On this very somber day, I thought it might help people to have something lighthearted to read. Which leads me to the following true story:
In a conversation with a friend recently, the topic came around to Pastafarianism. Some of you may be familiar with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. A fairly recently recent religion, it has one thing going for it: Its metaphysics is equally as grounded in verifiable evidence as are the metaphysics of all competing major religions.
But what about physics? Suppose there really is a Flying Spaghetti Monster? Would the existence of His Noodly Appendage be consistent with what we know of the physical laws of our Universe?
Eventually the conversation got around to various known physical phenomena. There are so many to consider: universal gravitation, the strong and weak nuclear forces, dark matter, black holes, the expansion of the universe.
And what about string theory? We couldn’t help but see the obvious geometric connection between strings and spaghetti. But how to reconcile such a view with the prevailing hypothesis that of the 9 or 10 spatial dimensions predicted by string theory, 6 or 7 of them actually consist of tiny circular loops?
We looked at each other in sudden enlightenment — it was so obvious once you saw it: Spaghettios!