from my last post: I said I was going to get manufacturer samples to compare my current samples to, and guess what? THEY WON’T GIVE THEM TO ME. They won’t even let me buy them at full price.

Why? Something about blowing up half of NYC.

I DID NOT BLOW UP HALF OF NYC. My collider was used INCORRECTLY and THEN blew up Fisk Tower.

How many times do I have to say so? I’m SO TIRED of being blamed for this.

Anyway. I’d regale you with some fascinating tales of the collider deconstruction, but right now, it’s literally just cleaning up after the scaffold collapse. Long story short, some scaffolding collapsed, as you could probably guess. Didn’t have anyone on it - well, except me, but I’ve got six arms, so it’s not like a multistory fall is really going to bother me.

There’s a lot of bent metal and broken wood lying all over the place now. That scaffolding had to be pretty heavy-duty to handle us carrying heavy machinery around, so go figure, the mess looks borderline apocalyptic.

But that’s only part of it. Remember my glasses? How they wouldn’t keep the date? They’ve kept doing that every time I fix them. And it still won’t sync with my computer, so now I’ve got an incorrect date in the corner of my vision and it’s throwing me off.

We caught some idiots sneaking into the collider wreck last week. I don’t know what they were trying to do, and I don’t care. And if they’re reading this: come in here again and I’ll do a lot more than just flail all six arms at you.

Someone also sabotaged my computer, did I mention that? As if the construction collapse, break-in, glasses, and manufacturer bullshit wasn’t enough. Fucking moved a bunch of shit around. Nothing’s missing, as far as I can tell, but they could’ve copied some really sensitive information. I keep telling myself, at least the intruders didn’t hijack the entire damn thing this time.

Hm. Yeah. I’m not in a very good mood today.

Oh yeah. Small breakthrough with the sensor pieces. To recap: some sensor pieces were giving off a weird signal, so I started doing some diagnostic tests to see what was wrong, and turns out the sensor pieces are made out of an entirely different material than what I remember. My theory is that they got thrown out of a different universe during the whole collider explosion. I’ve been running tests on a whole series of things, trying to figure out what’s going on. Anyway, I found some collider prototype parts hidden in one of the Alchemax warehouses - they should be as close to the manufacturer’s originals as possible. That’ll have to do for now.

I’m going to test them, just... not right now. Not today. I’ll do it tomorrow. I’m going to sleep off this headache.

          Oh yeah. Happy holidays.

[eightlivs]

20 Jan 2020

I’ve been holed up playing Mass Effect for a while. Told Adrien and the work folks I’m sick.

Everywhere I look, it’s just a reminder of where I am.

Where is this universe’s Liv? What happened to her? Is she in my universe? Clearly she’s similar enough to me that I could be mistaken for her for a lengthy time (mostly, anyway).

I’m living in her apartment. These aren’t my clothes. The labs are hers. These are her games I’m playing.

Fuck. I’ve messed up all her saves, haven’t I. Whoops. Whatever.

I’ve been gone from my universe for over a year.

I wonder what’s been going on.

But whatever, I’ve been thinking. Particle physics is different here, but I know enough about it, and about this universe’s collider to work on it for a year, and to understand all the notes “I” left for myself. That’s useful.

However, if the speed of light is different, there’s a possibility that time works differently here. Google “time dilation,” it’s actually really fascinating. It doesn’t confirm it, especially when I’m trying to use logic from a different universe, but it gives me an idea - 

WAIT. MY GLASSES.

THE TIME. MY GLASSES MIGHT BE RUNNING ON MY UNIVERSE’S TIME. HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT I HAVE TO

[eightlivs]

07 January 2020

Something’s wrong.

I’ve scaled up tests to include non-collider materials. Even non-collider materials seem to be showing the same signs.

It’s like the very LAWS OF PHYSICS are different. Things like magnesium burning at a lower temperature, but with no decrease in luminosity; cupric chloride burning yellow instead of green-blue; and the acceleration due to gravity being 9.08m/s^2 instead of 9.8m/s^2. I know that’s basic, basic stuff, but it’s exactly that: it’s BASIC, BASIC STUFF.

This is ridiculous. The laws of physics don’t just up and CHANGE randomly.

HOW HAVE I NOT NOTICED THIS BEFORE?

I’ve requested some time at SLAC to confirm a few of my finer-point suspicions. That might take a while, though. I’m pulling some strings to get it in quickly, and to get it in at all. We’ll see. I’ll post my results here.

Adrien thinks I’ve gone nuts. He’s going on about how I can’t let the “stress” of the collider “get to me.”

I’ll just show him.

My glasses are out of date again. This is getting really old.

Footnotes: Cupric chloride (which is CuCl2) does indeed burn green-blue - it’s cool to watch! - and magnesium burns at 4000F in a bright flash. The acceleration due to Earth’s gravity is 9.8m/s^2, which means for every second something falls, it gains 9.8m/s in speed. Well, minus air resistance, which is a whole ‘nother thing.

Also, did you know you can request beam time at Stanford’s Linear Accelerator Center, aka SLAC? It’s pretty cool. It’s only open to legitimate research proposals, not just “general public,” but it’s still super cool knowing it’s there.

[eightlivs]

20 January 2020

Sorry for cutting off, I accidentally hit the submit button. I found my glasses and worked with the time settings for a few hours, plotting out past dates, and I’ve come to a rather worrying conclusion: it’s not a ratio/linear difference. It looks almost like it’s exponential, the difference getting greater and greater with each day. I’ve modeled it with a wonky parabola, because that’s all that could fit it with some back-of-the-napkin math. I’ll have to find a better formula of it when I’ve got more time.

These timelines are kind of... hypothetically moving away from each other, aren’t they.

Ohhhhh, fuck.

I’m on a fucking time limit. Oh shit. Who knows how long I’ve got? I’ve got to get to the collider site. It’s not like there’s a damn manual for inter-universal travel.

I have to rebuild this collider so I can get home before they move too far apart for me to jump the difference.

Footnotes: Oh, I love getting to plot points. So! Between this and the last post: Time dilation is a really cool concept! It’s also intrinsically linked to the concept of time travel. The idea of light’s speed being linked to how time works is much more hypothetical than confirmed, to my knowledge, but it leads to some really interesting conclusions if you assume it as true, however indirectly.

Because I’m a math nerd, yes, I’ve got equations for the “time lapse” effect going on here. That exponential is a work in progress, though. Pesky thing.