Fanboys Anonymous

With the political stand offs going on in Washington, everlasting hunger throughout the world and global warming slowly heating the planet to an unbearable temperature, we find ourselves inevitably asking the question... Who would win in an Epic Rap Battle Between some of the greatest minds in the history of science anyway? Ok, Maybe not, but since you have no government, people are starving anyway and you are going to be broiled like a brisket soon enough, you may as well stick around and find out. These Epic Rap Battles of scientific History promise to be bloody battles, fit for the coliseums. Find out who won and why.



Thomas Edison was a classic inventor and is the fourth most prolific one in history. He was not an inventor of insane ideas, but rather the inventor of everyday ideas, things we still use today, including the creator of modern home power. His most talked about invention, which was the nearly modern incandescent light bulb, is the most credited and discredited accomplishment of his life. He, in fact, did not invent the light bulb, but he perfected it…within reason. He invented the first practical incandescent with a marketable bulb life. This little stone thrown into the turbines of truth is really no issue; The Wizard of Menlo Park has 1,092 other patents to fall back on, including pioneering in the recording devices we use today for sound and video. The very car you drive today is initially powered by a concept Edison invented, the car battery. Edison, as smart as he was, was sort of an everyday man, taking what jobs he could, before he became the inventor he is known as to this day.



Nikola Tesla, one of my favorite scientists, on the other hand, was the model for many science fiction mad-scientist books and movies today. His whole persona was unique, and he was the epitome of a scientist ahead of his time. The interesting thing is that he was able to brainstorm and build concepts that are beyond most of us. His Tesla Coil is the invention most known by ordinary people, although it is not the most used. This high-frequency, high-power extraordinaire is responsible for building a resonator (only 7 inches long) that was said to be able to shake building foundations, and he was able to transmit electricity through radio and to light unlit light bulbs in homes that were not connected to power. His X-ray is still used medically all the time. The funny thing about Tesla—which perhaps isn't so funny, is that he was so convinced of his ideas, and for good reason, that he would throw his own funds behind them. As a result, even though his many inventions had fetched him a pretty penny, as he neared the end of his life Nikola Tesla was still living the lifestyle of an average middle-class man. The daunting task of making worldwide communication a possibility and delivering electricity to every home was at first spat upon by the media and eventually by the people, then demolished by the government, moves that inspired years and years of conspiracy theories that are still argued today. Ultimately, his Wardenclyffe Tower drained him. It—and we—had taken everything.

What makes the square-off between Edison and Tesla interesting is that, at one time, they knew each other quite well. Actually, Edison was Tesla's boss…quite literally. Tesla began working for Edison in France as an electrical engineer and was quickly put in charge of handling the most difficult issues in the company. Eventually, Tesla claimed that he could redesign Edison's inefficient motor and generators, delivering much better service for less. Edison, jokingly or not, responded "There's $50,000 in it for you, if you can do it." It was later discovered that Edison's company did not have that sort of money to give away just willy nilly. Surprised by the fact that Tesla actually did do it, Edison claimed that he was only joking, saying, "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor." Edison offered him US$10 a week raise over Tesla's US$18 per week salary, but Tesla refused the offer, immediately resigning.


Keeping in mind that Tesla very well may be my favorite scientist, for a couple reasons, I still felt that Edison won the battle. Although it portrayed him as somewhat of a miser, I suspect that he probably was a kidder, and I know he also was sort of a "smarter than the average man" average man. Tesla more than likely did misunderstand, but the battle portrays him as only giving two s**ts about money, a correlation made from his shrewd business practices, and that portrayal puts Tesla on defense. It was because of this that Tesla, as true as his statements were, finds himself being dragged around a bit. Let me know what you thought.



Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking represent contending ideas concerning matter. Einstein's theory doesn't argue against the idea of multiple universes being consistent in makeup from blast to freeze, but it doesn't argue a connection either. In fact, it doesn't even talk about it. There could be an infinite number of universes exactly like ours from start finish, and there could even be potential for travel from one to the other via the wormhole, which was a topic of which Einstein was a fan, however, simply because they share everything alike does not mean they are connected. Each and every universe is born with a certain amount of mass. That's not to say they can't have differing masses, unless they are literally the same, but that mass, whether converted to energy or not, remains forever. As universes expand (a concept currently being argued against), combine, tear apart, or any scenario you can imagine, his theory states that the original matter will always remain no matter where it ever appears in the infinite unknown. Most of the friction between this theory and Stephen Hawking's original black hole theory is created by the "fact" that matter cannot be changed and should therefore be forever identifiable by its wave function.

Stephen Hawking, however, one of today's most renowned theoretical physicists and cosmologists, argued in his Black Hole Theory that state is just another stone we're stepping on, that wave function information can be lost and, in consideration of the The No Hair Theorem, must be. Stephen Hawking discovered by equation that black holes omit a form of radiation—Hawking Radiation—the only known energy that does, in fact, escape the hellish gape of the monstrosities. This should be an impossibility, because no force, including light, can escape its grasp, but he argued that information can be and is lost. The problem was that there was so much paradoxical friction with Liouville's Theorem, which states that the density of system points, in the vicinity of a given system point traveling through phase-space, is constant with time. Hawking's was not a popular opinion; however those that did decide it was worth looking into found ways to justify the theory.

A lot of good that did. Hawking had done the math incorrectly, later admitting that the information is in fact preserved, but his theory still set a new standard for thought. In 2004, Stephen Hawking's new emerging theory on black holes tipped the world on end. Surely one of the great minds of our time has a solution to his own black hole information paradox. His answer? The information is preserved, it just goes elsewhere, or even to another time in the universe's infinite life, which means that the sooner we create vessels and some way to reach the center of a black hole without turning to mush, the sooner we will be able to discover the vast and unending other universes or go back and stop ourselves from doing something we regret. Of course, that all has its own paradoxes to be kept in check. After several more years of equations and headache, Stephen stumbled upon a new truth—that information never left the universe, that there was no time machine or universe gateway and that black holes simply evaporate away material, crushing and melding it until the code is unidentifiable and releasing it back into the universe when it dies.


Wow! Who might have known that Einstein was such a terrible person? From what I've heard, read, and gathered from other media, Einstein was exactly the opposite, but he sure was a mean and terrible person when he ran into Stephen Hawking at his local rap battle club. Stephen was set up to lose this one, just as he was forced to concede in his science. My opinion is based in the fact that more thought was put into Einstein's bombs, as they used his theories, coupled with the meanest name calling I've ever heard. Hawking ended on a good note, but he spent his first verses simply name calling and bragging inexplicably. Either way, it's important to note that Stephen Hawking has made so many more contributions to science than just his black hole blunder, which, incidentally, in itself, did a lot to help explain black holes. It's also important to note that, with infinite potential, such groundbreaking minds as Hawking's and Einstein's can only solve so many equations in a lifetime. I consider their contributions equal. After all, it's difficult to improve upon good ideas. Ask anyone who's ever written a book/movie sequel.

Drop an opinion and let me know what you think.