Tuesday, 7 May 2013

The Speed of Deliciousness

(Dangerfield BSc, Registered Scientician #2. 2008)


I remember learning at school that nothing travels faster than the speed of light. Is this true? (Mabel Archer, Roslyn)

Yes Mabel, you remember correctly. The fact that every particle with mass must travel slower than the speed of light has been very important in modern physics. In fact, it is integral to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, a theory that changed the face of physics when introduced in 1905. However, a recent discovery has cast this historic theory into doubt.

Scientists now believe that they have found something even faster than the speed of light: the speed of deliciousness. This discovery was prompted by the release of the new Chocotastic DelightsTM by the Taste-o-Riffic Food Corporation. “Upon placing a Chocotastic DelightTM on the tongue, the tasty treat’s deliciousness travels at unprecedented speeds, flooding every part of the consumer’s body with choctacular goodness almost instantaneously” says Dr. Jennifer Barber of the Illinois Institute of Gastronomic Physics.

While these mouth-watering confectionaries initially excited Dr. Barber with their near-instant deliciousness, it was only after running several tests that she made her startling discovery. After sending the Chocotastic DelightsTM through an interferometer, she found that their deliciousness reached speeds of up to 800 million metres per second – well over twice the speed of light. Before this discovery, the highest speed of deliciousness recorded was a mere six million metres per second. This speed was achieved by French scientists in 1996 by combining Belgian chocolate, honey-roasted peanuts and a tablespoon of fresh lard. Incidentally, this concoction also broke the record for the most snacktacular foodstuff ever created.

John Smythe of the Taste-o-Riffic Food Corporation is understandably pleased with the new discovery. “I am happy to report that our new Chocotastic DelightsTM not only change our entire understanding of physics,” he said in a press release issued last week, “but they do so with half the fat of our competing brands.” And they do indeed change physics: upon discovering that the speed of deliciousness is in fact faster than the speed of light, physicists have been forced to reconsider the entire concept of relativity. “We now know, for example, that the deliciousness of a carrot cake travels at the same speed regardless of whether or not the carrot cake is in a moving frame” says Dr. Barber. “This changes everything we thought we knew about snack-based mechanics.” It is also theorised that if a spacecraft were to travel close to the speed of deliciousness, the astronauts would return to Earth to discover that fudge brownies taste even better than when they left.    

No comments:

Post a Comment