Science Gone Too Far Dept.
We hadn't designed Catalog of
Cool Online to be a venue for breaking news, but when word reached
us of this applied-physics breakthrough, we knew, like the WWF,
Carl's Junior and Ford Trucks, it was time to break a few rules.
Catalog and Too Cool contributing editor Jim Trombetta reports.
SCIENTISTS OUT TRUMP HAIR SECRET
NEW
YORK -- A team of scientists associated with the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, the National Pattern Baldness Council and the Hair
Club for Men stands poised to collect the million-dollar bounty
offered by real-estate magnate Donald Trump to anyone who can
explain the secret of his "quantum hair."
The coif would be more properly called "Moebius hair,"
said Hans Blix, chairman of the team, adding, however, that it
was "an engineering marvel more impressive than any of Trump's
buildings."
The issue of "quantum hair" first came to the fore
last November when the Hubble Telescope, aimed accidentally down
at Atlantic City during its last servicing, took photographs
of Trump's hair from above. Astronomers expressed concern that
the hair appeared to be traveling in two directions at once.
"It undermined everything that we thought we knew about
the physical universe," Stephen Hawking said at the time.
The Moebius explanation has the advantage of collapsing this
paradox, which Blix said was actually a "sophisticated optical
illusion." The hair appears to have been swept dramatically
back from the forehead, in a northwesterly direction. In fact,
it has really been combed diagonally forward over a bald spot,
coming southeast.
The key is the "flip" over the forehead, which is
analogous to the twist in a Moebius strip which causes it have
one continuous surface. Trump's hair is actually combed down
in his flip, but it seems to turn up, inviting the eye to follow
the hair backwards as if it had actually been combed that way.
Trump, who offered the million-dollar bounty at the time the
hair paradox was revealed, could not be reached for comment,
but a spokesperson said, "He hasn't seen the report yet,
but if it's right, they'll get their [expletive] money."
-- Jim Trombetta
See also Jim Trombetta's piece on Robert
Mitchum: Hipster Saint, and in our INK
chapter his "The Coolest Sci-Fi"
and "Into the Paper Universe: The Last
Word in Hyper-Real Reads."