by Siderius Nuncious

Robin Somes (ye gods, he gets about! Ed.) wrote in message ...

>In article <52bWOBA0HID4EwkC@reflect.demon.co.uk>, btms
><Linda@reflect.demon.co.uk> writes
>>I am now able to disclose that I have been out of the country on a special mission in search of the nun - and I found her!  On Saturday morning last she was seen in the Via Capello, Verona, at around 10.00am.

>Well, as nuns go she's obviously a pretty speedy one, because I saw her at 10.14am Sunday morning cycling - with a determined look about her, I might add - near Salzburg's Hauptbahnhof (as the Austrians stubbornly persist in calling their railway station).

>Can any boffin types extrapolate from these 2 points where she might appear next,

Let us assume for the moment that these two sightings are genuine. I surmise on this basis that we may have observed the elusive Quantum Nun (properly called the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle - Looks Ecclesiastical). It did occur to me while she was passing here regularly that she might be undergoing acceleration in a huge and secret Nunotron, getting faster and faster with each circuit. An anti-nun may have been accelerated in the opposite direction and then a collision engineered in which (my heart breaks to say it) "my" nun and the anti-nun disappeared in a shower of other nun and sub-nun particles. These would obviously be travelling at very high speed, and could very well have got to Verona and Salzburg by now. The world's most sophisticated detector is in Rome, of course, but high background nun levels there can make results unreliable.

Careful analysis of collected data may shed light on this phenomenon, known (particularly to organic chemists) as the Sid's Nun or SN1 reaction.

Regards

Sid
(Shepherds Bush, West London)