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Universal Lightbulbs
Posted to %afda by pieceoftheuniverse on 08th December 2000
Screwtape wrote:
>>>> ...the sun is hot, the sun is not a place where we could live.
Caleb wrote:
>>> Of course not. Scientists have found that the sun is a gigantic atom-smashing machine.
Jacob wrote:
>> The sun is, in fact, a mass of incandescent gas.
Roy Stark wrote:
> A gigantic nuclear furnace...
All of the above is untrue. The sun is, as has been found out only recently, a big lightbulb.
The universe is filled with lightbulbs (hooked into their sockets fifth-dimensionally, so it's really no wonder that we don't see the electric side of it), all different grades. There are some hundred-billion-watts, some fifty-seven-trillion, some twenty-two, depending on the deistic user and what precisely their needs are. Of course, it's been found that our kind (the 40 billion billion million watts, also known as "yellow") is by far a better efficient use of electricity, which is by no means inexhaustible. However, when our solar bulb burns out, it will shatter, thus releasing a whole mess of thermal debris outward in a roughly spherical direction. The impact, if not the heat, will surely kill us.
However, there is a solution! Scientists from the twenty-seventh dimension (third removed) have come up with a new solar lightbulb design that merely shuts down near the end of its lifecycle rather than exploding, which just makes a mess of the universal carpet. While humans may be worried -- and rather justifiably -- about shutting off the sun for any length of time while the bulb is changed, the twenty-seventh dimension (third removed) scientists insist that this is really the better way to go. As an added bonus, the new bulb will burn brighter and longer than ever before.
There are always other options, of course: neon suns have become very popular now, and come in a wide variety of colours for our approval. Sadly, the "flickering effect" is all too common, and such places usually become disreputable in a matter of æons.
Halogen suns are possibly the best way to go. Though shaped slightly different than the regular suns, they are compatible with almost any sized fifth-dimensional socket. Conversion packs are available, but the resulting "off time" while the deity tries to make sense of the instructions may be bad for any civilization of sentients nearby.
The planet-warmers advertised on some of the more questionable twenty-seventh dimensional (third removed) stations are nothing but shams, and should not be used for any planetoid larger than a few hundred kilometers across (at the equator, of course). Planet-warmers are not advised for keeping sentients "under wraps" for longer than two-fifteenths of a galactic rotation, as it may spoil their outlook on the universe, not to mention stellar cartography in general. As such, there is no use in using these planet-warmers as substitutes for suns, not even for relatively short periods of time.
Thank you for your curiosity in this matter. Please remember the following tips for maximum enjoyment of your solar lightbulb:
- always shut off the sun when you leave the solar system.
- make sure some kind of buffer is between you and the sun
- to filter out unwanted cosmic rays.
- do not touch the sun directly when it is active
- be sure to wait a few moments for the sun to cool before
- changing the bulb
- do not look directly at the sun when it is active
--
pieceoftheuniverse - happy service!
