Alchemax Collider Project | Olivia Octavius

So, the collider project was the crowning achievement of my career. (Still pissed about it getting blown up, but whatever, I can say that until I'm blue in the face.)

But fuck it, it still ran and it still gave me data and I'm still going to claim the results, so here goes.

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Oh, wait, did you expect me to post my actual data?? HAHA NO. You're getting a summary, because I'll be damned if I post my actual data on a public-facing report log. Fuck you. Read about it in the paper I'll eventually publish, with my name on it. I am not going to let people just nick everything I've been working for.

But here you go. Things my collider has suggested or proved:

You can make micro black holes with as little energy as 9.4 tera-electronvolts (TeV) (aka, you can make them in a sufficiently powerful collider). (The LHC has a max design capability of 6.5 TeV per beam so far. My collider was supposed to start at 4.5 TeV and scale up to 8 TeV after upgrades (for a total of 16 TeV).)

Micro black holes exist. (These are just tiny, tiny black holes. They’re actually quite safe, so long as you aren’t standing near them. They pop into existence, then evaporate (see below) and disappear.)

There’s more than three spatial dimensions. (Also see here.) (Considering only three spatial dimensions, the “black hole threshold” is WAY too high, and you won’t be able to make a black hole of any size in a TeV-capable collider. The Planck mass (a natural unit of mass derived from only natural constants) is indicated to be a minimum limit on black hole masses - and the calculations just don’t allow black holes in the TeV range when using only three dimensions plus time. So, in order for black holes to be possible in the TeV range, you have to have a way to scale gravity in a way that’s stronger than in our three spatial dimensions. Otherwise, you won’t have the right conditions for a black hole. With more than three spatial dimensions (personally, I prefer M-theory, a version of string theory which favors ten spatial dimensions plus time), gravity can operate throughout ALL those dimensions, and can scale differently, lowering the “black hole threshold” into the TeV range.)

Gravity works in more than 3 dimensions. (In order for everything above to work, gravity has to permeate more than three dimensions in order to actually scale properly.) (Additionally, the fact that appearing and collapsing black holes can “grab onto” space enough to shred it indicates that gravity does indeed affect space itself.)

Black holes do indeed evaporate. (This has been accepted for a long time - Hawking proposed it in the 70’s, hence why it’s often referred to as Hawking radiation. The old idea that “nothing escapes a black hole”? That’s a trick statement, because technically, black holes DO radiate stuff, and lose mass and energy when they do. (hence the nickname “evaporation”). We’ve never had experimental proof of it before, but now, we know from looking at the data from the collider’s test runs that the micro black holes DID indeed evaporate and disappear in a flash of energy.)

More evidence that gravitons should be a thing. (String theories predicted a graviton, a subatomic elementary particle that regulates gravity.)

Warping space can shred the fabric of spacetime. (This is where the magic happens! The collider creates streams of micro black holes, which have gravitational pull and “bend” space a little bit. Then, the micro black hole disappears, and space snaps back. However, if you have a ton of micro black holes doing that, it’s pulling space in all sorts of rather violent directions all at once, and actually rips the space. That’s where the dimensional “portal” opens up.)

Space is, indeed, elastic to some degree - either that, or it can move fluidly enough that it looks like it’s healing the tears. (The dimensional “portals” were only open while the collider was on, and closed up when the collider turned off.)

Space DOES seem to have some form of “surface tension” or resistive buoyancy - possibly gravity? - that pushes back. (When the original Parker got pushed into the beam by Green Goblin, it took effort to hold him there, as if he were being pushed back.)

Parallel universes exist.

Different laws of physics exist in those universes. (This one’s a little bit less hard-proven and a little more “strongly suggested,” in that the spiders’ glitching seems to almost be on an atomic level, hinting at different underlying base physics.)

There’s some as-of-yet unnamed phenomenon which allows parallel-universe “versions” of a person to be summoned by throwing DNA into the collider beam.

I could think of more, but I think that’s enough stuff for today.

Footnotes: Hey folks! Long time, no see!

First things first, don't take anything here as truth. This is a lot more speculative fiction!

Second, I'm not starting this blog up again. I don't have the time for it - each post typically took days to weeks to research and write, even though they're short posts, and while I loved writing them, I just can't fit it in.

However, I found this in my drafts today - it's been sitting here since 2019! - and I'm not sure why I never posted it. It's something I remember putting a LOT of work into, though, and someone might find it interesting! I remember I wanted to list out possible things that Liv's collider experiments would have implications for, and there's a number of things here about the fictional collider's functions that I hadn't gotten to touch on.

Honestly, I don't thoroughly remember enough to vet the concepts fully as of today, but it's all fictional anyway. Like I said, don't take anything here as truth! If one could operate a collider like Liv’s, and get those particular results, then it’s POSSIBLE it would imply things, BUT in OUR universe, they haven’t been proven (and, again, I'm not a physicist! I'm a hobbyist armed with books and Google, and there's a high chance I've misinterpreted things here or there).

Citations are in-text as links.

Concepts that already existed: These are generally accepted as either a "thing" or "viable theory" by physicists. Micro black holes, Hawking radiation, more than 3 dimensions, gravitons, M-theory.

Concepts that already existed, but are kind of shaky: making micro black holes in a collider, parallel universes.

Concepts that I totally made up based on the movie (and thinking way too hard about things): shredding spacetime, space having surface tension, different laws of physics in parallel universes, the “as-of-yet unnamed phenomenon” of the last one.

Hey folks! It’s been a while!

If it wasn’t obvious by now, I don’t really have time to be engaging with this blog like I used to, which is... sad, but it is what it is. My health has settled into a weird cycle of improving/getting worse/improving/getting worse again, which seems to be about the standard for what I’ve been diagnosed with. Plus, things shift - in a weird turn of events, I’ve started school again, which is a terrifying yet exhilarating prospect.

I’ll come back to this eventually, but for now, I’m officially shelving the project. I don’t want to put up subpar posts because I don’t have the time to properly research things, and - even though it’s been nearly a year since the last post - I wanted to put up an official bookend type of thing just for my own brain to quit its anxious yelling whenever I think about it. (I have a bad habit of feeling badly for not posting on this blog and I think a “bookend” post will help that, haha. Don’t mind my neurosis.)

In the meantime, feel free to follow me over on my personal blog at @northperseids or on AO3 - I don’t have much Spiderverse stuff up on either at the moment but I expect that’ll change come June.

Wow.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it.

Look, in my defense, they did say I could lay off some of the reports as we ramped up construction. Don’t want some intrepid teenager building one of these things in their backyard, do we?

Actually, I take that back. Plenty of people have built them. Not a dual-beam collider, mind you - but you can totally build a mini particle collider in your garage, if you’re clever enough. They’re called fusors. Basically: a highly negatively charged grid on the inside, surrounded by a grounded grid on the outside, then suck out as much of the air as you can, and tadaa! You’ve built yourself a particle collider.

Sort of. It won’t break the laws of physics or prove a bunch of shit, but it does look cool. They’ve been nicknamed “a star in a jar.” Just don’t... you know. Electrocute yourself or something. That much electrical potential is enough to blast you across the room.

But anyway. I’m getting off topic.

Construction on the collider has reached a point where we’re dimensioning the beam pipe for... drumroll please!

THIS FUCKING THING!

See? SEE? Had to block out some of the specifications, but still! This is just the first page of a whole report on the tolerances, but it’s the inner tracker barrel of the sensor! They JUST finished all the panels on the sensor recently, and we’ve got to slot it in. Turns out the tolerance is off by a bit - well, you can’t see it on the sheet there, it just shows some of the general dimensions. But the tolerance is 0.5mm and it was supposed to be 0.3mm. You wouldn’t think that would make a big difference, but when you’re aiming at something 0.000000175mm wide, it’s the relative size of, like, twenty football fields. Or more. I’m not running the numbers on that.

But we’re not called engineers for nothing. We’re making it work.

Just so you know, this sensor is what picked up signs from other universes first. It’s similar to the CMS sensor - it’s a solenoid magnet on the outside, then you’ve got a gazillion layers of things ending with the silicon tracker barrel on the inside. Kind of a general-purpose, jack-of-all-trades sensor, y’know? Partly why we picked that to mount on the collider beam pipes rather than further back in the housing.

But anyway. Maybe I’ll sneak a photo. Just of the inner tracker barrel. It looks almost like some sort of abstract phone background.

We’ll see.

Footnotes: Wow. It has really been a while. I can’t make any promises about posting, but I’ve been in a very write-y mood lately, and that coupled with a new job promotion for engineering just made me want to stick a toe in the water again here.

You’ll likely notice another post (or a few, depending) go up dated previous to this one - I don’t remember if I ever mentioned, but I plan to backdate a few posts to update what Liv’s been doing this whole time and to keep the plot rolling.

Anyway, the usual science notes! Fusors are a thing - they are typically two spherical grids of wire, one inside the other, with the inner one charged to a VERY high negative potential and the outer one grounded. If you place a strong glass around them, then vacuum out almost all the air, the remaining particles get pulled in toward the negatively-charged grid, where they will usually miss the grid wiring and accelerate toward the center to smash into other particles that have been pulled in as well. Quite a few people have made them at home, but it’s NOWHERE NEAR as quick or easy as Liv makes it sound - it involves perilous levels of electricity and very strong vacuums capable of shattering the fusor’s glass housing rather explosively. So... yeah. Don’t try that for your next science experiment.

The solenoid sensor is one I’ve mentioned plenty of times before - CERN’s Compact Muon Solenoid is my favorite of all the Large Hadron Collider sensors! It’s incredibly useful in particle physics, and also very pretty. It’s the one that discovered the Higgs boson particle.

I am almost cringing at the fact it took me so long to answer this - but it's incredibly appreciated. Folks like you are going to be part of why I WILL eventually come back to this blog, you know! Despite the lack of prompt response, and the fact health is a constant issue, this definitely put a smile on my face.

So... despite the optimism of my last post from a while ago, I may need to just... put this blog on hiatus for a while. My health continues to be a problem - it's gotten bad enough that it's become a driving hazard, which is causing problems at work if I can't drive in the mornings - and it's caused a car accident before (minor - I'm okay, it was just scary), along with persistent headaches and nausea that make it hard to focus even on regular daily tasks. I also had to unexpectedly move AGAIN during the pandemic, which has caused a lot of stress, which in turn has caused more health flares.

I haven't forgotten about this blog - it's still very dear to me, but I just wanted to give an update, especially after the last note I left.

“ suzirya said: (WELCOME BACK!!) “ (HOW DO I REPLY TO REPLIES WITH LIV’S BLOG NOT MY PERSONAL ONE I can research quantum physics all day but I’m confused by tumblr dot com okay so I’m sticking it here and answering both)

Thank you, thank you! It’s really good to BE back. Really. It’s incredible how much I’ve missed this blog - it’s like I didn’t even realize it until I finally posted something.

Break was good enough, haha. It’s difficult to get a restorative break in the middle of a global and national crisis, but, ya know, you do what you can.

I’m sorry I sort of dropped off the face of the planet for a while. It’s still SO cool that people actually still read this, so - double and triple thank-you. I worry too much, I think - worried it’ll be too “baby-ing” or too dense of an explanation, or too irregular, or repetitive... Even to my “regulars” (I see y’all, you know who you are and you are awesome). But I feel more level about it currently, to be honest, so we’ll see where it goes.

So I’ve graduated orbital mechanics.

I’ve got the hang of it, I’m sure. Couple rounds of KSP later - no, no, I’m kidding. KSP is great for getting the hang of things visually, but there’s nothing quite like plotting a hypothetical course for Mars including Hohmann Transfer Windows and a gravity anomaly. (All verified by simulation, of course.)

So. What’s next?

I’ve been saying I need to start thinking long-term for a while now. The collider is almost ready to start being rebuilt, and I need to double-check and triple-check my work, because I’m not working with my own physics here, am I. This is another universe.

Maybe I can build another simulator to help. Maybe. It’s pretty complex, trying to build a macro simulator - no , no, that’s too complicated. And I can’t just rely on PYTHIA here, either - that’s the collider simulator I’ve been using. Too many variables.

...I need another set of eyes.

I can’t. I can’t. The only person I’d even remotely trust with that would be Adrien, but he’d look at me like I’m absolutely bonkers if I go to him and say “hey, I’m from another universe!”

But... Proof. Hm. What proof do I have? All the collider material matches this universe, as far as I know  - my testing with the spectrometer established that.

Wait - my suit! The material of it! I keep forgetting about it! If I can demonstrate that the material doesn’t follow this universe’s physics -

Oh, but that would involve coming clean about the whole Doc Ock thing, wouldn’t it. I know, I know, everyone thinks it’s me, but thinking it’s me and me admitting it are two VERY different things.

...I’ll need to think about it.

In the meantime... Do you ever think about how weird it is that physics have equations?

I don’t mean, like - “how weird is it that F=ma.” I mean, how weird is it that the equation mimics reality well enough to model it?

That’s part of why some people say we live in a computer simulation - that the equations are written into the “virtual reality.” But I’m not convinced. I mean, if math is the language of physics, then language is the... er... language of thought, which would be the language of physics because thoughts happen because physics, and - look, it would just be a big ol’ pile of contradictions, okay?

Anyway. My collider is going to prove all over again that there’s more to this universe - and others - than a simulation. You’ll see.

Footnotes: Please note this post went up on Feb. 24, 2022 and was backdated to Feb. 10, 2021 in order to fill in some of the blanks during the very very long hiatus.

Some quick notes - KSP, or Kerbal Space Program, is an unusually (although not exact) good rocket simulator populated by little green aliens called Kerbals. While it’s not entirely accurate, it DOES include some very detailed elements of orbital mechanics and space travel, such as the Hohmann transfer windows Liv mentioned.

Two years.

That’s how long I’ve been doing this.

Two years.

Two years since I’ve been in my own universe. Two years working on a collider that is my only hope of getting home.

That’s enough to make anyone feel a bit bonkers, don’t you think?

So... just enjoy a picture of the stars. ‘Kay?

(Sorry about the stray Ock arm. I was mid-jump. It’s still a nice picture.)

Footnotes: It’s technically been over two years, but I’d have to imagine Liv was active during my little sabbatical. So here, have a badly-photoshopped picture that Liv took on one of her tree-jumping-forest-trips.

So, gravity.

If you’ll recall, the speed of light is different here. That has a lot of gravitational implications. So, I’m re-learning about gravity.

Easy way to do that is larger-scale than quantum physics, so I’m going macro! We’re talking PLANETS, orbital mechanics, black holes.

Oh, shit, I need to check lensing effects here. If the speed of light is different, they might look a bit different compared to back home. Oh, but I’d have to model back home, wouldn’t I - well, I could, but that would take a while.

Okay. No. Orbital mechanics.

Orbital mechanics are fucking bizarre. It’s kind of reassuring to see orbital mechanics are just as fucked-up here as back home. Shit like firing thrusters to move you forward technically slows you down instead of speeding you up because it increases your orbit and orbits further away are technically slower.

Yeah, I know. It’s really fucking counterintuitive.

Believe it or not, that game - what’s it called? Kerbal Space Program - has some pretty realistic mechanics for a literal video game.

So, yeah. Playing video games for science. What of it?

Believe it or not, it helped get the basics down before I jumped into a more in-depth simulator. (Plus, it was fun. Who says science can’t be fun.)

If you remember, gravity is a fundamental force. Have I covered those? Gravity, electromagnetism, strong force, and weak force. (Strong force holds atoms together, weak force plays a part in radioactivity.) Anyway.

Observing it will give me a clearer idea of how the mechanics in this universe are different. Using simulators is a good way to do that, because the existing formulas and numbers are already built in there without me having to recreate it with a ton of experiments. And it just gives me a better idea of what’s going on, like, visually.

Okay. What I’ve found is that while the speeds and numbers are a tad different, the basic concepts are still there, and thank FUCK for that, too. The collider relies on gravity to do its punch-through-dimensions little party trick, and I only know how that works in MY universe.

But if they’re similar, I can make this work. Right?

Yeah. I can totally make it work.

Footnotes: Hey, all. It’s, uh, been a hot minute, hasn’t it. Long story short, my health - mental, physical, etc. - has not been doing well. I’ve been exceedingly stressed about everything, and even this blog became stressful because I felt like I had to update it on SOME sort of schedule, even if it was irregular.

So I took a break. But I’m missing the science, and to be honest, researching all the stuff that goes into this blog makes me feel less stressed. (Yes, researching quantum physics is stress relief, apparently.) So... I’m back. I think. I’m going to back-date some of the posts to make up for the gap, so the next few posts will have a way earlier date on the title. Don’t worry about it.

And now: the science! Gravitational lensing looks like the COOLEST shit ever. It’s where light is bent by gravity. It’s REALLY noticeable around black holes. Also, the four fundamental forces! Those are the only fundamental forces in the universe, as far as we know. They’re carried by “bosons” whose existence is way too complicated for me to explain in a footnote.

Orbital mechanics are truly some of the most fucked physics I’ve encountered, and I’m a person who researches quantum physics and colliders for shits and giggles.

I’m getting the hang of that CAD program. Fucking command line bullshit. Give me macros instead and I’ll be happy.

Anyway, now that I can actually do some PROPER work, we’re getting busy checking and re-checking things before we order or machine the more customized parts, which means a lot of simulation testing and triple-checking our work.

That’s not the most important thing right now, though.

I just finished something that I’ve been working on for a while, and right as my beam time request got put through at Brookhaven, no less. (I put in a beam time request for another collider to run an experiment for me. Ended up not going with SLAC. Turns out I had some strings left to pull at Brookhaven’s laboratory, and hey, all the better, because their collider is better suited for this kind of work.)

Oh, it feels good to be running experiments again. Even if they are a pain in the ass sometimes.

Anyway, a quick rundown, since this IS technically a report log: I’m simulating my OWN collider with a computer program called an event generator, while comparing the simulations to real results. Check this out:

That’s a graph showing how many photons were found at a given energy for the first simulation.

But you know what I’m realizing? I’m going to need a monumental amount of testing to get anywhere, and - well, I’ve got to do it all by myself.

This is... um. This is going to take a long time. Last time, setting up and analyzing runs enough to get new information wasn’t even something we’d gotten to yet, and that’s with an entire COMPANY at my disposal. Unless I’m ridiculously lucky, this may take years even AFTER THE COLLIDER IS BUILT.

I don’t want that. Fuck. Fuck. I’m tired of this. It’s one fucking thing after another, isn’t it. Windows and Linux workarounds, C++, MC formats not working, more MC formats not working, more workarounds, python not working, compilers not working, incorrect variables, run after run after run of incorrect programming, fucking VERTICAL DATA instead of HORIZONTAL like FORMAT YOUR SHIT RIGHT PLEASE, and collider bullshit, and collider setbacks and - I JUST - FUCK.

...okay.

Okay. Hmm.

It’s fine, all right? I’ve just been programming for too long. My eyeballs feel like they’re going to roll out of my skull. The amount of work that it takes just to program, analyze, troubleshoot, and reprogram a single event generator run is not small, okay? We’re talking hours or days PER RUN. And, I mean, it kind of sucks that I can’t tell anybody about this - they’d think I was bonkers. It makes you feel kind of weird, knowing you’ve only known anybody on the whole planet for a period of less than two years.

But, you know, back to the grind. I’ve got more work to do. Catch you all later.

Oh, before I sign off, I’m updating my experiment record - it’s that little link at the right, under the OFFLINE status. The one I just finished working on is tests 12A-D - yes, 12, it’s taken me twelve groups of runs to get this fucking thing right.

I’m going home.

Footnotes: Oh wow. Okay. It may not look like it, but I’ve been working on this since APRIL. That graph up there? That’s not something I found or made up. It’s an actual graph of results from a real simulation run with an actual collision simulator.

One of my fave things about this blog is that it’s based on REAL science, and it’s challenged me to learn new things. I knew Liv was going to have to start doing collision experiments at some point, and I naively ignored the fact that she’d be getting, you know, RESULTS - until I had the idea to simulate them myself. So I installed the program over the course of a week or two - it’s not very user-friendly in a non-programmer type of way - and I’ve been experimenting with it on and off since April. I ran Liv’s final test results last night, which is what you see up there. One thing: I cannot claim any of these results are actually sensible; I am, after all, literally self-taught, and I am not actually a physicist!

Pretty cool, huh. The program I’m using is called PYTHIA - it’s what is called a Monte Carlo event generator. Each particle interaction result is called an “event,” and Monte Carlo refers to a mathematical method of using algorithms and random sampling to get results. It’s really useful in this instance because there’s a level of probability-guessing that has to be done when figuring out what a particle - or particles - will do. Particles are very all-over-the-place little things, so randomness helps simulate that.

Project Summary: First run of tests to simulate and compare collisions from different universes. This was honestly more of a calibration run to test whether I was doing the right thing with the right settings, so on. Inconclusive results.

VIEW PROJECT?

Oooh, really? I’ll see if I can edit that in, that’s a really neat little detail - especially the whole Alchemax image as you mentioned. I’ll admit, I know zero about trees and etc., that’s not really my area, hehe! I had no idea birch trees could get that tall!

Oh, do NOT get me wrong, I would LOVE to regale you with tales of how we’re already machining pieces for the collider and we’ve got things ordered and we’re starting construction and we’ve gotten a TON of stuff done while I’ve been out -

But no.

Guess what this chick has been doing? For THREE MONTHS?

RE-LEARNING FUCKING AUTO.CAD.

Why, why, WHY can’t they just use Solid.Works. Why. We’ve used Solid.Works for YEARS.

Well, apparently NOT, the other-universe version of Alchemax uses AUTO.CAD. And not even the CAD software I remember, oh no, it’s some weird pseudo-command-line shit that I’m having to memorize.

And we can’t use the software I’ve BEEN using up ‘til now because fucking formatting and something else about not having a commercial license for it, blah blah, so we’ve got to take all the stuff I’ve been doing and convert it.

So everyone ELSE is off modeling and altering pieces that I originally drafted and designed, while I get to sit in a computer lab and watch fucking TRAINING VIDEOS and try not to throw things at people.

(Didn’t work. Adrien has to go change clothes and my coffee’s all over the floor.)

You know what? Fuck this. I’ve been staring at a screen for so long my eyeballs are going to roll out of my damn skull. I could use a good run out into the trees. It’s late enough that maybe I’ll get to see some stars.

-

I’m back. Oh, that’s much better. Jumping fifty-foot birch trees with octopus arms? Whoo, that never gets old! You know my best initial propelled speed so far is nearly 90 mph? It’s WAY faster in a swing or a dive - 90 mph is jumping from a standstill. That’s limited by me, by the way, not the prosthetics. I’m still working up to it, okay? You do realize a jump from standstill to 90 mph means 0-90 mph in less than a second, right? That’s like 4 g’s.

And if you don’t know, G’s are g-forces, which is basically “how much times the Earth’s gravity is this acceleration.” Trained humans, like pilots, can wear suits and flex muscles to let them withstand about 9 g’s, but the rest of us puny humans can withstand about 5 g’s (not comfortably, but you’d manage it). That’s the equivalent of roughly 0 to 110 mph in one second.

Not bad, eh?

Oh. I ran into the new Spider-Man, y’know. He’s still so... small.

Still, he’s a fast little shit. I’ll have another bruise on my jaw tomorrow. (Why is it always my jaw?)

I hadn’t seen him for a while. Guess it was too much to hope he was gone.

Ah well. All in good time.

I’m in a much better mood. Time to go home for the day.

Footnotes: Hi everyone! I’m back! I’ve moved, I no longer have the flu or whatever (not COVID, don’t worry), I nailed what I hope is a more stable income source... things are winding down in my personal life... Holy hell, has the past three months been QUITE something.

Anyway! Notes as usual: SolidWorks and AutoCAD are both actual CAD softwares used in engineering - they’re basically highly precise modeling programs. I’ve actually used both - I prefer SolidWorks, but meh. My current job uses something entirely different - one called Terramodel, which does work off a sort of custom command line type of interface - and it’s bloody annoying to learn, so I share Liv’s annoyance there.

Liv’s jump speed is limited by the fact that humans are squishy and don’t accelerate very solidly. Fastest acceleration a non-trained human could likely withstand is indeed about 5 g’s before all sorts of weird stuff starts happening - most notably, you pass out because there’s very little blood going to your head. That link has a lot of info about G-forces! The calculations are pretty easy, too - you can even google “G-force conversion” and a calculator will probably pop up.

The collider teardown is DONE. Nearly fifteen months of work on this fucking thing and we haven’t even BUILT anything yet.

I’ve been REALLY busy, though. Speed of light being different kind of implies a LOT of other things are different, too. Or - well - the light speed thing might be gravitational, but look, I’m not fucking Roemer, okay?

You want to hear something weird about gravity?

So... There’s four fundamental forces in quantum mechanics. Gravity, electromagnetism, and two others that are called the “weak force” and “strong force.” (Weak force causes radioactive decay while strong force holds atomic nuclei together.)

Gravity’s powerful, right? I mean, it moves PLANETS.

NOPE! It’s deadass the weakest one by, like, a SEPTILLION. You’ve got three values around the same magnitude, and then one that’s a SEPTILLION off. Why? Nobody fucking knows.

This is called the hierarchy problem (or part of it, at least). Been pestering the fuck out of physicists for decades. It’s one of the big things my collider was supposed to investigate, actually. It DID investigate it and even PROVED some stuff about it before it got, you know, blown the fuck up, and I got blamed for it, now can’t officially publish the research, yadda yadda. Spiders are assholes. What’s new.

One solution to the hierarchy problem is suggesting another aspect of space outside of what we can access. Literally, a direction TOTALLY outside of “up/down left/right forward/backward.”

Where is that direction? Oh, you know. Another dimension.

“Wait a minute, other dimensions?” you say? Hm, it’s almost like I had an actual scientific vision in mind when building this collider instead of pulling it out of my mad-scientist ass! And not “dimensions” as in “parallel universe.” No. The universes are all separated BY this extra dimension. Floating in it.

ANYWAY, if you’ve got extra dimensions going on, then... you can kind of think about it as if what we see of gravity is only part of the total.

Breaking that down mathematically requires quantifying how many extra dimensions there are, and how big. They’re not INFINITE.

In my original universe, the math checked out with 1 large extra dimension, accounting for size. But in this one, TWO are required, or the math just... doesn’t make any sense. At all. The collider shouldn’t even WORK with only one extra dimension in this universe.

But the two universes are supposed to be separated by the SAME single extra-dimensional space, according to literally every other theory I know.

In short: what the fuck.

Anyway, I know this is already a long report, but one more thing: that bizarreness that you get with gravity if there’s extra dimensions? It lets you make micro black holes in colliders. Basically: you get a micro black hole in a collider? Congrats! You’ve got experimental proof that large extra dimensions exist!

AND GUESS WHAT.

Actually, hold on. Where the fuck is it. I know I saved it. FUCK. How do I get the picture off my glasses?

THERE. THERE IT IS. THERE. THAT’S A FUCKING MICRO BLACK HOLE. IN MY COLLIDER. I mean, it was BUILT to MAKE micro black holes. I fucking PROVED extra dimensions exist, you assholes, and NOBODY WILL LET ME - JUST - I put half my LIFE into this. LET ME FUCKING PUBLISH IT.

In summary, that original collider was a fucking gorgeous piece of work and it didn’t deserve what it got.

Footnotes: Okay! Yay quantum mechanics! The four fundamental forces in quantum mechanics are indeed what Liv lists off here. The hierarchy problem IS an actual thing, too, and it’s quite fascinating.

Quite possibly my favorite thing so far, though, is that the large extra dimensions theory? THAT’S REAL. That’s an ACTUAL potential solution to the hierarchy problem, and CERN’s LHC has even looked for micro black holes as evidence! Honestly, depending on which version you subscribe to, you could have up to 26 different dimensions. Standard M-theory supports about 11.

Lastly, that picture is of a decay of a micro black hole in Liv’s collider - or, well, in her universe it is. Here, it’s just something I sketched out very quickly, HEAVILY based off of some of CERN’s simulations of what a micro black hole might look like! Mine probably wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny, but, you know. It looks cool.

…

……

A "thing"? As in what? A fucking summer fling?

Oh boy. Okay. Good heavens. Here we go.

No, we did not have a “thing” at all. Fucking - NO. OSBORNE, that cheating piece of ABSOLUTE SHIT. I know you're not privy to corporate espionage, but take my word for it he's a fucking - just - PIECE OF SHIT.

What in blazes would’ve given you that idea? Was it the tabloids? I bet it was the tabloids. Don’t believe everything you read.

I'd just as soon put my cybernetics around that fucker's throat.

Anyway, for the record, I’m not really into… men in general.

Oh.

Oh.

I didn’t even THINK of that. Of COURSE another me is probably working on the same problem! Parallel universes being what they are, she’s probably figured out she’s not in her own universe by now, since parallel universes “close” (not physically, but in nature) to each other tend to have grand similarity across the entire universe, or so we think (and that’s loosely supported by the fact that throwing something into the beam line produces multiple similar parallel versions of said thing instead of spawning random shit throughout time).

And hers IS moving... well.. is it moving faster? Hold on, I’ve got to check my graphs.

Okay. The date from my original universe is behind this one. If anything, the universe I’m in right now is moving “faster,” but this is also multiversal hyperdimensional physics we’re talking about, so who the hell knows.

Oh, oh, but maybe I can get a message through! Things tend to get pulled to their home universes if you’ve got it set right - that’s another phenomena we discovered when sending in our initial RTG probes, and yet another thing the collider discovered that fucking nobody is ever going to hear about because everybody thinks I’m a crackpot - so I’ll bet you I could take a sample of my own universe matter and use it to “aim” a message into the beam. With any luck, it’ll get thrown into my original universe! Oh, man, I could have communication with her! With another ME! 

And to answer your other question -

...

Complicated.

Footnotes: I don’t usually put footnotes on answered questions, but I’ll make an exception here!

The idea of parallel universes being organized in some fashion is something that exists canonically in Spiderverse and Marvel (I mean, they’re numbered - plus in the first collider test in the movie, they’ve even got the different universe icons posed at differing distances, which I like to think implies they can gauge how “far” the universe is), although there’s no proof that they’re grouped sensically. However, parallel universes being organized to any degree is not really a real thing - outside of philosophy, I guess? I dunno.

Liv’s graphs, if you’re interested. The distance between the two graphs is the number of days’ difference between the two universes - roughly.