The Pauli Exclusion Principle simply states that a fermion cannot exist twice in a quantum state.  At a more basic level (also known as, the level I’m at and I’m a fifth year chemistry student), two electrons with the same spin cannot be in the same quantum state.   They have to be of opposite spins.

Figure 1 is hydrogen. Yeah, it’s pretty boring.  One electron in the 1s orbital.  That electron could be pointing up or down (ie, of either spin), but by convention we write it upwards.

Figure 2 is helium… sort of.  In this example, two electrons are in the 1s orbital.  However, both electrons have the same spin.  That is what the Pauli Exclusion Principle says we cannot do.

Figure 3 is also helium.  Two electrons in the 1s orbital however, the second is pointing downwards, thus signifying a spin in the other direction.  That is the correct way of drawing the 1s orbital.

(The electrons can also be drawn on top of the line.  In fact, I had one chem prof who wanted them drawn that way and a different chem prof who wanted them to be drawn through the line.  Clearly, I like the second chem prof more.)

Now, back to the regularly scheduled tv discussion.

Last Thursday, Fringe made a grave mistake in science.

Yes, Fringe is all about mistakes in (fake) science.

This mistake, however, holds the singular claim (for this show) of pissing me off.

The mistake?  Nina Sharp was explaining to Olivia about why the two universes cannot be brought together – one will inevitably be destroyed.

Yes, that’s a pretty common theory and it always shows up in science fiction.  In fact, I have absolutely no problem with that – it’s effing theoretical physics so do whatever the hell you want.

Just don’t mutilate quantum mechanics whilst you do so.

You see, Nina’s reasoning for why two universes can’t exist at the same time was ‘you know the Pauli Exclusion Principle?’ and then smush the two snow globes together and one breaks whilst the other is perfectly intact.  Immediately, I hit the pause button on my dvr and yelled at the tv ‘but that’s not what the Pauli Exclusion Principle says!’  I also wished that I was watching this live so I could get on the twitters and tweet about it, but my twitter addiction is not the topic of today’s blog.

While the wiki article on the Pauli Exclusion Principle is pretty technical and could almost imply that two of the same things cannot exist at the same time, you do have to remember that things on the quantum level do not apply to the macroscopic world.  Last I checked, my location wasn’t uncertain.  I’m really damn sure that I’m sitting in front of my computer writing this blog entry.  However, that electron?  Yeah, that one over there.  Well, it might not actually BE over there.  It could be here.  Or there.

And somehow I got onto Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and the Born Interpretation instead of the Pauli Exclusion Principle.

Right.

Well, I am in a class about quantum mechanics right now.

The Pauli Exclusion Principle simply states that a fermion cannot exist twice in a quantum state.  More generally, two electrons with the same spin cannot be in the same quantum state.   They have to be of opposite spins.

Figure 1 is hydrogen. Yeah, it’s pretty boring.  One electron in the 1s orbital.  That electron could be pointing up or down (ie, of either spin), but by convention we write it upwards.

Figure 2 is helium… sort of.  In this example, two electrons are in the 1s orbital.  However, both electrons have the same spin.  That is what the Pauli Exclusion Principle says we cannot do.

Figure 3 is also helium.  Two electrons in the 1s orbital however, the second is pointing downwards, thus signifying a spin in the other direction.  That is the correct way of drawing the 1s orbital.

(The electrons can also be drawn on top of the line.  In fact, I had one chem prof who wanted them drawn that way and a different chem prof who wanted them to be drawn through the line.  Clearly, I like the second chem prof more.)

So, yeah, absolutely nothing to do with two universes colliding.

Great job on the science there Fringe.  Great job.

At least Stargate made up a nonsense reason for why two people from different universes can’t exist in one universe at the same time.  Entropic Cascade Failure ftw!

Long story short?  If you’re going to make up science, make up science.  Don’t try to manipulate actual scientific principles to suit your own needs.

Buuut I’ll put it under a cut cuz I really hate uncut long articles on blogs.

• House – I’m pretttty sure the perma-stubble gives away the gender of the lead character
• Chuck – The last time I checked, Sarah wasn’t the lead character
• Castle – Third show in a row to be named after the male lead? Niiiice Nikki, niiice.
• The Big Bang Theory – One female character in the regular cast. ’nuff said.
• Fringe – I’m not sure on this one… Olivia is sorta the main character, but Walter steals the screen and Peter is almost as important as Olivia.  It is a bit too ensemble-y with the three leads to really count as a female lead. Getting close, though!
• Criminal Minds – This show has not one, but two male leads
• Bones – Brennan and Booth are equally important, as seen by the title screen with both Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz in the most equal manner possible
• Eleventh Hour – Canceled, yes, but Rufus Sewell (aka, the male lead) is yummy enough for me to watch the show again… and again… and again…. Oh, the science is great too.
• Sanctuary – Amanda Tapping!
• Eureka – Male lead. But, wut wut, the not-Tony-Stark character is on the screen?  Get that sheriff outta my line of sight!
• Stargate SG-1 – While Sam Carter should have been the lead character after Richard Dean Anderson left the show, it was not to be.
• Stargate Atlantis – Ultimately, John Sheppard is the lead character of this series… though Elizabeth Weir and Sam Carter lead the expedition for four seasons and (Meredith) Rodney McKay stole the show with awesomeness.
• Star Trek: TOS, TNG, ENT – Combined cuz I’m lazy and, well, the Captain is male. ’nuff said.  (DS9 is excluded simply because I haven’t had a chance to watch that series yet.)
• Star Trek: Voyager – Honestly?  I find most of the male characters rather boring. But, yay, short redheaded female captains ftw!
• The X-Files – C’mon, there are only two main-main characters (what? I need to separate M+S from Skinner, Reyes and Doggett somehow) and they share the lead pretty well – whilst Mulder will run off without Scully, the weird stuff tends to happen to her, not him.
• Warehouse 13 – It’s in the vein of The X-Files and Bones so Myka and Pete are co-main characters, I guess
• Defying Gravity – Ensemble cast, but the two leaders of the expedition are male

So, yeah, long story short?  There generally aren’t any clearly dominant female leads in the stuff I watch.  This also applies to novels (unless they were written for women), but I’m not going to make a massive list of that because A) I’ve read way too many books in my life time and B) I don’t even remember all the names or the authors of most of the books I’ve read.

And I’m not going to bother listing comics because those are written for men and I expect the lead characters to be male and I half expect that the female characters are going to suck.  Some of them don’t, but I find that male writers tend to have women that are just… weird.  They don’t seem like they’re people, y’know?  Not that I’m dissing male writers – the opposite definitely holds true for female writers.  Seriously, read any yaoi recently?  Half of the time one or both of the characters take on a distinctly feminine feel.  And that’s even in fanfic where the character isn’t canonically girly.

Again, the opposite often is true for men writing femslash.

Naturally, I began wondering why it is this way and, wellll, beyond the ‘women/men can’t write men/women’, I haven’t come up with a good reason.  Of course, I’ve come up with reasons, but my idealistic self doesn’t want them to be true and my feminist self doesn’t believe that they’re good reasons.

Simply put, my other reasons all involve sexism – too many male writers/producers/executives that all believe that men could never relate to a female character.  And, thus, for whatever reason they have decided that lead characters must be male because either A) women don’t count (from a marketers standpoint, that’s technically true since, in some workplaces, women still make a lower salary than men.  Add in the fact that it still seems to be women who leave the workforce to raise children and you have a definite skew towards men making, and thus spending, more money.  Thus, you’d want men to be watching the show and commercials and, thus, buying stuff) or, B) they feel that women can relate to men (or throw in a secondary female character for women to relate to).

Yeah.

You can see why I hope that I’m not right.

For interests of full disclosure, I’m kind of guilty of this as well – my lead characters tend to be female and, in the story that still only has a WIP name (currently Forced Fate), my two main characters are both female and, of my three secondary characters, two are male.  Not a very gender balanced cast, but I’d rather have the cast skewed in one direction over it being dead even because casts with exactly as many women as there are men often seem a little bit contrived.  It can be done, but I don’t think I could pull it off.

Besides, I don’t think about that sort of thing while writing – I just come up with characters and put them together.  If they happen to be male, fine by me.  It really does not make a difference to me.

And, perhaps, that’s just how tv is written as well.

But I doubt it.