Betraying their roots?

I have a new reason to detest and even oppose the creation of more offshore 'wind parks'. The impact they are having on the dolphin population. New research into why there has been a massive increase in dolphins stranding and dying in the North Sea area has found that it is because the victims are going deaf. It has taken a long time to find this out, and a lot more effort to find the cause. It turns out that the deafened dolphins are all from pods who lived and hunted in the vacinity of new wind parks. It has now been established that the cause of their going deaf is a direct result of the noise created when driving the 'piling' to create the foundations for the wind turbines.

A dolphin that cannot hear, cannot find food, cannot find its way, cannot detect obstructions, cannot ...

Now comes the really entertaining bit. Greenpeace has its origins in defending and protecting marine mammals - starting with the great whales, then expanding to cover Orca, dolphins and others. Now it seems, since Greenpeace are reaping large financial rewards from these same wind parks, that's no longer a priority. Pity about the dolphins, seals, fish and other marine life. No wonder more and more of the founders of Greenpeace are turning against them. I've come a long way down that road myself. It may surprise some to know that I once supported their campaigns to stop over fishing, the slaughter of dolphins and whales and so on. Now I will not give them ice in winter.

Building these wind turbines means driving massive piled foundations deep into the sea bed. This is done by 'hammering' using a massive falling weight which strikes the metal 'pile', each blow driving it deeper. The sound of the blow is amplified by the water, travelling as a kind of pressure wave. During the 'driving' operation these hammer blows are repeated at least once every minute, and all marine animals within a considerable radius of the source are subjected to this intense noise. Dolphins have a particularly sensitive ear - they need it - and the damage is rapid and permanent. Nor is it 'short duration' noise, the piling operations last for weeks. The underwater noise levels, if translated into the human environmental equivalent, would invoke an immediate ban by the Health and Safety Executive.

So, I expect Greenpeace will continue to put out its propaganda about 'Global Warming' and 'Climate Change', while ignoring the damage its favourite 'renewable' energy source is causing to all the marine and other wildlife it once thought so important. No, I will never again support them on any issue, and I will continue to object to the construction of useless windmills whose sole purpose seems to be to enrich their proponents.

What if Scotland decides to stay in the UK?

Ever since the Blair/Brown mangling of the UK’s Constitution, there has been a large question mark over the status of ‘England’ within the Union. Scotland has a Parliament, Wales and Northern Ireland have Assemblies, but England has … Westminster, which, we are constantly told is the “United Kingdom Parliament”. In other words, “England” is represented by its MPs sitting in a joint parliament making decisions that apply only in England and determined to a large extent by Scottish, Welsh and Irish MPs.

Let’s take a look at the actual make-up of the Westminster Chamber (I’ll leave the Lords out of it for the moment - that is another problem entirely thanks to Blair!). There are 650 MPs currently in the House of Commons, of whom 533 are ‘English’ (though in reality some are Scottish or Welsh Party Members in ‘English’ seats), 40 Welsh, 59 Scottish and 18 Northern Irish. In effect it means that there are 117 MPs voting on laws that have little or no impact on their own constituents in matters ‘devolved’ to the Scottish Parliament or the two Assemblies. Worse, it means that the voters in each of these constituencies actually has TWO MPs - one 'local' and the other in Westminster, while the 'English' constituencies have only one, in Westminster. Since a majority of the constituencies in Scotland and Wales are invariably also Labour, Nationalist or Liberal Democrat supporters, there is a clear bias against the representation most frequently the choice of ‘English’ voters. Reference to the map clearly shows this.

To further complicate the story we must also recognise that there are 53 million people in England, 3 million in Wales, 5.29 million in Scotland and 1.8 million in Northern Ireland. This means there are fewer voters per MP in Scotland and Wales than there are in England. Then there are arguments about the allocation of funds to the various components as well, with the per capita spend in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland higher than anywhere in England. And all of this is ‘managed’ by Westminster where those 117 ‘National’ MPs make very sure their voters ‘interests’ are paramount. It is a very tricky question and, to use a hackneyed expression, thorny issue. One the politicians hoped they could evade by breaking England up into ‘Regions’ so each Region had its own Assembly and could safely be sidelined.

That plan fell apart when the first ‘Region’ resoundingly rejected being made autonomous and being made to pay for yet another hot-air talking shop for meddlers. The surprise was that it was a Labour ‘heartland area. To date the only such ‘Region’ to accept the ‘honour’ is the London conurbation where the Greater London Authority has an Assembly which presides over the 33 Boroughs and cities that make up what everyone outside the UK calls ‘London’. The problem when the voters rejected the ‘Regional Assembly’ proposal was that Blair and his planners had no alternative plan, no back-up to answer what has, for many years, been known as the “West Lothian Question”. For some reason, all our ‘political’ class are terrified of allowing the ‘English’ to have their own voice, their own Parliament.

Perhaps it is time to call this bluff, and for the ‘English’ to demand the same status as the Welsh, Scots and Irish (and come to that the Suzerainties of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man). Perhaps it is time to reject entirely the divisions imposed by Westminster and Whitehall in their ‘Regions’ and demand an English Parliament based outside of London. Surely, if we are going to continue to play this so-called ‘democracy’ game, it is only right? The problem is that the Liberal Left (and possibly the Conservative Centre as well) seem to be absolutely terrified by the thought of an 'English' Parliament. One has to ask why?

As I see it there are several purely ‘political’ problems to address here. The first is that the ‘first past the post/winner takes all’ electoral system is so far past its ‘sell by’ date it is a joke. The second is to acknowledge that, without the Scottish and Welsh MPs, Labour will never form a majority government in England. The third part of the problem is that Westminster, and to a large extent, Whitehall, will have to be completely restructured with Whitehall being cut back and many of its Departments devolved completely to the four national governments. I would suggest therefore that Whitehall would be responsible only for overall ‘Treasury’ functions, Defence, Foreign Policy and matters pertaining to Immigration, Citizenship and mutual internal arrangements. Westminster itself could be slimmed down dramatically, losing perhaps half of its current denizens and all their ‘hanger’s on’.

The more I consider this, the more I like it. Moving the activities of the Civil Service closer to the people they purport to serve  - the taxpayer - will make them far more responsive to reality, rather than their imagined world. It will also break what Jonathon Swift called “the echo of the London Coffee House”. As he said, there is a tendency in Westminster and Whitehall to believe that “London” is the whole of the UK, and this has caused problems all through the ages. Shifting an ‘English’ Parliament out of London, and ejecting all those departments that are devolved as well, will certainly cure that tendency.

I believe the idea of a Parliament for England is an idea whose time has come. The only question is how to compel the denizens of Westminster to accept it.

Medical Dilemmas ...

Those who suffer allergic reactions are familiar with the need to take loads of antihistamines to suppress the reaction. Mine is an annual bout of battling pollen, and a month on antihistamines which always makes me wish someone would find a 'cure'. There are some supposed 'cures' but they are also high-risk and don't always work.

Some years ago I learned that Hayfever, Asthma and Eczema are all caused by the same gene defect, but it is rare for someone suffering from the first of these to develop the other two. Unfortunately, those who develop Eczema frequently also develop Asthma and it can get even more complex. Medical science focuses on treating the symptoms of these ailments, rather than treating the cause - difficult when it is caused by the bodies own defences 'reacting' to a non-infectious agent such as pollen. My own allergies are house dust and grass pollen, though I seem to be reacting to a few other species of pollen lately as well. Other folk react to animal hair, certain foods (some folk get migraines from eating chocolate) and a wide range of other 'trigger' substances.

Part of the problem, of course, is that we are basically 'Mk I' humans, and though we have adapted our environs, our genes haven't yet adapted to many of the things those adaptations have introduced. Add to that, the damage we take from various illnesses we suffer, exposure to some substances in our careers, or inadvertantly in our homes, and the cumulation means we wind up allergic to something.

Step forward the pharmaceutical industry.

While many ailments can be cured, others have to be 'managed' by palliative treatments. Like my hay fever. I dose myself with an antihistamine preparation which - most of the time - relieves the symptoms. I also resort to some 'old fashioned' practices, like flushing my nose with salt water, and, more recently, using a 'wand' type device which is inserted into the nostrils and bathes the reacting mucosa in red light. It is a case of just trying to get through the worst of the season as best one can - which is what our ancestors did for much of the time I suspect. I know many of mine resorted to becoming seafarers - no pollen at sea at least.

Now the problem with daily doses of antihistamine is that it affects more than just the parts of the system that are responding to the pollen. It affects the whole of the immune system. So, if you also suffer from some other underlying conditions, you reduce the bodies natural response to those as well. This is why I tend to 'take the meds' only when I'm already pretty desperate, which, of course, means they are much less effective. While Hayfever is very common, it isn't the focus of a great deal of research. Why? Largely because there is more money to be made in already available preparations which deal with the symptoms, than in trying to find a way to cure it.

That leads me to a recent article on treatments for cancer which is based on boosting the immune system. The problem with cancer cells is that they generate an agent which 'blocks' the immune system and prevents it from acting to destroy the cancer cell. So the discovery of that, and the development of the means to 'boost' the immune system so it does attack tumours is a major step forward. But now comes my question - how will this work for someone who needs to take an immune system suppressing agents to control - for example - Hayfever?

Perhaps it is time the pharmaceutical industry did take a look at finding ways to treat those of us who are sensitive to pollen, dust and other 'particulates'. Hayfever, Asthma and Eczema are possibly the most common allergy conditions in every population group. Yes, we are a lovely 'cash cow' for all the preparations we have little choice but to use when our 'affliction is upon us', but, since it is already known which gene causes it, and what the 'defect' looks like - why, of why, can't someone come up with a proper cure?

Could some 'researcher' reading this give it some thought please?
 

Doomsayers; Past, Present and Future?

Every now and again you are reminded that you have seen something somewhere at some time in your stumble through life and knowledge, and I had such a moment recently when clearing out some boxes I have carried around from house to house and even country to country. Opening a book at random I found myself rereading a current meme - only this is something from one of the oldest religious texts. From the Hindu Vishnu Purana, come the following prophecies: -

• promiscuity will increase everywhere and marriage will decline,
• lies will become the road to success,
• causes of devotion will be confined to physical well being of self,
• the only bond between sexes will be passion and the rites of marriage will cease,
• men will be terrified of death and fear scarcity,
• the wealthy will control men whose only interest is the gaining of wealth, however dishonestly,
• the earth will be valued for its treasures only,
• leaders will arise who are violent men who will seize the goods of their subjects, 
• the ice caps will melt,
• oceans will rise,
• droughts will become normal and famine will prevail ...

Welcome to the Kali-yuga, the last of the four "Ages" set out in the ancient texts of the Vishnu Purana, which, according to the Hindu Calendar, we are currently living in. I first read this in the 1970s, and ever since the whole 'Climate Change' argument started, I have been wondering where I had heard or read the IPCC 'predictions' before. The rediscovery of the book, an otherwise amusing book which explores the world of predictions, prophecies and general 'doomsday' predictions is now long out of print I suspect, but some of the information in it can be found in the 1997 produced book "Predictions for the Millennium" published by Island Books (who I suspect are now out of business as well).

According to the Hindu text, this will be the shortest of the four 'ages' and though it will be troubled by violence, hardship, deceit and all things nasty (it is ruled by Kali, mother goddess and ruler of the night, and probably the nastiest of the Hindu goddesses), it is supposed to lead to 'rebirth' of a new and perfect world. This is a meme most prominently shared in Buddhist teaching which has a similar 'Great Year' (25,290 years) cycle in its holy books. I suppose it is a 'comfort' to know that the Kali-yuga is the shortest  of the four 'ages', only a mere 2,500 years in length and we are now supposedly entering the final years.

Anyone else recognise the meme?

Certainly, we are able to recognise the breakdown indications in any given society as being among those listed in this and, it must be said, many other 'prophecies' in a wide range of scriptures from an equally wide range of religions. many Christian 'Pentecostalists' and scriptural literalists, argue that this is what the 'Revelations' is all about and put forward their case for a final 'doomsday' and the Second Coming from their interpretation of passages from that book - which, though it does not carry any of the Hindu or Buddhist imagery, is being interpreted in the light of their teaching. Does this prove all such religious books, philosophies or scriptures to be 'false' as some would claim? 

In my view, no. What it does demonstrate is that ideas have been an interchangeable and influential currency across many cultures and across millennia. We can recognise strands of this and other 'Eastern Mystic' religious thinking in Greek philosophy, ancient Egyptian texts and in Hebrew writings - and in the Bible in spirit if not in concept. Even now it has currency in 'modern' writing and thinking. Take the current 'Climate Change' debate. Is it any surprise that the leader of the IPCC at the UN is from India? Even if he is not a Hindu, he will be familiar with their sacred texts, since some of this even crops up in the Quran, and in the Gnostic writings that provide a 'source' for much of that. Hence, if one reads the Vishnu Purana and the IPCC reports one can identify several parallels. Not least the fear of the melting ice caps and the rising seas. Then there is the emphasis on 'warming', increasing severity of storms, catastrophic events carrying off thousands of lives, famines, droughts and so on. The only difference is that the Hindu text says it is unstoppable, the IPCC says we can stop it.

Rereading this made me think about where else these (and a few other predictions) crop up today. Surprise, surprise, the same meme comes up in Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and several more 'Green' proponents. It crops up in the ideologies promulgated by several left-wing political movements as well. Even some of the more radical evangelical Christian movements have eagerly espoused some of these, claiming 'it's in the Bible', which requires a bit of re-interpretation of some passages taken in isolation and out of context. The odd ones are the atheist figures who have taken it on, and I find some parallels among various humanist, secularist and 'New Age' neo-paganist utterances. I'm sure my friend Josephus will be able to suggest a few parallels from some of the fringes of Masonic offshoots from the 19th and early 20th Centuries. 

So we have an ancient text which some would claim is 'validated' by the 'proof' that the 'Global Warming' is 'real', that the breakdown we think we see in our society is evidence of its accuracy. On the other hand we have those who will deny that they are influenced by any of this 'religious stuff' and only believe in the 'science' that proves it. OK, if that 'floats your boat' it's fine by me. From my perspective, the most interesting factor is to ask the question; Just how much of our current doomsday thinking on Climate Change, societal collapse, rising crime, poverty and political chicanery is coloured by 'something we heard' or 'something we read' at school, university or at points in between?  How many of today's Doomsayers, are simply re-interpreting something they read in a religious text? 

It seems to me that some things make more sense, and others less sense when reread after a gap of 40 years, and this book certainly is one of those. Today the Kali-yuga is dressed up as 'Catastrophic Global Warming/Climate Change' and we are told that if we do exactly as the IPCC and its Green supporters tell us, we will emerge into a 'new world' with a better future which looks remarkably like - you guessed it - the Krita-yuga of the Vishnu Purana.  

Rereading this after forty years has been an amusing experience, partly because I have now recognised some things uttered by leading figures over that period that I am pretty sure they would deny come from this source. I've also recognised how some of my own thinking may have been influenced by some things I have read, experienced or been taught.

Perhaps the Ancient Greeks had a point. They believed humanity was here for the amusement of the gods ...

Perceptions of Risk - Biased?

In recent weeks we have had a number of wonderfully colourful ‘scare’ stories in the mass media, starting with ‘Ebola victim diagnosed in Canada’, and, at regular intervals, headlines declaring that this or that ‘flu virus is about to become the next Black Death. And then there is ‘nuclear’ - that beloved bogeyman that lurks in every nuclear power station, an H-bomb just waiting to detonate and obliterate the town/city/country it's located in. Now we can add to that the dreaded “carbon” that is - according to the IPCC, Greenpeace and assorted politicians - the sole cause of ‘Global Warming/Climate Change”. But only, apparently, if it is generated by your car, the local power station, or the cattle, pigs and chickens you eat. Volcanos don’t count (even though, having forced everyone to ‘scrub’ Sulphur Dioxide out of our emissions, the same organisations are now claiming that volcanos injecting millions of tons of the stuff into the stratosphere during eruptions is ‘slowing Global Warming’) as their CO2 and SO2 is ‘natural’. 

Part of the trouble here is that our perceptions of risk are highly individual and generally biased by our levels of knowledge on a subject, by our training, our background and even our circumstances. Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy  of Need’ plays an important part in how we assess the risk against the need to achieve something. Two recent articles sent me by friends highlight both aspects. In the first, “Ebola, Organic Food, and Fukushima; three dope slaps about how we get risk wrong”  the author sets out the argument for how ‘fear’ of something we don’t understand, or feel we can’t control or protect ourselves from, slews our perception of the risk it presents. 

Take Ebola. It is a rather nasty virus, which causes perforation of the blood vessels. Victims bleed from every orifice and the virus is extremely contagious, but death isn’t a result of the bleeding, it comes as a result of damage to all the vital organs due to the redistribution of fluids and the inability of the blood to distribute nutrients efficiently. Right, so its a VERY nasty disease, but it is also confined to Central and West Africa, and it effects a few victims each year. In the last 40 years, several hundred people have been infected and died of it. On the other hand, millions have died in the same period, and thousands die each year of Tuberculosis, Hepatitis, HIV/AIDS and other less dramatic diseases. Which one should we be more concerned about? Especially in our crowded cities far from sources of Ebola (actually carried by certain primates many west and central African tribes consume as ‘Bush Meat’ and which some are now trying to bring to Britain) where, on a crowded bus, ’Tube’, train or U-Bahn journey you are far more likely to be exposed to TB being distributed by someone coughing or spitting?

Fukushima induced near global panic among the terminally anti-nuclear and we are still seeing regular Greenpeace incited headlines that ‘new’ radiation hotspots, contaminated water, or ‘airborne particles’ are about to ‘irradiate’ somewhere. Ironic that the UN’s own agencies (and I will admit to being a total sceptic with any UN agency) have been able to find not a single case of cancer or permanent damage among the workers exposed during their attempts to contain and control the problems there, nor among any of the people exposed in the surrounding areas. The much trumpeted ‘radio-active cloud’ that the US media hysterically declared was about to engulf the western US turned out to be almost undetectable against the normal background radiation for those areas. And, I’m sorry, but I don’t believe for a moment Greenpeace’s ‘scientists’ and ‘experts’ who claim to be able to detect ‘enhanced levels of radiation’ in the sea or anywhere else. 

So why does ‘nuclear’ induce such fear? I believe that it is partly due to the ‘ban the bomb’ campaigns of the 1960s and onward. The average ‘man-in-the-street’ has been taught that any and all nuclear reactors are dangerous bombs just waiting to detonate with the characteristic mushroom cloud, blinding flash of light and poisonous fallout. Many don’t have the faintest idea of how a nuclear pile is used in the generation of electricity, and all believe that all ionising radiation causes instant cancer, death, or ghastly mutations and monsters like the Simpsons five eyed fish. The fact is that the ‘detonations’ we saw at Fukushima were not ‘nuclear’ in that it was not the fissile fuel rods exploding, but Hydrogen gas which was generated by the breakdown of the coolant water into its component parts of Hydrogen and Oxygen. Yes, there certainly was radioactive material involved and there certainly was a lot of it thrown around, but, as at Chernobyl, it was not a ‘nuclear’ explosion and did not involve a ‘fission’ reaction to produce the bang. 

Yes, we can and should make use of a different fuel. Replacing the Uranium fuel rods with Thorium would produce less toxic waste for starters, but here again there is resistance from the public who have been fed the story that radioactive waste coolant water, spent fuel rods and so on amounts to millions of tons of highly radioactive waste leaking into our drinking water, percolating into our food, or leaking into our homes. The truth is that there is quite a lot of low level radioactive waste, most of it things like metal tools, overalls and scrap materials. It is ‘low level’ waste because it has very short half-life periods and the radiation it gives off is mainly Alpha and Beta radiation which is easily deflected as long as you don’t inhale or ingest it. This ‘low level’ waste is generally disposed of by packing it into steel containers, compressing it into a sort of ‘pill’ and then stacking these inside a larger container which is filled with boron or simply filled with concrete. It can then be stored underground for as long as necessary.

The high level waste is more problematic, since it takes around a hundred years to cool down enough to be put through the final process of disposal, but even that is manageable - in part because there isn’t as much of it as some believe. Again, the perception is well adrift and doesn’t align with reality, partly because the photos that circulate on the internet and surface every time anyone suggests building a new nuclear plant, are of the rather haphazard and careless storage uncovered when the Iron Curtain fell and we had access to how the Eastern Bloc had just dumped a lot of this material. All of those sites have now been cleaned up and the problems addressed, but in the minds of the anti-nuclear lobby, nothing has changed. Once again, the alignment of risk and the perception of it is coloured by the inculcated ‘beliefs’ founded on hype and misinformation. Sadly, here as with many other such areas, one also encounters the mindset that says ‘if the government/big business says it - it must be a lie’.

The third example given in the article I referred to above is an even more sensitive one. Food. Those who demand ‘bio-food’ only insist that this is because they want ‘healthier’ food devoid of insecticide or ‘artificial’ chemicals. There is usually a second agenda in that they refuse to eat anything ‘genetically modified’ and argue that this is ‘unsafe because we don’t know what the longterm effects are’. The sub-plot there is actually much simpler - they don’t like the fact that these foods have to be bought from the companies that created the seeds - because the modified plants can’t naturally reproduce. They hate the fact that someone might make a profit from the sale of the seeds or the creation of a food which is drought resistant, insect resistant or contains vitamins which may actually be healthier.

So they insist on eating food grown with ‘natural’ fertiliser, ignorant of the fact that they have a much better chance of contracting E-Coli from a tomato grown in pig or cow dung than one of Monsanto’s modified plants for growing in a greenhouse. ‘Golden Rice’ must be banned, because it is ‘genetically modified’ despite the fact it could cut malnutrition and eye disease in populations dependent on rice as their staple food. The fear of what the Media have labelled ‘Frankenfood’ and the hatred of anyone actually making any money from their research overrides everything else. Once again the perception of risk is coloured by factors having nothing to do with the actual risk perceived. Presumably the deficient diet, as perceived by western anti-commercial, anti-progress campaigners, is the lesser of the two evils and therefore must be tolerated for the ‘greater good’ of eradicating profit and progress. Unfortunately it is also likely to eradicate a large slice of humanity - but that is presumably also for the ‘greater good’. Whose, is a moot point.

A large part of the problem of risk perception is explained in a second article I have recently read, entitled “5 Cognitive Biases That Affect Our Work Performance.”  Put very simply, the way we see things or respond to things can be slewed by one or more natural biases we have built into our genes. The first is ‘Confirmation Bias’ which predisposes us to look only for the information that confirms an already held opinion or view. The second  is termed ‘The BandWagon Effect’ and is perhaps most simply explained as the desire to be ‘onside’ and to be part of the ‘team’. Dissenters are outsiders, often reviled, so we ‘go with the flow’ rather than try to form our own opinion. Third is ‘Negative Bias’.  If we are only exposed to negative stories about something we will, eventually, come to think of that as ‘truth’ and reject everything positive we hear. This is a problem we have with Mass Media - bad news sells, good news doesn’t so there is a built in bias in the reporting of events. If we add in a tendency to distrust certain sources - then the negativity is further reinforced. (OK, I’ll admit that if I am told the sun is shining by a politician, civil servant or Greenpeace and a few other advocacy organisations - I go and check for myself that it is).

Fourth comes what is termed ‘Functional Fixedness’, where we put on the blinders and stick to our preferred sources, or our preferred methods of doing things and refuse to acknowledge any others. This often leads to failure and a worse situation, but the experience frequently is rejected as ‘it worked the last time’ so it can’t be me that is wrong. The fifth is perhaps the most pernicious pitfall. Called ‘Projection Bias’ it leads us to think everyone else sees and thinks of things as we do. This is what leads us to think something must be so self-evident to everyone else present, we don’t need to explain it at all.

When we put all of this into the matrix as we wonder why some folk are scared witless at the mere mention of Ebola, or of a nuclear power plant, or even of GM crops, the picture that emerges is a complex one. Better communication is not the only answer, after all the internet is supposed to give everyone access to all the information on everything - isn’t it? 

Oh. Yes, back to point number one on the cognitive biases list - we only search and accept the information that confirms …

A Crisis for Science?

I wonder how many see the irony in the various artists, internet bullies calling themselves atheists, secularists, and so on attacking the ‘fantasy’ of ‘religion’ while holding up ‘science’ as the model of rationalism and perfection? The fact that many don't understand either ‘science’ (except in the broadest sense of its supposed methodology) or religion (except in the 'Sunday School' simplicities) or the fact that science is seldom ‘settled’ on anything often makes me smile. The best example of this is the present dilemma in the field of Physics. For the last 45 years at least, physicists have searched for proof of the ‘Supersymmetry’ Hypothesis (It’s not a ‘Theory’ until all the evidence is found that confirms it), and hoped, with the Large Hadron Collider and the recent much trumpeted discovery of the ‘God Particle’, otherwise known as the Higgs Boson, to have it. 

What the LHC and Higgs Boson have produced so far is far more questions than answers. Some physicists are now privately saying that if the next run of the LHC doesn’t provide the proof they are looking for, the whole hypothesis may have to be binned. That will leave the entire science of Physics looking for a new explanation of a whole range of things, not least being why things have the Mass they do. This is one of the reasons I love science and the search for scientific understanding of the universe - though in this case they are looking at the sub-atomic universe of Quantum Physics. For a true scientist, each new ‘discovery’ is simply cresting the latest ridge and catching a glimpse of the next valley, the next range of mountains, or the next ridge. Sometimes, of course, it means acknowledging that the current route is impassable, that it is a dead-end leading to nothing but a void, and that it will be necessary to retrace one’s steps and find a new route.

An article in the latest edition of Scientific American to reach me, spells this out rather well. In “Supersymmetry and the Crisis in Physics” (page 24), the authors, both themselves physicists, explain that the supersymmetry hypothesis makes it possible to explain a number of things in quantum mechanics when we try to extend our understanding of it. Chief among these is the concept of ‘mass’ and what gives a particle the mass it has. Wrapped up in all of this is the concept of ‘dark matter’ - which we can’t see, and can’t find either. The hypothesis suggests that every particle has a hidden ‘superpartner’ which balances the equation. The hope was that the Large Hadron Collider would provide evidence of this ‘supersymmetry’ as well as proof of the existence of ‘Bosons’. It hasn’t.

At least, it hasn’t done so to date. It has, however, raised a whole crop of new and exciting questions, and provided plenty of new insights. Space, in quantum terms, is a very busy place. The next run is scheduled for 2015 and will be run at a higher power than the previous series, so there are high hopes it will deliver the goods. As the authors of the article put it - 

“If super partners are discovered in the next run of the LHC, the current angst of particle physicists will be replaced by enormous excitement over finally breaching the threshold of the super world. A wild intellectual adventure will begin. 

Yet if super partners are not found, we face a paradigm rupture in our basic grasp of quantum physics. Already this prospect is inspiring a radical rethinking of basic phenomena that underlie the fabric of the universe. A better understanding of the Higgs Boson will be central to building a new paradigm. Experimental signals of dark matter, that lonely but persistent outlier of particle physics, may ultimately be a beacon showing the way forward.”

In short, if one hypothesis fails, we will need another in order to understand what we currently think we understand. I find that exciting, and obviously so do a number of the people involved in this. One of the criticisms of the ‘supersymmetry’ model is that it is ‘too neat’ and that suggests, to some, that it may be wrong. It will be interesting to see how this develops. There are several other hypotheses on the table already, these include a ‘multiverse’, ‘Extra Dimensions’ having a warped geometry, and Dimensional Transmutation. 

All of which leaves me (a non-physicist) wondering about a whole range of scientific ‘proofs’ based on assumed values, and assumed behaviours. My favourite at the moment is the serious submission by a group of mathematicians, that the entire universe is, in effect, a hologram. They arrive at this conclusion through some very complex mathematics (way beyond my understanding of mathematics at any rate) which is based on what we know about the fact that everything, animate and inanimate, is made up of vast numbers of sub-atomic particles. In other words, if we ‘lost’ the ability for all the billions of atoms to hold themselves together in the patterns and groups they currently hold (think a Star Trek ‘Transporter’ beam) we would simply fly apart into our component atoms. The problem is that no matter how much we learn about the sub-atomic level of everything, we still need to understand why it takes the form and shape it does. Why does one combination of particles produce atoms that produce living things, and another combination produces rocks. As one scifi writer put it many years ago - All Flesh is Brass. 

So, I suppose the next BIG question for the Japanese team is, who is operating the program that operates the holographic projector that assembles everything into the form and shape it is? Oops, perhaps that’s now wandering back into ‘religion’ …

For me, science provides insights and explanations to many, many things, and that is good. It opens doors, and fuels the search for answers to many things, but the key scientific principle I have learned over the years to accept is a simple one. Nothing is ever ‘set in stone’. In science there is no ‘never’ - at least not when it is being done by real scientists. Those I know, argue and question everything regularly, they test hypotheses to destruction, then try again. They have taught me that nothing is ‘impossible’ and no one can ever say something will ‘never’ be achievable or happen. To them the failure of one system simply means they have to look in another direction - perhaps even admit they were wrong and try something they once rejected.

This is why I love science and don’t find in it any conflict with my faith. Science often provides answers to questions faith cannot answer, and at other times it makes me take a fresh look at things I had never before considered. I may have only the most basic grasp of quantum physics, but I can’t wait to see what the next run of the LHC produces. Whatever it is, it will be an exciting time for science and for each and every one of us whether we realise it or not.

Easter and the empty tomb ...

Today is Easter Day, the day the women visiting the tomb of Jesus to finish the burial preparations, in other words, the proper embalming of the body hastily wrapped and laid out in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea on the eve of the Sabbath or Passover. To their horror, the body was gone, so were the guards the Sanhedrin had posted to ensure no one took and hid the body in order to claim exactly what they feared - that Christ had indeed 'risen from the dead'. But the curious thing here is that the 'thieves' had apparently unwrapped the body - though they left them in a position which suggested it had simply been 'extracted' from the wrappings, leaving them empty. The single item not where it had originally been placed, was a 'napkin' (KJV translation) that had been used to cover the head and face.

That had been carefully folded and placed in a place apart. That is, in itself interesting, since it was, and is,  a signal given by the head of the household at a Jewish meal, that the food may be cleared - the meal is finished.

Why is this 'curious'? It suggests that, if it was the work of 'grave robbers' they were extremely well prepared, and had no fear of being disturbed. Since the Sanhedrin had taken the precaution of posting guards - veterans unlikely to be frightened off by a handful of grave robbers - something else must have occurred to do so. Interestingly there are independent accounts in existence that say the Sanhedrin later paid the guards to say they were attacked and the body stolen, a story picked up in recent years every time an ossary is found bearing the name 'Yeshua' and touted as 'possible' proof that the Sanhedrin story is true. Since 'Yeshua' (Jesus in Hellenised form) was a very common name at the time of the crucifixion, these 'discoveries' actually prove nothing.

It is often also claimed that the resurrection chapters of the gospel accounts were added two or more centuries later. That claim falls when the author style is examined for Matthew, Luke and John. Those books display the same 'author style' throughout, and all three were written in the form we have them today by 80AD. How do we know this? Quite simply because papyrus fragments exist which show that later copies were accurate. The exception is the Gospel of Mark - probably the earliest of the four, and probably based on the memories of Peter himself, and filled in by the observations of Mark, the 'youth who ran away naked' from the Garden of Gethsemane, in whose parents house the Last Supper took place. The final chapter of that is different, and was added later. Why? Largely because the scroll from which the present version was copied had been damaged, quite possibly in a fire, and the ending destroyed. Legend has it that the original was damaged in the fire at the time of Nero. It is that 'reconstruction' which has become, courtesy of the Internet, 'proof' that all the resurrection stories are false.

What do I believe? I believe that Jesus of Nazareth did leave the tomb. What remained were the grave clothes, the pain, the wounds and the blood. What came forth was a new being, the forerunner of what we are all to become. His friends didn't recognise him, and we are not able to judge why on the evidence available. Though the way the story is written we can draw the conclusion that there was no sign of his wounds or suffering (remember he'd been flogged and then crucified - the flogging alone would have left some serious wounds on his body, even without the wound inflicted by the soldiers spear, or the nails going through his hands and feet), and that something else about him had changed dramatically.  The fact he 'appeared' to several people who knew him well and wasn't recognised is strongly suggestive of this, but one thing had not - the way he 'broke the bread' he shared with them.

I believe, therefore, in the Resurrection. I believe that in Christ, we see what is to be. This is why I have no hesitation in saying with Christians everywhere - Christ is Risen. Hallelujah! He is risen indeed. Hallelujah.