Lousy Day

So my brilliant system of 3 interlocking alarms completely failed to wake me up this morning. I didn't wake up until 9.05, when I had intended to be at work by 9, so I could leave to go to class at 5. So, not going to class today, not a huge deal as I'm still seriously considered dropping it.

At work I was waiting on someone to look at some data, to make sure it's ok, but they couldn't see my directory for some reason (on a unix system.) Yesterday I had played around with the permissions to try to give them access, but managed to completely break everything I was doing. So not only can they not see what I need them to look at, I can't see it anymore. Apparently the admin may be able to fix it, but he's awol, so the only thing I can do is recreate the work I spent most of last week doing. So once I get back to where I was yesterday, I'm still stuck cause he still needs to check this data! So, not the most productive I could be.

And I kind of wanted to go to class today, I remembered I like physics after reading this article about a paper AIAA published on research that connects gravity and electromagnetism.

Summary:

The standard model of physics, … is incapable of predicting a particle's mass. …when researchers ... implemented Heim's mass theorem in a computer program, it predicted masses of fundamental particles that matched the measured values to within the accuracy of experimental error.

….From this, Dröscher claims, you can derive the four forces known in physics: the gravitational and electromagnetic forces, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. But there's more to it than that. "If Heim's picture is to make sense," Dröscher says, "we are forced to postulate two more fundamental forces." These are, Dröscher claims, related to the familiar gravitational force: one is a repulsive anti-gravity similar to the dark energy that appears to be causing the universe's expansion to accelerate. And the other might be used to accelerate a spacecraft without any rocket fuel.

… if this happens, it would be possible to reach Mars in less than 3 hours and a star 11 light years away in only 80 days, Dröscher and Häuser say.

That would be so incredibly, ridiculously awesome. It will probably not happen, but the future has to come sometime, right? Maybe I read too much, but I spend so much time in worlds that are much better than ours, it really sucks sometimes to come back to reality and realize that no, the world is not that amazing yet. I wish it would hurry up.