Archimedes Plutonium

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Archimedes Plutonium (born July 5, 1950 as Ludwig Poehlmann^[1][2]), known as Arky by his fans,^[1] is widely noted for his varied contributions to Usenet and his claims that the entire Universe is a single plutonium atom.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Theories 3 References 4 Further reading

[edit] Biography

According to his autobiography, Plutonium was born with the name Ludwig Poehlmann in Arzberg, Germany. His family came to the United States in his youth, settling near Cincinnati, Ohio. Ludwig was adopted in his teens by a local real-estate investor and landscape architect named Willis Hansen, and his name was changed to Ludwig Hansen. His autobiography also states that he received an undergraduate degree in mathematics from the University of Cincinnati, did some graduate work at a university in Utah, headed off to Melbourne to serve as a mathematics teacher in a High School in the early 1970s, returned to the United States in mid 1970s due to his father's death, in the late 1970s worked for a Masters degree from Utah State University, legally changed his name to Ludwig van Ludvig in 1978 (because the court would not accept his first choice of Ludwig Ludwig), spent some time in the United States Navy during the 1980s, arrived in Hanover, New Hampshire circa 1988 to write a book on investing in the stock-market, and took a menial part time job for two days per week in order to learn about computers and to have full access to a college.^[2][3]

On 1990-11-07, Plutonium claimed to have the realization of his Plutonium Atom Totality Theory, a theory that the Universe is a giant plutonium atom. This theory incorporates elements of superdeterminism, pantheism, and reincarnation, with Plutonium saying that "when you die, you dissolve into photons and neutrinos" which are "recombined in the nucleus". After formulating this theory, Plutonium legally changed his name to Ludwig Plutonium.^[3]

After formulating his theory, Plutonium initially bought advertisements in The Dartmouth in order to present his theory. Later he found the Internet as a better venue for his ideas. As part of Dartmouth College's effort at the time to promote electronic mail, every student, faculty member, and college employee was given their own electronic mail account in the dartmouth.edu domain and free Internet access. That included Plutonium, whose part-time job was that of a dishwasher at the Hanover Inn, a restaurant owned by the college that was located opposite the main college campus. He proceeded to post large amounts of material, including his Plutonium Atom Totality theory, his thoughts, his observations, and his many other theories of science, to Usenet newsgroups on a daily basis, unceasingly, for several years, using the facilities at the Kiewit Computation Center. His "scientific" postings ran to many thousands of pages, but he also discussed many other subjects, from stock market tips, through observations about religion, to memories of his own childhood.^[3][1]

The college received several complaints from other Usenet posters, who wished to have Plutonium's Usenet access revoked. However, other people defended him for a variety of reasons. Some defended him on the basis of his free speech rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Some defended him on the grounds that public scientific debate should be robust enough to welcome the challenge of viewpoints that diverged from the mainstream. Others defended him on the grounds that anyone who dubbed himself "The King of All Science" while talking to Nobel prize winners about pumping water from the Pacific Ocean to the Moon via a giant hose using osmotic pressure, more than made up for any perceived lack of academic credentials for the sheer entertainment that such things gave to the world. Plutonium gained a cult following, with summaries of his postings occasionally being posted by others for the benefit of those who had been on vacation and who missed the show.^[1]

In July 1994, Plutonium's Internet access was briefly revoked. The Kiewit Computation Center removed his name from the Dartmouth Name Directory for 30 days, thereby disabling his ability to use any programs using his account, as a result of his posting a message, a skit entitled Neanderthal Park 2, which called The New York Times the "Jew York Times". Plutonium himself said that the skit was simply intended to poke fun at the mathematical and science community, and stated that it was in no way intended to be anti-Semitic. He created the skit because he was, in his words, "upset over The New York Times doing the black hole on their cover". The Times had recently printed a picture of a black hole on its front page and credited Albert Einstein with its discovery. Plutonium stated that this had angered him, because he could prove that Einstein "stole the Special Relativity theory from the Frenchman Poincaré", and that he was frustrated because the Times' weekly science section in his view often "throws Einstein into stories not relating to Einstein". He stated that "Einstein has this terrific Jewish press in back of him. It's just not fair to the other scientists.".^[4][3]

Several continued to defend Plutonium, again on free speech grounds. In an editorial opinion piece in the The Dartmouth,^[5] staffers wrote that

"administrators, employees, faculty and students should be able to post whatever they want on the Internet without fearing that the College will deem their message offensive. Although it is true that access to electronic-mail and bulletins networks is a privilege given to users by Dartmouth, the College still does not have the right to violate the principle of free speech. [...] An educational institution should support free speech, discussion and debate. [...] Even if someone sends harassing or offensive messages through BlitzMail, the College's electronic mail network, the College still should not act as a network police. The recipient of such a message could pursue legal actions if they wanted to, but the College should keep its hands out of matters of free speech."

John Strayer^[6] wrote

"The College's statement on the 'Freedom of Expression and Dissent', found on page iii of the Student Handbook, states that the only reasons the College might interfere with one's attempts to express his opinion are if such speech denies the right of free speech to another individual, force or threat of force is used or if the orderly processes of the College are deliberately obstructed. Ludwig did none of these things. [...] However, the College has no legal obligation to uphold free speech. It is a private institution. We give up that right when we agree to attend Dartmouth. I simply wish that the College would acknowledge that fact in the Student Handbook. I suggest a revised Student Handbook, the last line of which would read, 'Dartmouth, however, is a private institution. We can and will do whatever the hell we want.'"

Plutonium became a minor celebrity at the college, recognizable for his mode of dress, which could involve orange neon or a ski parka covered with equations written with a felt-tip pen. By 1997, Plutonium was still working as a dishwasher three days a week, making use of the Kiewit Computation Centre facilities and the Baker Library, and had changed his name again. After reading biographies of Archimedes written by Danish historian Ludvig Heiberg, he had become convinced that he was the reincarnation of Archimedes, and as a result changed his name to Archimedes Plutonium.^[3][6]

Plutonium made a point of attending the guest lectures given by physicists who visited Dartmouth, and presenting his Plutonium Atom Totality theory to them during any question-and-answer sessions. In one such session in 1994, the response that he received from Leon Lederman, who said of the theory that "That's out of my field of knowledge.", caused Plutonium to write to The Dartmouth, calling Lederman "arrogant" and attacking modern physics as "cluttered-up gobbledy-gook".^[3][7]

Plutonium lost his Internet access via Dartmouth College in November 1999 when he was fired from the Hanover Inn. He had posted, over the prior period of three years, a complete set of electronic mail correspondence between himself, his supervisors at the Hanover Inn, and the personnel office of the college, which Francis describes as "remarkable not only for their absolute candor, but also for their inevitable conclusion (which just about everyone but [their] author could see coming) [...] in which he hilariously contested all sorts of aspects of his job as a dishwasher". Francis observed that Plutonium "was far more worried about when Dartmouth would cut off his employee email account than about his loss of a paycheck".^[1]

In a Usenet post written shortly after he was fired, Plutonium said that

"Dartmouth is cursed. [...] The curse of Dartmouth College is not something I concocted, but rather something I see and observe and report on. God does these things, not me. And that no science will ever thrive at Dartmouth or from its alumni but will dry up, shrivel up, and blow away. Dartmouth College will become a 'science and math desert'. A science intellectual desert. [...] Dartmouth science professors, instead of helping Archimedes Plutonium, mocked and persecuted AP. Dartmouth laughed at AP for 10 years, now the world will begin to start to laugh and hear bad news about Dartmouth College science and math."^[1][8]

In 2000, Plutonium moved to a new home, an Airstream trailer in South Dakota. By January 2001, just over a year later, he still felt mistreated by Dartmouth College and by the entire town of Hanover. When contacted by Hanover detective Eric Bates, and later by chief of police Nick Giaccone, in relation to the case of the murders of Half and Susanne Zantop, asking him to telephone the Hanover police station and provide an alibi for the day of the murders, he refused to pay the long distance telephone call charges simply in order to prove to Hanover police that he was not a murderer. Hanover police then arranged for a local South Dakota officer to contact Plutonium directly. This outraged Plutonium, who said "I do not like it when police come to my house. It is a bad image for the neighbors. What do the neighbors think when police arrive at your home?" Plutonium, still refusing to pay for the call, sent his telephone number via electronic mail to the chief of police, who then called him. Plutonium pointed out that he could have had no involvement whatsoever in the murders, since at the time he had been happily posting Usenet messages throughout the day from his home in South Dakota, and that his ISP had the logs to prove it. In Plutonium's words "My Internet posts are like a physical log-in proving my whereabouts." Plutonium blamed the people of Dartmouth for attempting to associate him with the murders in the first place, stating that a "huge gaggle of haters" can "easily mention my name to the Hanover police whenever any crime occurs so as to harrass me. This is how the Dartmouth College community railroads people whom they dislike out of town." Francis reports that the police themselves regarded their interaction with Plutonium as "an irritating but necessary detour" in the investigation.^[1][9]

[edit] Theories

Plutonium's Atom Totality or Single Atom Universe theory did not come into full bloom until November 1990, when he announced his completed Atom Totality theory, stating specifically that the Universe is a giant plutonium atom, and that galaxies are dots of the electron cloud (electron-dot-cloud, as some call it) of this single atom. Plutonium stated it must be plutonium in order to satisfy special constants of physics and mathematics, including the fine-structure constant, the 2.71 K cosmic microwave background radiation, quantized galaxy speeds as per redshift quantization, the Sloan Great Wall of galaxies, the layered age of the universe and galaxies, and the values of π and e.

Plutonium published a book on the Internet under the title Atom Totality Theory Replaces Big Bang Theory in Physics (Archimedes Plutonium, Internet book, 1993-2007, assimilated in Jan-Feb 2007 in newsgroups sci.physics, sci.math).^{[citation needed]}

Plutonium has claimed that his theory is related to similar ideas proposed by others throughout history, including the following:

• The first idea of the Universe being one single atom appears to have been suggested by Democritus some 2,400 years ago, one of the founders of the Atomic theory, as referenced in the book A Short History of Atomism (Joshua C. Gregory, 1931, A.& C. Black Ltd), page 4: "A single Democritean atom might even be, so some said, as big as the world. The gigantic Democritean atom, if it ever existed, vanished from the atomic tradition."
• Georges Lemaître proposed his "hypothesis of the primeval atom" in 1927. Lemaître is credited with the discovery of the Big Bang theory, and begins his theory by saying that the total universe started out as a primeval-atom.
• Carl Sagan suggested that the universe could perhaps be considered as an individual elementary particle. As written in his book "Cosmos" (1980, Random House, pages 265-267): "... so that an elementary particle, such as an electron, in our universe would, if penetrated, reveal itself to be an entire closed universe."
• The Dalai Lama published a book Universe in a Single Atom in 2006 (Time Warner).

An example of Plutonium's persistent challenge of other's ideas is found in the April, 1993 Letters to the Editor section of Scientific American.

When will you publishers stop propagandizing for speculative ideas such as the big bang and black holes? When they are discovered not to exist, what rationale will you use, since you plastered your magazine full of this nonsense? You are the publicity agents for birdbrain professors of physics. I give you till the end of the year to publish the fact that the observable universe is the last electron of plutonium. ^[10]

To date, Plutonium continues to post his theories and musings on a regular basis to mathematics and physics Internet newsgroups.

[edit] References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Eric Francis (2005-04-05). The Dartmouth Murders. St. Martin's True Crime, 87–93. ISBN 0312982313. 
2. ^ ^{a b} Archimedes Plutonium. Science website of Archimedes Plutonium.
3. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Joseph C. Scott. "Sometime-scientist Plutonium says science is 'gobbledygook'", The Dartmouth, 1997-09-25.
4. ^ Alexander R. Edlich. "Kiewit revokes man's network access", The Dartmouth, 1994-07-26.
5. ^ 32 Robinson. "Support free speech", The Dartmouth, 1994-08-01.
6. ^ ^{a b} John Strayer. "College violated freedom of speech", The Dartmouth, 1994-07-28.
7. ^ Keith Lavigne. "Lederman speech brings light to physics", The Dartmouth, 1994-04-22.
8. ^ Archimedes Plutonium (1999-11-03). "new movie: The Curse of Dartmouth College". sci.physics. (Google Groups).
9. ^ Archimedes Plutonium (2001-03-03). "ACLU address; stopping Police Harrassement Re: Is Uncle Al A Killer?". misc.legal. (Google Groups).
10. ^ Ludwig Plutonium (White River Jct., VT), Letters to the Editor, Scientific American, p. 12, April, 1993.

[edit] Further reading

• Jennifer Kahn. "Notes from Another Universe", Discover, 2002-04-01. Retrieved on March 18, 2007.
• Archimedes Plutonium (1997-09-05). "Re: PISCES Project; patent application for the Moon". sci.physics.fusion. (Google Groups). — Plutonium's proposal to supply the moon with water
• Dartmouth Alumni Magazine October, 1992