Enchantium Gas is Real (Tell Me Something I Didn’t Know)

By guest blogger Robert Paul Weston

[This post originally appeared in May 2014 on Robert Paul Weston's blog. We liked it, and he kindly offered to share it. - The Sci/Why Gang.]

The Lagoon Nebula.
Photo credit: "ESO/VPHAS+ team" (http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1403a/)

This morning I read an article about a “quiet revolution” in theoretical physics. According to Max Tegmark, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, consciousness may in fact be an undiscovered form of matter, as in a solid, liquid or gas. He even gave the new element a fancy name. “Perceptronium.”

Now, far be it from me to accuse a highly decorated theoretical physicist of scientific plagiarism, but I had to wonder…has this guy read my book?

Enchantium Gas, the square root of -1
on the periodic table of elements.
A discovery I made way back in 2008.
Photo credit: Robert Paul Weston/Penguin USA

In Zorgamazoo, I very clearly laid out the principles not only of human thought as an element (ahem, Enchantium Gas anyone?), but I also went one step further, postulating how an entire civilisation, power system and energy cycle could be derived from something as intangible as psychological boredom.

This was way back in 2008. This guy Tegmark—if that’s his real name—is waaay behind the times. Seriously, physicists, chemists, people of science: Do try to keep up.

(Sigh.)

Robert Paul Weston grew up in Ontario but now lives in England. He writes fiction that sometimes veers toward fact.