Satire City, CA – At a news conference held in a vending machine room in the basement of the Student Union Building, a research team led by Damnford University Professor of Astrophysics – Dr. Scott Scybala and visiting Professor from Japan Dr. Takasheeti announce their groundbreaking discovery.
“We have discovered a portal to another universe confirming that the multiverse is real!! exclaimed Dr. Scybala as he popped open a spurting bottle of well-shaken Sprite from the nearby vending machine.
Dr. Takasheeti shaking the soda off his head quickly corrected his colleague, “It’s not so much a portal TO another universe as a portal FROM another universe. But yes, it proves the multiverse is real!”
Dr. Scybala continued, “After years of hard work begging for government grants to conduct our research, in 2018 we were finally able to secure enough funding to spend a few weeks combing through the images of the uppermost region of the sky taken by the Hubble Space telescope. It was there we found an unusual binary system – a black hole which inexplicably expels massive amounts of material through an adjacent white portal which utilizes a gravitational well to basically ‘drop’ this dark matter into our universe.”
“Amazing! How often does this happen?”
“Well, it’s very curious, unlike a quasar or a pulsar which emit matter or radiation in a predictable, regular pattern, there is no regular pattern for these dark matter drops. Usually there’s a medium-sized load once a day in the mid-morning but sometimes it can be very irregular and go as long as four days with no drop until eventually a huge load will seemingly stretch the edges of the black hole behind the white portal before dropping into our universe.”
Dr. Takasheeti injected, “We were stumped. We couldn’t explain the observation and not just because the images from the notoriously near-sighted Hubble telescope weren’t clear enough but also because we ran out of money.”
“What did you do next?”
“Like any other research scientists, we spent the next several years applying for grants, begging the government, begging the Universities, and sometimes just begging random people in the street for research money.
“Tough break…”
“Yeah, the only discovery we made during that time is that we have no financial security…or dignity. But during this time NASA launched the James Webb Space telescope and got great pictures of the portal. We were now able to clearly make out the smooth oval shape and hinge mechanism. The portal was clearly the underside of a giant cosmic toilet seat!”
“Amazing ! What does the top of the seat look like?”
“We can’t see it. The top of the toilet seat is at the bottom of the other universe and the underside of the toilet seat is at the top of OUR universe.”
“Professor, what does it mean?”
“Evidently and unfortunately, it would appear to mean that when every other universe in the multiverse flushes its toilet, OUR universe is where it goes…”
He let out a deep sigh of resignation and continued, “In retrospect, there were hints. The darkness, the isolation, the multitude of turd shaped asteroids… we didn’t want to believe it… but our place in the multiverse is as clear as it is depressing – we are the celestial sewer.”
“Still, it’s an amazing discovery”.
“Yeah, yeah….it may well be the biggest scientific discovery of our time – that the origin of the universe, wasn’t a ‘Big Bang’ – it was more like a ‘First Flush’. Unfortunately, I suspect no one is going to be giving me the Nobel prize for discovering our universe is a shithole.”
“Hmmm, another tough break…”
“Yeah and worse than that is knowing that we will NEVER make meaningful contact with other civilizations in the multiverse. I mean, could you imagine if we ever crossed the rim of the white portal and emerged on the other side – do you think we would be greeted very warmly? Conversely, if we ever DO get visits from extraterrestrials, we need not get too excited. They will be the equivalent of plumbers – just here to snake out the wormholes or unclog the gravitational wells. I can assure you they are NOT interested in learning about our civilization, probing us or being taken to our leader – that’s for shit sure!”
