Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/61428
What Do Quantum Physics and Tarheel Basketball Have In Common? by PITT DICKEY common? Unfortunately, lots. The boys in light blue left the big dance early this year after a valiant fi rst What do zombies and next season's Tarheels' basketball team have in a clue from Odysseus when Ody was faced with the Sirens singing near the reef. Roy should have tied our team to the mast of the Dean Dome and stopped up their ears with bee's wax to keep them from hearing the pro agents singing songs of buckets of money. Who is going to be on the court next year for the Heels? The stalwart and valiant few players left behind after our decimation by dollar signs will be there. But will Carolina be the Walking Dead of the collegiate round-ball world? How could this awful thing have come to pass? I have the answer to Heel neuropathy or at least a theory drawn from the wonderful world of quantum physics. Consider the first law of physics promulgated by comic strip hero, Dick Tracy who said, "The nation that controls magnetism will control the universe." The team that controls quantum It's not looking good for Tarheel basketball, but Coach Roy Williams always has something under his hat. physics will win the big dance. Ponder the mischief of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. Swiss Scientists are messing with Mother Nature. The commercial for Chiffon margarine prudently advised, "It isn't nice to fool Mother Nature." The collider is a 16-mile round donut ring. Scientists are getting ready to blast protons around the collider until the protons reach almost the speed of light, or approximately the speed of Kendall Marshall on a fast break. The protons will whip around the 16-mile donut in opposite directions 11,000 times a second. When the protons reach their maximum speed, like a 10-year-old with an electric train set, the head scientist will fl ip a switch. The protons, like two electric trains, will smash into each other causing a tiny fi reball that is supposed to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang. This collision is supposed to create something even rarer than an honest politician, a particle half against Kansas in which true believers could believe we might live to fi ght another day even without all-world point guard Kendall Marshall. If the indignity of losing to a fl ock of Jayhawks wasn't enough for Carolina fans, the siren song of NBA dollars pulled at least three of our underclassmen out of the friendly confi nes of the Dean Dome into the land to Big Bucks. Maybe ol' Roy should have taken one than be one. If quantum physics theory is right, the Big Bang created a whole mess of Higgs bosons. In the good old days, scientists thought matter was just trusty old called the Higgs boson. No one has ever seen a Higgs boson, but like a purple cow I'd rather see electrons, protons and neutrons. Everything was neat and pretty. Then some smarty pants fi gured out protons and neutrons were made up of even smaller things called quarks. This discovery upset the physics applecart and gave birth to quantum physics. Immediately after the Big Bang, neutrons and protons had no mass, but like a drunk suddenly fi nding religion in jail, the protons and neutrons suddenly got mass. Kind of a reverse Weight Watchers diet. In theory the universe is made up of an energy fi eld named Higgs Field which coincidentally was named by physicist Pete Higgs. The Higgs fi eld periodically squishes together into little bitty particles called Higgs bosons that magically turned the Big Bang into the universe we know and love. produce will only exist for an instant and then disintegrate into our more familiar atomic particles. This is what happened to UNC's 2012 National Championship basketball team. The Heels were done in by a stray The Higgs bosons that the collider will immediately through injuries, graduation and NBA dollars. All that is left of our team is the decayed particles left over after the attack of the Higgs boson. The walking and dribbling dead. The only thing sadder than the 2012-2013 Tar Heel basketball team will be Higgs boson that escaped from Geneva and knocked our team into an alternate universe. The 2012 UNC National Championship team existed for a brief instant and disintegrated the Tar Heel fans sitting in the Dean Dome, drinking their wine, chomping their cheese and hating the Higgs boson that brought us to this evil end. Unless of course, Ol' Roy pulls a rabbit out of his hat. And Ol' Roy, like Bullwinkle J. Moose has a lot of hats. PITT DICKEY, Contributing Writer, COMMENTS? Edi- tor@upandcomingweekly.com. Does your advertising leave you feeling this way? Advertising can be pretty complex. You may not know which way to turn. Th ere is a sign you can rely on — ours. Call us today so that our professionals can make the most of your advertising investment. WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM wwwupandcomingweekly.com 484-6200 Another sign we're working for you. Free Papers Working For You APRIL 11-17, 2012 UCW 7