We shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
October 30, 2012 11:44 AM   Subscribe

Physicist Ben Tippett has written a paper [PDF] showing that the events of Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu could have happened.
posted by Chrysostom (37 comments total) 39 users marked this as a favorite
 
It is basically impossible not to love a paper that's got a section in it called "Non-Euclidean Geometry and Gravitational Lensing".
posted by mhoye at 11:45 AM on October 30, 2012


Physicist Ben Tippett has written a paper [PDF] showing that the events of Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu could have happened.

Yeah...

"Could have."

Sleep tight, humanity. He who dreams below the waters has come before and will come again...
posted by infinitywaltz at 11:52 AM on October 30, 2012 [5 favorites]


I've just glanced at it and I think I lost about half a dozen SAN points
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:04 PM on October 30, 2012 [15 favorites]


Wait till you hear about his theory that Battlestar Galactica really happened.

Corner Gas joke yay
posted by bleep at 12:06 PM on October 30, 2012 [2 favorites]


But anyway this is great.
Love this paragraph in particular:
The most wonderful thing in the world, in our opinion, is the ability of the human mind to correlate many seemingly unrelated pieces of information into a jubilant whole. We are born ignorant, imprisoned by the islands of our personal experience; but intelligence, logic, and diligent study are like glorious seaworthy vessels which allow us to travel boundless and brilliant oceans. The great ambition of science is the piecing together of dissociated knowledge to create hard tempered theories, and then the bravely facing of their philosophical implications in order to begin the process anew. In this way we have climbed towards the brilliant truth, and have lifted our human state into the glory of an age of enlightenment.
posted by bleep at 12:10 PM on October 30, 2012 [19 favorites]


Possible Bubbles of Spacetime Curvature in the South Pacific - Cthulhu Mythos skill +2, Sanity loss: 0/1D3, Spells: Create Time Warp (partial), Study time: 2 weeks, Author: Blogger, Language: English, Style: Academic.
posted by zamboni at 12:14 PM on October 30, 2012 [12 favorites]


Oh yes, my brain needed more validity towards Cthulu imagery in my life, gee thanks.
posted by Theta States at 12:22 PM on October 30, 2012 [1 favorite]


I've just glanced at it and I think I lost about half a dozen SAN points

N00b move. You probably have dimensional gates in your brain now or something as well.
posted by Artw at 12:26 PM on October 30, 2012 [2 favorites]


He fails to connect the 4th stage Guild navigators and the Ancient Ones. This is a serious omission IMO. The connections are obvious to all who have the courage to look.

Also, H.P.L. and F. H. were brothers on Sirius.
posted by Phyllis Harmonic at 12:30 PM on October 30, 2012 [1 favorite]


I'd show this to my physicist friends, but their building's been infested with toves since they turned on their cyclotron last week, and we're getting worried there might be a rath in there.
posted by cthuljew at 12:30 PM on October 30, 2012 [6 favorites]


Tonight I finally run Cthulhu Dark!
posted by Zed at 12:34 PM on October 30, 2012 [4 favorites]


Pah- this is rankest conjecture when compared to Van Geel's "Observation of Possible Quantum Entanglement Phenomena and Associated Spherical Anomalies in the Antarctic." Tippet is not fit to clean the whiteboards of an intellectual giant like Van Geel, and his amateurissshhh nmkl pjkl ftumch...grrhck...


Yog-Sothoth is the Gate
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:47 PM on October 30, 2012 [2 favorites]


I appreciate that the picture uses the "leaf" variant of the elder sign. That version doesn't get enough play.
posted by bswinburn at 12:58 PM on October 30, 2012 [3 favorites]


5 minutes with intro to G.R., a copy of Lovecraft, and Mathematica, does not a paper make.
posted by TomStampy at 1:09 PM on October 30, 2012


As the author is neither US (Dark Chamber) or British (The Laundry), I'm not entirely certain which agency will take down this paper, and cause this post to be deleted from mefi then removed from the deleted posts blog. The Canadian arcane counter-terror bureaus have been the prize and casualty of many political fights recently. The Office We Officially Don't Talk About (nee JTF-1) used to be part of Defense, then were amalgamated into CSIS, but I think it's been hidden under one of the usual black boxes.

So yeah. Matt, if you get a call from someone claiming to be from the Canadian Official Languages Commission, it's probably already too late.
posted by bonehead at 1:41 PM on October 30, 2012 [9 favorites]


5 minutes with intro to G.R., a copy of Lovecraft, and Mathematica, does not a paper make.

It's a good job this is totally serious and not a bit of fun, or you'd have made yourself look a bit of a pompous, joyless old git there.
posted by howfar at 1:45 PM on October 30, 2012 [7 favorites]


Why this paper on relativity and Cthulhu is not very academically rigorous AT ALL!
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 1:52 PM on October 30, 2012 [11 favorites]


bonehead:
I think Black Chamber would be all over this one, since it would be a territorial dispute, but they would have to form a joint task force with JTF-1 if they were to require intrusion or any other direct action. Just pray to whatever dark entity you pray to that they don't need to call in any cleaners. Those guys have no sense of tact and tend to muck things up quite a bit.

Somehow, I doubt it will come to that. I mean, H.P. is great and all, but he barely scratched the surface of just how thin the veil can be if you have the right formula and a good conductor. Also, goats blood? In this day and age?
posted by daq at 2:09 PM on October 30, 2012


Clearly the events of CoC would be classed as an excession or OCP. It those special circumstances I think we all know who would clean it up.
posted by winna at 2:19 PM on October 30, 2012


Thurston and Johansen are clearly not well versed in the vocabulary of non-Euclidean geometry –we would not expect them to be– and they leave us with the task of deducing the underlying truth.

Clearly, the author has only been exposed to the beginning levels of the Able Seaman's Test. The advanced levels draw heavily on many sources of arcane lore.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:57 PM on October 30, 2012


I'd say it was MAJESTIC, but they're all gone now, probably how this crept through. Some crotchety old bastard from DELTA GREEN will probably figure out what's gone on and tidy up the mess.

Let's not talk about PISCES.
posted by Artw at 3:01 PM on October 30, 2012


I don't know, winna, the Great Old Ones might not even be fazed by CAM and gridfire. On the other hand, maybe Minds are immune to Sanity loss?
posted by Zimboe Metamonkey at 3:02 PM on October 30, 2012


The Great Old Ones would appear to reside at the top end of the eleven known dimensions and thus be a mystery to Minds on the order of the Sublimed, with whom they share many traits.
posted by Artw at 3:16 PM on October 30, 2012


I, for one, know whom to call.
posted by cthuljew at 4:07 PM on October 30, 2012


I don't know, winna, the Great Old Ones might not even be fazed by CAM and gridfire. On the other hand, maybe Minds are immune to Sanity loss?

Oh dear, now we see the flaw in my plan. I'm pretty sure Minds would be as susceptible, if not more so than humans, to SAN loss.

Now I want to play a version of Delta Green set in the Culture.
posted by winna at 5:06 PM on October 30, 2012 [1 favorite]


"The Spooky season is upon us."

Stars brightly burning, boiling and churning
Bode a returning season of doom

posted by homunculus at 5:42 PM on October 30, 2012 [1 favorite]


Oh dear, now we see the flaw in my plan. I'm pretty sure Minds would be as susceptible, if not more so than humans, to SAN loss.

I'm personally of the opinion that Culture Minds would recognise the Great Old Ones etc as Minds themselves, albeit injured ones. I seem to remember that other godlike entities (Mr Adequate, the Dra'Azon guardian of Schar's World, for example) are understood in this way. So the question is whether what the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods know is enough to drive a Mind insane, and of course exactly where these pesky mad intelligences came from in the first place...

You could definitely make it work as a campaign setting, at least in the shorter term, although you'd need to bend both the Culture parts and the Mythos parts somewhat to make a snug fit.
posted by howfar at 6:37 PM on October 30, 2012 [2 favorites]


Listen not to the God Learners.
posted by fleacircus at 8:26 PM on October 30, 2012 [1 favorite]


Hah, just getting started on this, but I have to say; between this and the zombie paper Canada puts out the *best* hoax papers.
posted by Canageek at 8:49 PM on October 30, 2012


That said, he needs to learn how to use TeX.

1) As his citations are all out of order he either needs to run it more times, or more likely, stop doing his citations by hand.

2) He needs to learn to put in Dr./ instead of Dr. so that is doesn't get a intersentance space.
posted by Canageek at 9:10 PM on October 30, 2012


intersentance

Ha ha!
posted by obiwanwasabi at 1:24 AM on October 31, 2012


I for one am sick and tired of academia taking the easy way out. No, what the general public needs is an honest-to-Newton paper proving once and for all if a ship ramming into Cthulhu could make enough of an impact to make him flee.

Ia! Ia!
posted by ersatz at 6:49 AM on October 31, 2012 [2 favorites]


The Minds would likely just regard Cthulhu et al. as very-far-off-basline Eccentrics, with deviant hobbies (vis Meatfucker). I doubt Hastur would get many invites to Infinite Fun Space.
posted by bonehead at 6:52 AM on October 31, 2012


Sorry, did I screw up somehow? intersentance as opposed to interword spacing...
posted by Canageek at 5:36 PM on October 31, 2012


Canageek there's something wrong with that sentence...
posted by howfar at 5:41 PM on October 31, 2012


Well, I put in a 'a' instead of 'an', but other then that I'm obviously missing something. Writers blindness sucks, I can't stop seeing what I meant to write.
posted by Canageek at 8:23 PM on October 31, 2012


It's harsh, I know. Muphry's Law, I'm afraid. You misspelled "sentence". Which no-one would mention, apart from the fact that you were being punished by a cruel and unfair universe. Hence you were mocked, for comedy is only tragedy plus it happening to some other poor sod.
posted by howfar at 8:39 PM on October 31, 2012


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