Footnote Physicist

 by Steven Gussman         It's been a very nice homecoming, getting back into video games over this past year. 1   As a part of that homecoming, I've also began reading about video games again (reading science books is largely what replaced playing video games for me).  I think it's the reading of sci-fi reviews by the great Hideo Kojima in The Creative Gene , with its emphasis on curating and passing down one's favorite memes, which inspired me to write about my favorite and most anticipated games. 2   I am hoping to end my short hiatus on game development as well, but one step at a time. My Favorite Video Games 1. Super Mario 3D World by Nintendo (Wii U) Cat Mario explores World 1 of Super Mario 3D World 3         Easily, my favorite video game series (and genre) are the Super Mario 3D platformers.  But how did an obscure entry from a failed console end up representing the bunch on this list?  I was surpr...

by Steven Gussman  THE PROBLEM           My sister, Katie Gussman, and her boyfriend, J. C. Lopez have two pet cats, Twitchy and Chewy. 1   These cats grew up together in their home(s) from a relatively young age (though old enough to be spayed and put up for adoption, at a few months), and generally got along.  Presently, they must be kept on completely separate floors of their home so that Chewy does not violently attack Twitchy (ironically, Katie identifies Twitchy as having been the benevolent dominant before this began).  Even from separate floors, Chewy will howl at and track Twitchy.  Between the two of them, several hypotheses have been proffered about what caused this. J.C. thinks it has something to do with an event that occurred just weeks before the problem began: Katie brought the cats to our parents' home, which houses two cats, Catnis and Datchi (a generally non-violent, rescued stray).  Upon introduction, Ch...

by Steven Gussman  THE HYPOTHESIS           Typically, the largest known structure of the universe, the cosmic filaments, are “explained” by the following argument: it is said that quantum fluctuations in the early universe were inflated during the inflationary epoch, seeding the locations where matter would clump in the universe. 1   I am proposing an alternative hypothesis that attempts a more precise and testable mechanism.  The philosophy of physics is simple: the early universe was a sea of interference between primordial gravitational waves. 2   Being curvatures in space time, these waves were inflated during the inflationary epoch to cosmically large sizes.  At these scales, the light-speed propagation of these waves is relatively slow (it's as if the pseudo-random state of the interference pattern at the time of inflation was preserved as it was inflated).  This allowed time in the post-inflationary epoch for matte...