Portal-Mania…

In light of the fact that they are now once again juicing up the flux capacitors at CERN (they use flux capacitors at CERN, right? I’m pretty sure they do…) in order to rip holes in the space-time continuum and collapse the dimensional divides, in order to usher in some Nephilim-horde army, I’ve been thinking about portals a fair bit lately. Well, I don’t really think all that, I was kidding of course. That’s silly. All those billions of dollars spent on a national-boundary-spanning hadron collider are so we can finally solve a theorem of quantum mechanics that 99.9999999% of humanity is too mathematically-challenged to understand in the first place. I think they’re hoping that enough power will be applied this time around so that they can finally know which final mark to make on that worn-out chalkboard at CERN, after which they’ll finally get to sit back and relax with a nice cup of tea and game of Sudoku…

Nah. Just kidding again. I am uCERNtain what exactly to make of it all, but I don’t think it’s something to be completely unconCERNed about. Ha, more shameless CERN-worldplay.

But ok… I know I’ve written about portals before, and here I go again, without having a whole heck of lot to try and say about the topic in any real “meaty” way (I’m no quantum-physicist, I confess) but what I DO find myself marveling at, again and again, is just how much this concept is just constantly showing up in entertainment/Hollywood etc., again and again. It’s something I see I don’t how many times in an average week, so, I finally sat down and tried to find images from all the recent examples I could remember, just to see what it would be. I wound up with folders within folders, literally, over a hundred images. I couldn’t possibly use them all, so I chose a few of my favorites and had some photoshop playtime…

But wait… Science fiction films/shows for adults aren’t the only place you see copious amounts of portal-related entertainment. One thing that has seriously blown me away over the past several years now as a parent, is how much my KIDS have been completely reared by modern children’s entertainment to be so utterly familiar with the basic concept of inter-dimensional travel that they essentially have assumed it was REAL from the time they could speak. Think about that… I mean, if I were to sit down with one of my kids and try to explain to them with words things like “teleportation” or “quantum folds” etc., then they’d just stare at me drooling while I rambled for an hour and accomplished nothing. But alas, cartoons and movies and video games have easily achieved what wouldn’t even know how to attempt. It’s literally EVERYWHERE, from hit video games like Minecraft (a big favorite in our house) to the Lego Movie, even My Little Pony. (!) I mean, when my youngest son was like THREE, if he saw some image even remotely resembling some kind of “swirling spiral”, his immediate response was just, “Hey look, a portal”, just as nonchalantly as if he saw a representation of a house or a tree or a rainbow…

So anyhoo, about a week ago I finally got to sit down and watch “Big Hero 6” with my ninos, and what “sci fi” concept happens to feature prominently in the storyline, yet again….? Yeah, you guessed it.

I dunno what to make of it all exactly, but one thing I do know is that if suddenly tomorrow it was announced that the “greatest scientific achievement in history” had finally been accomplished and interstellar travel was not proven to be possible through some incredible breakthrough in quantum mechanics, my children would almost certainly not be glued to the television, having their minds blown.

They’d probably just say something like “well DUH Dad, it’s just a portal…”