It was pizza night, but Howard and Bernadette couldn't make it.
Leonard and Amy were deep in conversation about school projects, it turns out they both love a good spelling bee and had both made "hot ice" at science fair.
Raj is puzzled "whatever is that?"
Amy explains "It's like ice, but it's hot! "
Leonard joins in "Isn't that cool!" They both laugh and high five.
Lesley and Penny wince and exchange long suffering glances. Penny subtly gestures toward the door with her head. Lesley nods. Penny makes a break for it. "Cool indeed. Well, we'll go get pizza"
Leonard is rummaging in a kitchen cupboard. "We've no sodium acetate but I think we've enough vinegar and baking soda to make hot ice, we can show you Raj"
Sheldon sighs. He's been curled up in his spot, engrossed in his laptop. "I need to keep at this. Penny, mind if i work over yours?"
"Sure honey, I'll bring our pizza over"
She gives him a kiss and grabs her purse.
On the pizza run
"So, what's up with Doctor Dumbass?"
Penny laughs. "He hates it when you call him that. "
Lesley shrugs. "I know, that's why I do it. It's the only taunt I've got for him, he doesn't care about anything else. Except maybe you. And if I called him Dr Pennyfucker you'd kick my ass."
Penny bursts out laughing "oh, you would be So dead"
"He's got a lot cooler recently, which I'd put down to your influence. Helpful too. He showed me the funniest book about Leonards childhood."
"Oh, the one his mother did about his potty time development ? She's smart but so mean at times."
"It explains so much about him though. Anyway what's bugging Sheldon?"
"He's said something about switching from string theory to studying dark matter, he's really throwing himself into it."
"That's weird, he has always been a string guy. It's one of the most fun things to taunt him about. "
"You don't do strings?"
"No, the theory is good but has holes, it can't explain optical shifts that quantum loop gravity describes better."
"Can't they just loop the strings?"
"They tried, but any loop, knot or entanglement strings can do doesn't fit the math. Next time we have a girly night I'll bring my laptop and show you."
"Can't we just sink a few bottles of wine, bitch about the guys and motorboat each other like last time?"
Lesley laughs. "I was getting too preachy on the loops?"
"Way too preachy "
Lesley takes the pizzas in to 4a. Opening the door she's hit by an overpowering Stink of boiled vinegar and
Leonard shouting excitedly about amplitude.
Penny gives her a look of pity and heads into 4b. Sheldon is looking despondent, staring at his laptop.
"Time to take a break Honey, the foods here." He looks up.
"From the smell they're making the hot ice? Well, let us hope Amy is a better chemist than Leonard and they react the baking soda with the vinegar before they boil it. "
Penny looks worried as she puts the pizza down "er, why?"
"Acid plus carbonate, my dear Penny. it reacts violently and foams as it generates a large volume of carbon dioxide gas"
"So Leonard may spray boiling vinegar over himself?" She shrugs and sits down. "I'm sure we'll hear the screams if he does"
Sheldon opens the pizza box. "Ah, Pizza, my favourite geometric shaped food. A circle divided into sectors, served in a square box. Even the pepperoni is round. " He smiles.
Penny takes a slice "And a cheesy crust ." She takes a bite then asks, mouth full "So what's up honey? you've been distracted and down all week."
"I'm trying to get a new angle on Dark Matter, but I just can't get round the omega baryon constraints"
"Sounds tricky! and as I have no idea what you're talking about I'll have to help another way. Now, an important part of any relationship is emotional support, so I've used one of the older relationship traditions, the mix tape. "
"Mix tape? "
"It dates back to the days of tape to tape recording, to show you cared about someone you would make a tape of your favourite music so you could share it with them. So I made you the modern version, a playlist.
She stops and ponders. "I guess before tape you just played your sweetheart your favourite vinyl on your gramophone?"
"So, You want to share your music with me?"
"I thought it would make you feel better." She laughs. "Got to warn you, I was a bit of a rock chick in college. You won't find most of these on Rock band."
She clicks play on her lap top.
"ah, Smile by Lily Allen."Sheldon stops and smiles. "You were playing this when we met."
She grins. "I thought so. Your crazy good memory makes music a really good short cut to trigger feelings and memories."
"I listened to the lyrics as well. They really don't fit the songs tone, until I recalled you'd just broken up from Kurt.
"When I see you cry, it makes me smile? yeah, it was my happy to be rid of him song"
"what's next?" He starts skipping ahead.
"a few songs that make me think of you"
Hey hey blow the man down. - trad
She blinded me with science - Thomas Dolby
Weird science - oingo boingo
Futures so bright i got to wear shades - Timbuk 3.
"Do you think I'm a pirate or a science nerd from a bad 80s movie?"
"something more modern then"
Exit music from a film - Radiohead
"ah, this is the Radiohead?"
The scientist - Coldplay
Electronic beats and a man's voice starts proclaiming
"Plato says when the music of a society changes, the whole society will change. Aristotle, a contemporary of Plato's, says when music changes there should be laws to govern the nature and the character of that music"
"someone sampled Jimmy Swaggert?"
"yes, it was the only bit I could find that mentioned Plato"
Keep talking. Pink Floyd
"For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination: we learned to talk"
Sheldon stops, stock still "Professor Hawking?" He pulls his legs up and leans on Penny, listening.
She hugs him close and he just relaxes into her.
"It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking
As the track winds down he sighs and says simply "thank you Penny"
Looking at her laptop he asks "What's on the other list?"
She gives him a shy little smile "That's.. erm... darker, edgier stuff for setting the mood when you're feeling Dom."
"Things that make you feel submissive? interesting let's have a look. Ah. Metallica. Master of Puppets. The Divinyls, I touch Myself. Nine in nails . I know the hand that feeds. Closer?
She laughs. "You'll understand that one later."
"Happiness in slavery?"
She hum a bit "I have found. You can find. Happiness in slavery" Wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him.
"Now, I've been on Reddit, the "explain it to me like I was 5" forum is a real help to keep up with you guys on science. They say one way to get round a mental block is to explain it to someone from base principles.
So, from the beginning, what's up with dark matter?"
"Well, it starts with the big bang. Single point of 10 to the 15 Kelvin."
"Ok, so the whole universe was in a hot dense state."
"That then expands rapidly. We can measure the cosmic microwave background radiation, literally the echo of the big bang. But to balance the whole universe out, there must be something heavy out there that we can't see. Hence, dark matter."
"What, like anti matter?"
"No, that's the opposite of matter but still baryonic, still made of the same stuff. Dark matter would have to be wildly, completely different." he looks round for an example "It's like this. Apple. Matter. Orange. Anti matter. See, different but both fruit. Dark matter is like" he waves his hands "Rainbows or Rock music! "
"That's not a fruit?"
"Exactly! Non baryonic! Completely different!" He sighs, frustrated. "But we can't get the equations to balance, there's something missing. I was thinking about just inventing a new dark matter particle to evade the omega baryon constraints, but that just seems like something anyone could come up with. I just wish I could find something that excites me."
" Okay, all right, look. What got you excited about dark matter in the first place? "
"Well, I left string theory, which I'd been working on for a long time, and everyone was talking about how cool dark matter was, and I thought, "Well, sure, I'll give that a whirl" "
"So it's your rebound science? "
"What's that? "
"Well, not the science you spend the rest of your life with, but the one you use to make yourself feel pretty again."
"Well, if I'm being honest, I never forgot about string theory. It's remarkable. It's the closest we've come to a theory of everything, something even Einstein couldn't figure out."
"Well, if he couldn't figure it out, maybe it's just wrong."
"But it's so elegant. I mean, look, string theory posits that the fundamental particles we see in three dimensions are actually strings embedded in multidimensional space-time."
"Interesting...tell me more"
after Sheldon's explanation, which takes three white boards and lots of arm waving, She sits on a stool, kicking her legs "So it's sort of like a guitar string, but instead of making an actual sound, each vibration is a different particle.
Sheldon nods "Precisely. And when you express it in 11 dimensions, Einstein's relativity equations pop out. Does that sound like a coincidence?"
"It does not!"
"Yup. That's what I think."
She laughs "So, that's string theory? it's a particle, it's a string. It's straight, it's in a loop, it gets knotted up with other strings."
"Uh Well, actually there are no knots in anything greater than four dimensions... Ooh, unless we get around that by considering them as sheets. You know, topologically speaking, that has a lot of interesting possibilities."
"See? How long did that take me, like a minute?"
( stolen in part from the Solo Oscillation S11 E13.)
