The Ultimate Free Lunch

Crank mail is an occupational hazard for cosmologists. Einstein wanna-bes, convinced they’ve developed deep new theories, occasionally send their crabbed jottings to the professionals. Edward Harrison, an astronomer at the University of Massachusetts, is no stranger to such odd correspondence, and he might have dismissed a letter that crossed his desk recently had he not noticed that it was from a retired chemistry professor named Charles Leffert. One gets lots of crackpot mail, says Harrison. This was one that was not quite so crackpot.