If there’s somethin’ strange
In yer big ol’ barn
Who ya gonna call?
Quantum Physics Repair Service!

huh.

That so doesn’t work.

If there’s something weird
And it don’t look good
Who ya gonna call?
Black Hole Busters!

Better, but still not perfect…

Oh, I know why.

I spelled ‘wHierd’ wrong.

Okay, but you get the idea right?

Freakin’ black holes, or more specifically, my freakin’ black hole.

I first wrote about the black hole (and also its effect on poor Marshal Dillon Dingle) this past summer. But if you don’t want to read those links (because you may, or may not, be a little attention deficit-ed today by one or two championship football games), I will summarize for you.

Last summer, round about the beginning of July, the Nearly Perfect Husband walked through the Maine garden gate and into the house and asked – in a rather odd voice – “Hey, hun…” (note: not the Attila type ‘hun’) “.. Um… when you went into the barn the last time, did you notice anything, um, odd about it?”

Now, just to explain the ‘um’s.

I love my Old Barn in Maine.

Like, love it.

Ohhhhh, I am not ashamed to admit that I love a thing this much.

Go ahead.

Judge me.

I don’t care.

I love my Old Barn in Maine.

It is probably as close as I am ever going to get to my childhood dream of being a farmer.

I have written before about my childhood love of my Fisher Price Little People Barn, with its chickens and tractor and pig and cow and barn doors that ‘moo’d’ the way all real barn doors ‘moo’ when you open them…

Yes.

The answer is ‘yes’.

If my old barn doors in Maine opened ‘out’ (vs. slid) I would find a way to make them moo.

But I digress.

And the issue that the Nearly Perfect husband so delicately (and rather scared-ed-ly) was trying to refer to when he came into the house last July to ask me if anything was amiss the last time I was in the barn, was with the floor.

Which had collapsed, according to the Nearly Perfect Husband.

But we quickly dispelled that myth when it was determined that I had a black hole.

We used physics to figure that out.

So who ya gonna call?

Right.

We are right back to the beginning of the post.

So we called Fred and Les and his crew because they built the barn and they did not agree that we had a black hole, but because I had read Stephen Hawking’s, Brief History of Time and knew physics, I knew they were wrong.

So they decided to investigate further.

So here are some views of the inside of the beautiful Old Barn in Maine, which is teeny by big ol’ New England barn standards. It was estimated that the original barn bits are about 200 years old.  When we renovated it (much to the bewilderment of many neighbors and fellow Southport Island-ers as it would have been way cheaper to tear it down), we had an old barn restoration expert work on it. This guy even used a little hatchet to fit the beams together.

You can see the original frame, and the new beams in the view below…

And here…

But see all the pegs and stuff? The Old Barn Guy did the same throughout the barn, including the floor and the structure beneath the floor. And underneath the floor was where we needed to look to figure out how bad the Black Hole was. Because you can have teeny little black holes, or great big black holes.

But we still had a door… see?

So I was thinking it wasn’t a really big black hole.

But then, when you looked down….

Houston?

We have a problem.

Kind of a big one.

So it turns out that some black holes – and I have to let Stephen Hawking know about this – are due to rot.

Which is due to un fore seen circumstances.

Which is an underground spring.

We think.

And did you know that moisture can cause rot if you seal it up underneath your carefully renovated and beloved Old Barn?

You did.

Well, good for you, you self-righteous bastard.

I’m sorry.

I’m a bit emotional about my Old Barn.

But the good news is that we can fix it.

Turns out black holes respond rather well to this newly invented particle-y physics-boosting substance.

C-MeNT.

Yep.

C-MeNT is a very strong substance used in very specific black hole situations and we will determine its effectiveness with something called the Scientific Method:

1. Purpose (state the problem): I have a black hole in my Old Barn in Maine.

2. Research (find out about the topic): Tore up floor to locate black hole.

3. Hypothesis (predict the outcome of the problem): If I fill the black hole up with cement, the black hole will be dead.

4. Experiment (develop a procedure to test the hypothesis): Ask the Black Hole Repair Service (a combination of Les and Fred and Steve and Derek, Black Hole Certified Repair Experts) to design a C-MeNT formulation and injectionality procedure specific to this black hole situation.

5. Analysis (record the results of the experiment)

6. Conclusion (compare the hypothesis to the experiment’s conclusion)

You will note that steps 5 and 6 in the Scientific Method process are not determined yet and that is because I have nothing to analyze or conclude yet.

Because duh.

I’m only at before step 5.

So this winter and spring we are engaging in a scientific experiment in Maine and will be the first human beings on the planet Earth to attempt to plug up a black hole.

Which is pretty dang exciting.

Mostly because of our contribution to the arena called Quantum Physics.

And also.

To a beloved Old Barn in Maine.

Stay tuned.

As always, you can come on over to Just Ponderin’s Facebook page to comment or just hang out.