To quote the late Terry Pratchett: > Like a busy government which only passes expensive laws prohibiting some new and interesting thing when people have actua

To quote the late Terry Pratchett: > Like a busy government which only passes expensive laws prohibiting some new and interesting thing when people have actually found a way of doing it, the universe relied a great deal on things not being tried at all. When something is tried, Ponder found, it often does turn out to be impossible very quickly, but it takes a little while for this to really be the case* – in effect, for the overworked laws of causality to hurry to the scene and pretend it has been impossible all along. * In the case of cold fusion, this was longer than usual.