Index Quark Space Travel Miller Geologist Writing

The Quark Space Travel site name was derived from my short story, Lost in Googleland, in which a random Google® search comes across an obscure website: quarkspacetravel.com.

An excerpt from the beginning of the story:

Surfing the web when bored and having nothing else to do is, depending on your viewpoint, a growing world problem or a pastime, the latter in the case of nerds like me. It’s extremely addictive. I haven’t had a date in more than six months, and I really like the dark cave-like room where my computer is set up. No worries about skin cancer, right?

I once Googled for God. Out of curiosity I wanted to see what would come up. The word "God" gave some 566,000,000 results after only 0.05 seconds. Wow! God is really popular and fast. However, no matter which entry I clicked on, or even assisted by my copy of the O'Reilly® Google Pocket Guide, I never found his home page. Could God be computer illiterate? Has God not paid the fee to his ISP? Has God’s server crashed? However, I did find that the domain "iamgod.com" was for sale. I thought about buying it, but then people might ask me to perform miracles. Miracles? I have a hard enough time just getting out of bed. The water-to-wine thing was really cool, but that’s not my bag. I’m a dark beer guy.

Recently, in another moment of boredom, I typed "space travel" to see what would come up. There were some 158,000,000 “hits,” almost as many as for God. Could I narrow this down? Were there any space travel agencies? I typed "space travel agency." Yes, a bunch of them; mainly run by Russians. Seemed like millionaires with excess cash want to go into space.

Hmmm, here was one that did not look like Russians were involved:

http://www.quarkspacetravel.com.

Let’s see what’s there!

You can read the rest of this story by clicking on the PDF button below. If you don't have Adobe Reader, you can get the latest version by clicking on the second button.

All Stories on this Website can be downloaded as pdf files.

What's a Quark?

The following is from Wikipedia:

In particle physics, the quark (pronounced IPA: /kwɔː(r)k/) is one of the two basic constituents of matter (the other is the lepton). Quarks are the only fundamental particles that interact through all four of the fundamental forces.

Quarks come in six flavors, and their names (up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom) were also chosen arbitrarily based on the need to name them something that could be easily remembered and used.

Antiparticles of quarks are called antiquarks.

Isolated quarks are never found naturally; they are almost always found in groups of two (mesons) or groups of three (baryons) called hadrons. This is a direct consequence of confinement.

These are the six flavors of quarks and their most likely decay modes. Mass decreases moving from right to left on the chart. Decay paths are shown by the arrows. The letters used are the first letters of each of the flavors.

Can Writings be Comparable to Quarks?

Novels and short stories come in various genres: mysteries, science fiction, horror, romance, westerns, etc. Is it possible that my works have flavors, such as those of Quarks? Might there be stories that are UP, DOWN, CHARM, STRANGE, TOP and BOTTOM? We'll see, as my writing progresses. Presently, certain of of my stories can be placed in Quark-like categories. Certainly, Lost in Googleland would be in the STRANGE category. In fact, most of my writings would fall in that grouping. Perhaps, I can write stuff that fits the other categories.

All Stories on this Website can be downloaded as pdf files.