$20 DIY Universe Kit

Wondering what to get for that megalomaniacal person on your X-mas list who secretly (or not so secretly) wants to play God? How about a make-your-own-universe kit which will allow him/her to do just that and create a limitless googleplex of alternate universes and new worlds. It might also be a good antidote for existential despair--not a bad deal for $20, really.

San Francisco conceptual artist Jonathon Keats has created a $20 Do-It-Yourself Universe kit that goes on sale November 20th exclusively through Modernism Gallery in San Francisco. The kit comes packaged in a small metal tin and includes the uranium glass, scintillating crystal, and instructions so simple even "a six-year-old could assemble it in under ten minutes." Chewing gum, drinking straw, and mason jar not included (how MacGyver!).

Basically, it's a DIY kit to build your own quantum universe generator, with which you can deliberately cleave "the universe" whenever you want, creating new universes by subdividing the cosmos.

"It was a product of my anxiety," says Keats. "I'd recently had a couple museum shows, yet I was feeling that no matter what I made, it was hardly comparable to the creation of the cosmos. And though no one talks about it, the same issue faced Picasso, Monet, even Michelangelo. The Big Bang has artists beat."

Besides, Keats can't actually, well, paint. So, he studied the multiverse theory of the universe that arises from quantum mechanics instead... and used it to build this kit. As for how it actually works... oh, just go Google it yourself. Art, I can explain. Quantum Mechanics, not so much.

Here's a link to an article: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/10/the-makeyourownuniverse-kit.html