This question was posed to the Usenet Oracle:
If you drop a buttered piece of bread, it will fall on
the floor butter-side down. If a cat is dropped from
a window or other high and towering place, it will
land on its feet.
But what if you attach a buttered piece of bread,
butter-side up to a cat's back and toss them both out
the window? Will the cat land on its feet? Or will
the butter splat on the ground?
And in response, thus spoke the Oracle:
Even if you are too lazy to do the experiment yourself
you should be able to deduce the obvious result. The
laws of butterology demand that the butter must hit
the ground, and the equally strict laws of feline
aerodynamics demand that the cat can not smash its
furry back. If the combined construct were to land,
nature would have no way to resolve this paradox.
Therefore it simply does not fall.
That's right, you clever mortal (well, as clever as a
mortal can get), you have discovered the secret of
antigravity! A buttered cat will, when released,
quickly move to a height where the forces of
cat-twisting and butter repulsion are in equilibrium.
This equilibrium point can be modified by scraping off
some of the butter, providing lift, or removing some
of the cat's limbs, allowing descent.
Most of the civilized species of the Universe already
use this principle to drive their ships while within a
planetary system. The loud humming heard by most
sighters of UFOs is, in fact, the purring of several
hundred tabbies.
The one obvious danger is, of course, if the cats
manage to eat the bread off their backs they will
instantly plummet. Of course the cats will land on
their feet, but this usually doesn't do them much
good, since right after they make their graceful
landing several tons of red-hot starship and
pissed-off aliens crash on top of them.
"And now a few words on solving the problem of
creating a ship using the aforementioned anti-gravity
device.
"One could power a ship by means of cats held in
suspended animation (say, about minus 190 degrees
Celsius) with buttered bread strapped to their backs,
thus avoiding the possibility of collisions due to
temperamental felines. More importantly, how do you
steer, once all the cats are held in stasis?
"I offer a modest proposal:
"We all know that wearing a white shirt at an
Italian restaurant is a guaranteed way to take a trip
to the Laundromat.
Plaster the outside of your ship with white shirts.
Place four nozzles symmetrically around your ship,
which is of course saucer-shaped. Fire tomato sauce
out in proportion to the directions you wish to go.
The ship, drawn by the shirts, will automatically
follow the sauce.
"This does not work as well in deep gravity
wells, since the tomato sauce (now falling down a
black hole, perhaps) will drag the ship with it,
despite the counter-force of the anti-gravity
cat/butter machine. Your only hope at that point is to
jettison enormous quantities of Tide. This will create
the well-known Gravitational Tidal Force."
:mellow: ^_^
