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[yanka]

[QUESTION] How does the Academy Study Earth?

[tanner]

info transfer but not physical???

[Violet]

I'm really not sure about these things, but even info transfer must be physical on some level - surely even radio waves that travel through space are to some extent 'physical', but I'm not good at sciencey things, so no doubt heaps of peeps have a better insight than me!

[yanka]

[POTUS]

[jokerstrademark]

The people may think it's impossible, but maybe Sente has figured it out, and that's why the Academy doesn't want to take the money and use it for the purpose, because it's already done. There has to be some method of getting stuff here, we got the leitmarks didn't we?

[BrianEnigma]

[spugmeistress]

[Mikeyj]

Brilliant!

Says a number of things to me:

We're going to have to make something...a big tin-foil and toilet roll tube receiver, we'll probably be required to wear them too. They seem to be trying to keep us as a team so this makes sense (well, the making something thing anyway, not the tin-foil thing).

My hunch is tthe academy could already transport matter, the thieves stuck the cube in rather than having to escape through security with it.

The question is why? It can't do them much good here, they must really want the academy not to have it.

A further point on the physicsy side of things. The academy can track the cube on Earth...how have they done so? Either by co-opting earth based equipment via t'internet (a little more complex than creating a blog and forgetting to update a newspaper of dubious journalistic credibility) or by some sort of physical interaction. I think it would be reasonable to assume a single piece of technology capable of fiddling about with earth (ie both transport and tracking of the cube) if this is the case.

Is matter not information too? At a fundamental level? Feel free to scorn the "soft Scientist"; but on a self indulgent note someone mentioned disease and parasites...hooray for bacteria making an appearance!

[tanner]

of course it was an inside job -- read the errorlogs -- very suspicious

[BrianEnigma]

[Violet]

[Leeravitz]

Hmmm...makes you wonder. As Violet pointed out a while back 'Med. Ocean' seems like just another Sentinel typo (TM). But could it be that the good folks of Perplex City genuinely hold some funny ideas about how Earth works???!

It's clear that there is some close connection between Earth and the City, because they spend so much time referring to Earth - specific matters - note that Anna can study George Perec, Caine is into Bach...etc. Maybe their Academy is named in memory of Plato (which would explain the Classical Greek connection).

Now, it could be that if the City is located in a parallel universe, then it has played host to some of the same developments that have characterised Earth history (there was a J.S. Bach in Perplexian history as well, say). But I figure it's more likely that they actually have regular access to sources of Earthly information...

Think about Kurt's 'Geek Antiques' card, for instance. He knows enough about the microchip revolution of the 1980's to replicate computers from the era, and he knows enough about Charles Babbage to want to get his hands on a Difference Engine. Similarly, when Egyptian hieroglyphs were used in the 'Master of Secrets' card, I got the impression that the Perplexian puzzle setters were working to encode within a system that would be recognised by Earth dwellers - not necessarily in a language that is actually familiar to the inhabitants of the City...

We already have some hints that Mind Candy are actually working for Sente, which implies that there is a two - step information transference going on here...

But I don't suppose (barring knowledge of what the Cube is) that we've seen any physical transference of items...

Coming out of left - field, one theory that I was entertaining was: what if Perplex City is *exactly* what it appears to us? This is to say, it's a virtual world, which exists at the level of a computer simulation. That would be enough to give it a degree of 'reality' (because a simulation does exist, just not in three dimensions, if you see what I mean...). So, what we see is literally, the denizens of a self - contained virtual world reaching out to communicate with us, their efforts facilitated by other human beings (Mind Candy) acting as their brokers...

Once you start thinking about that, I do believe your head is likely to explode again...!!

In that sense, no - one ever gets out of the box...

[PuzzledPineapple]

I think information transfer without matter transfer would perhaps be possible, but not with EM radiation. I'm tempted to say 'wave-particle duality' and leave it there. Light (and the rest) is, in a sense, matter, at least as much as anything else is. What I think could have potential, although there are probably many people more sciencey than me to tear this to shreds, is the idea of gravity being used. Wasn't the whole idea of m-theory and the like that there are separate 'universes' for lack of a better word that gravity bleeds through into, which is why it's a bit weak and puny. That's more of a metaphor than an actual hypothesis I suppose, I have one public lecture's worth of knowledge about m-theory. Imagine me waving my hands at this point, that usually makes science sound more plausible. How exactly the wonderful people at MC picked up the original transmission from the other side is beyond me, I think I'll be happy with magic fairies passing on messages.

[yanka]