iℏ(∂/∂t) | Ψ ( 😁, 😍) ⟩ = H^| Ψ ( 😁, 😍) ⟩
I’ve got an exciting update on the latest findings from the future time capsule discovered by researchers at the County Durham College of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fine Arts (CDCAAHFA).
Physicists and linguists have been struggling to decipher a set of strange messages that feature high level mathematics in which emojis take the place of important variables. Here is an example:
iℏ(∂/∂t) | Ψ ( 😁, 😍) ⟩ = H^| Ψ ( 😁, 😍) ⟩
Some of you might recognize this as the general form of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation, but with a happy face and love-struck face in place of the position and time vectors. As much of the mathematics in the time capsule messages draws upon quantum theory, researchers have dubbed the whole system “quantemoji mechanics”.
But what, you ask, does it mean?
At the moment, no one is sure. Consensus amongst the researchers is that the mathematics gives clear, precise and unambiguous descriptions of personal relationships. It is, in effect, a logical positivist language of the heart.
But what, you ask again, now with a mumbled curse under your breath, does that mean?
And again, no one is sure. From what researchers have deciphered so far, it seems that, in the not-too-distant future, misunderstood text and social media messages will cause a huge number of problems, ranging from the usual political and television career cancellations up to a significant financial crash and, strangely, an outbreak of flu in northern Europe.
In order to counter this, it appears that roughly a hundred years from now, all non-verbal communication will be translated into quantemoji equations which contain both the original message and a precise description of the emotional state and intent of the sender, e.g. serious, joking, sarcastic, etc.
Even more exciting, however, is the possibility that these equations reveal something utterly astounding about our universe. A handful of physicists believe that the quantemoji equations only work if future scientists have discovered a whole new set of subatomic particles. In theory, these particles, already nicknamed “hearticles”, could carry the forces of our emotions–love, hate, ennui–just as the Higgs boson carries gravity.
The difficulty for the physicists, indeed all of the researchers at CDCAAHFA, lies in their inability to agree on exact, consistent and mathematical definitions for the various emojis. Several emojis seem to have different meanings in different contexts while others indicate changing or even mixed emotions.
The uncertainty of the emoji meanings leaves researchers with a quandry: at the heart of their beautiful, elegant and clear equations lies a dark cloud of ambiguity. As one akolouthologist working on the project said, “After seeing how scientists of the future designed their mathematics of the heart, only one thing is clear: the future gets irony.”
Christopher Randall 