After the last post, the Fetchstix writers received a surprise email from the great Stephen Hawking, the famous theoretical British physicist. He told us that for a long time he has been in the process of proving what will most likely turn out to be a world shattering new theory. Instead of the universe being formed originally by the Big Bang, Hawking theorizes it actually began as a Big Stick. Hurtling around for millions of years in its orbit through space and time, the Big Stick was a massive hunk of wood: 500 miles in diameter and 600 light years long! He is almost certain that an ancient species of Termites lived inside this stick. Termites that were hundreds of times larger than the largest dinosaur.
Apparently (and remember –this is still just a theory, but think about it. Who’s going to Question Stephen Hawking’s theories????) a mysterious force, directly related to The Force in the Star Wars chronicles, caused this huge honker of a stick to spontaneously explode. As one might imagine, the universe was tremendously hot as a result of particles of both matter and antimatter rushing apart in all directions. As it all began to cool, at around 10^-43 seconds after the explosion, there was an asymmetry in favor of matter. As a direct result of an excess of about one part per billion, the universe was able to mature in a way favorable for matter to persist. Essentially what occurred, in layman’s terms, is the sticks became the planets. Um, except for Earth. It turns out, our funny planet was partially formed out of Termite flesh!
Over the billions of years a vast chemical change took place in our planet, and by the time the dinosaurs roamed the earth, all that was left of the original monster stick were little sticks, kind of splinters, lying around on the floors of the oceans and swamps. Hawking is still scratching his head about what happened to the termite part - though he’s come up with some pretty accurate wild guesses……. Read the last post, below, to find out what happened next.
In the next post we will follow the sticks on their evolutionary journey. We will also be Branching off the main track, by exploring the fascinating mythology and belief systems that have always dogged the scientists’ efforts and theories. Although, naturally, we are solidly on the side of Science, we feel that people can believe what they want to believe about the history of Sticks. Hey, it’s a free country.
