Inspired by an article in which Mr. Raimi said he enjoyed reading about science and science fiction.
There's a thought experiment in quantum physics called "Schroedinger's Cat," after the physicist who suggested it. (What does this have to do with Joxer and Ted Raimi? Bear with me folks, and I'll explain.) For those of you not familiar with the experiment, you start with a box. In the box you place one cat, one vial of deadly gas, one Geiger counter connected to a hammer, and one radioactive atom. If the atom undergoes radioactive decay, the Geiger counter will detect it and release the hammer. The falling hammer will crush the vial, releasing the gas and killing the cat. (Don't get upset, now, it's just an imaginary cat.)
Where the weirdness of quantum physics comes in is that actions on a quantum scale (like our radioactive atom) are affected by the very act of being observed. A photon of light, for example, will act either as a wave or a particle depending on which state the observer is trying to watch.
Any quantum action or "wave-front" exists in all the states in which it can exist until it's observed - and that act of observation is called "collapsing the wave-front." What does this mean for our thought experiment? It means our little atom is both decayed and not-decayed and our cat both alive and dead (the two quantum states defined by the experiment) until some smart-aleck comes along and opens the box to see what happened. Or at least, that's how the theory runs.
Now this is all very well and good, but it doesn't exactly gibe with what we know of the real world. Let's assume we know that if the atom is going to decay, it will do so pretty quickly, say within an hour of our closing the box. So, if we wait three days before we open the box we know we will see either:
A) one really angry, hungry, stinky cat
or
B) a three-day old dead, stinky cat.
What we won't find is a freshly dead cat.
So how do those quantum mechanics explain this apparent discrepancy? Well, it just gets weirder from here. You should understand that I'm not a physicist, so I could be getting this wrong, but as I understand it one theory suggests that every time a quantum wave-front is collapsed by an observation, a new universe is created for every quantum state that could have existed. The moment we opened that box (anyone else reminded of Pandora?) two universes were created: one where the atom did not decay and the cat survived, and one where we find out if there's an open plot in that pet cemetery across the street.
Now think of how many quantum actions and observations go on every day. Just watching the sun rise could account for a couple of trillion billion universes!
Let's leave science now and slip over to science fiction. (Hey, with quantum mechanics that boundary is pretty darn thin!) If we have an infinite number of universes (caused by all those sunrise watchers), it's fair to say that any universe we can imagine is just as likely to exist as any other universe. That's where we get those "alternate universes" science fiction writers love so much. Hey, even "fictional" universes could exist - such as the one our friends at HERCULES created. (Ah, finally we get to Joxer! Thought I'd never make it, didn't you?)
In HERCULES: THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS we are introduced to a fictional/alternate universe - one in which the stories of Hercules and the other Greek myths run quite a bit differently that they did in our own. But in "Stranger in a Strange World" we're introduced to ANOTHER universe - one in which Hercules is an evil king called "the Sovereign" and Joxer is a bold warrior who leads the rebellion against him.
All right, let's make this even more interesting. During the course of the HERCULES series, we saw two episodes set in the present day - and in THAT universe Hercules is real and "Kevin Sorbo" is a persona invented to hide Herc's true identity. Assuming that is the logical extension into the future of the HERCULES universe, what do you suppose is going on in the SOVEREIGN'S universe?
Ah...NOW you're beginning to catch on! Yes, kiddies, in that other universe, there is a hit TV show called JOXER: THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS. Ted Raimi was tapped for the title role after his outstanding performance as Captain Timothy O'Neill on Spielberg's short-lived but critically acclaimed SEAQUEST 2021. Bruce Campbell, fresh off his stint on Fox's THE ADVENTURES OF LORD BOWLER, was cast as Autolycus, Joxer's naive but loyal sidekick. Frequent guest stars include Kevin Sorbo as the evil Sovereign Hercules; Michael Hurst as the jester Iolaus; and Lucy Lawless as Leah, a fierce warrior woman. Lawless eventually stars in a successful JOXER spin-off entitled LEAH: WARRIOR PRINCESS. (One of the fans' favorite episodes is "Warrior, Priestess, Tramp," where Leah meets her doubles - the slut Xena and the virgin priestess Meg. Internet fanfic suggests that the resemblance is caused by the indiscriminate mating habits of Ares, God of Love.)
In that universe there are thousands of JOXER and LEAH web sites, with a fierce debate raging over which shows fans are the most loyal. (Another hotly contested argument once flared up over the creation of a "comic relief" character named Callisto, a bumbling warrior-woman-wannabe whose unrequited passion for Joxer had fans creating web sites with such endearing titles as "Kill Callisto Now!" These sites faded out of existence when Ted Raimi declared his support for both Callisto and beleaguered actress Hudson Leick in a national press interview.)
Or that's how it COULD be, fellow Tedites, out there in the Twilight Zone of alternate universes. Now I'm not saying that the alternate Ted Raimi is actually the ORIGINAL Joxer, somehow made immortal and playing a role to hide his "secret identity"...but in any universe weird enough to contain quantum physics, who can say?
For more information on Schroedinger's Cat and quantum physics, check out the following web site:
http://www.cyborganic.com/People/gizard/Tibud/Mad/mad12.html
(Looks at the nature of wave-particle duality)
Unless otherwise noted, all text, art, code or other content ©1999-2006 Carolyn M. Wallace.
