Rube's Eyes Are Brown

I have that written down in Teaish on the upper right corner of my first page of notes. It had been bugging me for quite some time, but I know now that Rube's eyes are brown, a shade lighter than Archie's but darker than Mario's. It really is odd that I expected them to be blue, just as I always expected Mario's to be. I think it's residual from Sturken, as I really spent far too much sum total time looking at his eyes.

Stay tuned, those of you who ignore these sorts of science-y posts (I'm looking at you, Kathrya), for the story at the bottom.

And so, we have Cosmology, the Universe, and Particle Physics. Because, naturally, we can cover all three topics in a single class. In case you were wondering, there is a standard model of both cosmology and particle physics, because, when in doubt, scientists choose the most confusing name possible.

The universe is a pie chart. Quarks, leptons, and photons together are less than 5% of total stuff; the rest is dark energy and dark matter. Our universe is 13.7 billion years old. Now, personally, measuring the age of the universe in years strikes me as rather silly, when you consider the mutability of our orbit, but, alas, it is a commonly accepted unit of time despite its unwieldy nature.

Fun fact: if the universe were infinite, the sky would be white, because, anywhere you looked, somewhere, you would hit a star. Now, personally, I think that if light dims with distance, than this wouldn't be true, but it apparently is.

And now, the funny story.

Teacher: The universe is most likely curved, so if you go in a straight line, you can never reach its edge.

Rube: What if I go in a curved line?

Teacher: That's what I said- it makes you travel in a curved line.

Rube: but if I curve the opposite direction, wouldn't I technically be going straight? And, then, couldn't I get somewhere?

Teacher makes a thinking face and crosses his arms.

Other Student: His argument makes sense geometrically.

Rube: See?

Teacher: Ah. I'm not certain. How about you try it and report back to me next semester?

Other student: Wouldn't it make more sense for him to report back to you last semester?

The entire class laughs and Teacher returns to his lecture. "This is how you know we're geeky," Rube says to me after said teacher has resumed talking.

"Hmm?"

"If we weren't so geeky, we definitely wouldn't have laughed at that."

"It was funny. Wouldn't anybody laugh?"

"You're overestimating the world, I think."