Administrators are bosons – Ignobel Prize awarded in 2007 to
Prof. Vince Gutschick at
Two fundamental categories of particles in quantum mechanics are fermions and bosons. No two fermions can occupy the same state, while an arbitrary number of bosons may. Administrators (shall we say, administratons) are demonstrably bosons; they are identical, interchangeable particles, and their occupany of a given state (read, institution) can increase without limit. They show the ability to form a boson condensate, a system in which virtually all members occupy the lowest-energy state. They have an integral spin quantum number, as bosons must. In fact, their principal characteristic is spin – spinning in place, and putting spin on various things, including other entitites such as memons and scandalons. Regrettably, no anti-particles to administratons have been found; no researcher has even been able to claim that energy can be liberated in any kind of interaction with administratons. The administraton number of the universe is not conserved and has, in fact, been observed to increase monotonically with time. An active area of research seeks to determine if the stupefying mass of dark matter in the universe is simply composed of administratons. An alternative theory is that even more of this mass is contributed by hypermassive axial-vector particles, the screwupons, which accompany administratons. Screwupons are so massive that the coalescence of a small number of screwupons may generate a black hole. There is evidence that such black holes can even engulf abstract particles, including ideas.