Category Archives: Science & Technology

Questions and musings on all things Science and technology related

Philosophy, Science & Technology, Spirituality

Shouldn’t we Keep the Faith?

6 Comments

Unbelievable!

WASSUUP!

And I mean EVERYTHING! You, me, a leaf on a tree, an octopus, a puff of wind, the moon and stars or Bob. Especially Bob. Unbelievable, but there it all is anyway. It’s crazy! Crae, crae! .

Isn’t it? Is it just me, or do you catch yourself strolling along in a bit of nature or an urban sprawl, along an empty beach or just gawping up at the majesty of the heavens on a clear winter’s night, and just think “WOW I’m actually here, and thinking about me being here and how all this other stuff is here, and I’m here actually looking at it all. It’s unbelievable!”.

And then, one day, there it is. Maybe you were eight years old or maybe fifteen, but probably not older than that, and a whisper of a question drifts into the back of your mind, uninvited like a little grey, innocent puff of cloud….

“Hmm, just how did all this stuff get here in the first place?”.

And right there in that moment, my inquisitive little padawan, you are royally buggered…..FOREVER!

Couldn’t just let it go, could you? Couldn’t just do the ole empty-headed “Oooh thas pretty init love?”. Now you have to deal with the fallout from that harmless-looking question for at least the rest of your life, but maybe FOR ALL ETERNITY!

And it’s not in fact harmless at all, is it? In fact, it’s the single most complex question that you have ever asked, and now we all have to be here to try and deal with it, and it’s just so exhausting!

Still, no use in bitching like Trump about it is there? So in the words of Hannibal Lecter as he is about to push the Commendatore Rinaldo Pazzi out of a very ornate window in Florence, spilling his intestines all over the street and tourists below, “Okey Dokey, here we go”.

We take very little at face value, do we? If someone tells us something, we like to understand whether that thing is true or just made up, don’t we? Surely we need that?

“How do you know?”

“Do you have any evidence to support that claim?”

“Did anyone else witness it?”

“Who told you that?”

“Did you just make that up?”

Our entire judicial system depends on not taking things at face value, albeit that might not have always been true.

Villager: “She’s a Witch!”

Judge: “Is she?”

Villager: “Yes, she’s a witch”

Judge: “BURN HER!!!!”

Ok, I’m exaggerating, even then we used to apply the stringent witch test of seeing if she floated. If she did then she was clearly a witch and sent to the stake whereas if she sank, she was innocent but dead from drowning.

Whilst today, our judicial system calls for very detailed evidence to prove the guilt or innocence of a witch the accused, the corroborating evidence needed in other aspects of our society to support any given postulate, doesn’t appear to be that great. Sometimes, huge swathes of support from great numbers of people for a particular view can be garnered despite there being a complete vacuum of evidence to support that view.

I give you the 2020 US Presidential election. The strength of belief in large portions of the Trump base, that the election was rigged or fraudulent, is so strong that these people felt the need to lay siege to the Capitol building in Washinton DC in an attempt to overturn the election. They were/are prepared to start another civil war! Four people gave their lives for that belief and one police officer gave his life defending the truth. The basis for this belief? Trump said so. He said so over and over again to anyone that would listen, via every outlet that would carry his insane claims. No matter that over 80 court cases brought alleging voter fraud were summarily dismissed by various State and Federal legislatures, including the Supreme Court. No matter that no evidence of any fraudulent activity has been uncovered by anyone during or since the election. Despite the complete absence of any evidence of wrongdoing, this very large cadre of people (some 33.8m or 45% of Republican voters supported the assault on the Capitol), have simply taken it on faith that Trump is telling the truth and that everyone else is lying to them. The go-to position of everyone else in the world appears to be…

“Dumb bastards”

and whilst this is an incredibly powerful argument in the example I have given, it’s also lazy and somewhat arrogant thinking. Not all Trump voters are white supremacist, misogynistic, hardcore racist, uneducated, conspiracy toting, baseball-cap-wearing, dumb-as-dirt rednecks; it just feels that way. Some Trump supporters are black, and beyond credulity, some are women! WTF! All of these people have seen fit to put their faith in this awful travesty of a human being and his fantasies, against all reason, logic or fact.

“Come on Creasy, everyone knows they are just a bunch of dumb shit-kickers”

Hmmm. In the words of a very famous bloke from Palestine 2,021 years ago

“Let he who has not sinned, cast the first stone.”

Good old JC, he had a quip for every situation, didn’t he? We’d all like to think that we aren’t like these Trump voters but actually, none of us is really any different. We might kneel at different altars, but we kneel nonetheless.

You are wrong Creasy! I don’t like to say it because you are such a clever bloke with amazing insights and very good looking, but you are wrong about this! I am nothing like those gob-shites”

Very well, I will prove it to you, and when I have, I want you to leave me an apology in the comments….and another compliment about how good looking I am.

There are currently 7.8bn people on the planet and you are indisputably one of them. Of these, according to sociologists Arieta Keysar and Juhem Navarro-Rivera in 2017, there are only 450-500 million atheists and agnostics worldwide. That is only 6.4% of the world population; 93.6% of the world’s population believe in some sort of deity. Billions and billions of people affiliate themselves with structured religions such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Sikhism and many more.

Think about that for a moment. Not one single shred of credible evidence has ever been produced that proves there is a God, and yet the vast majority of us believe in some omnipotent being(s), that created everything. For many believers, their Faith is so strong that they would happily lay down their lives for their God. They even have a word for it; martyrdom! Many already have. Isn’t that unbelievable? Yet there it is, it’s a fact. Statistically, most of you reading this Blog believe in a God of some sort (yes, both of you!), and all three of you believe in something you can’t actually prove.

Let’s take a brief look at Faith in God. There is even less available credible evidence for the existence of God than there is for Trump’s claim that he won the US election, yet the vast majority of humans still believe God exists.

The accepted “evidence” for God, is written down in books like the Bible (Old and New Testaments), the Quran, the Torah or other sacred texts, and for huge portions of the population, these texts are compelling. For these believers, words and insights such as these could only come from God, and God used his prophets, or a Messiah and his disciples, to bring us his thoughts and his commandments via the written word. These written texts may be compelling, but are they enough to create and sustain such a large body of Faith in God on their own? I don’t think so, so there must be something else.

Let’s talk about “inherited” Faith as an evidentiary source for a mo’, because in my opinion, this may be the single biggest factor for Faith in God.

A child trusts nobody more than his or her parental unit. If they say Santa Claus exists, he does. If they say the tooth fairy will come to take the tooth and leave some money under your pillow he will, especially if the parental unit makes sure of that by removing the said tooth and depositing said money whilst the innocent, but somewhat naïve, little sausage is sleeping.

Which of us has not half-eaten Santa’s Milk and Cookies on Christmas Eve to convince our little angels that Santa came? It’s little surprise then, that our children believe in these things until such time as we tell them they aren’t real. Then, there is the painful realisation that a) magic isn’t real after all and there are no Unicorns, and that b) Mummy and Daddy are lying little shit-bags. My 12-year-old daughter has only recently discovered that a Haggis is not a trumpet nosed wee beasty living in the Scottish Highlands, because I didn’t disabuse her of that belief.

In like fashion, few parents tell their children God is not real and so, he stays real until such time as the child questions that belief. Many never do. For some reason, parents draw a distinction between Santa Claus and God. One is fun, the other a serious matter involving the eternal glorification or damnation of one’s soul. My own grandmother, a strong Catholic, would “hunt” down any of her grandchildren that hadn’t been baptised and baptise them herself. She was afraid that they might die and spend eternity in purgatory because they still carried Original Sin around with them (they get forgiven this sin when they are baptised). This distinction, and certainty that God is real and serious, probably derives from the fact that nobody said he wasn’t, and because people grow up in a world where sin is also very real; each one being marked down in their eternal ledgers.

Make a queue! Time to be Judged you ‘orrid bunch of sinners!

Fear of God’s judgement and eternal damnation in the afterlife becomes a real factor in how we choose to live our lives. Conveniently, the right way to live can be found written down in the aforementioned sacred texts, and our laws tend to be largely aligned with them (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours wife etc). This inherited tradition and the reinforcement provided by the rituals, mysticism and ceremony of the religion they are born into, combined with the fear of God’s judgement in the afterlife, becomes a powerful dogma that successfully confirms Faith in God but also provides a powerful disincentive for anarchy in this life.

The belief in an afterlife and a judgemental (but all-loving) God, gives many people a sense of purpose too. What greater purpose than to serve God, live in the way s/he has prescribed and avoid sinning. If you do sin, and the sin is not a very big one, ten Hail Mary’s, two Our Fathers and an act of contrition will sort you out, and eternal happiness will be yours. Our ability to reason forces us at some point in our lives to ask “Why am I here, what is my purpose?“. Pleasing God and being rewarded with eternal life in paradise, provides a pretty good answer to this question.

This isn’t true for everyone though, and it would be wrong to say it was. God as creator simply doesn’t work for some, and they search for answers in other quarters. Very few, including atheists and agnostics, sit back and decide not to believe in anything though!

Typically the Faith argument falls between the Believers and those that believe Science can answer how everything got here and where everything is going to. Science is a very compelling competitor to God, not least because it starts from a different place than religion. It starts by stating upfront, that every theory that has not been definitively and empirically proved could be wrong, no matter how elegant the theory is. It also starts out from the premise that the work of Science is to disprove theories raised, not to prove that they are correct. Believers make no such compromises or allowances.

“So what does Science say about the origins of Creation then Creasy?”

If you are going to ask questions like that you really need to be prepared for the consequences. Are you? Are you ready? Because if you aren’t I don’t want to go to all the hassle of writing it all down!

Ok then, you asked for it….

Science says that everything can be explained if only we could come up with a single unified theory of everything. This single theory would bring together all of the different branches of Science like Relativity, Thermodynamics, Quantum Mechanics etc. to definitively show where everything came from, how the universe came into being, it’s history and how everything will turn out.

“And where are we with that Theory then?”

A model of the expanding universe opening up from the viewer's left, facing the viewer in a 3/4 pose.

It’s a bit of a mixed bag to be honest.

On the one hand, Science is pretty good at history and predicting where the universe is heading. For example, Science can explain the history of everything in the Universe from 10-36 seconds after the Big Bang to right now.

Cosmic Microwave Background

In addition, Science does not only explain the theoretical history of the Universe, but it can also point to it in the sky and show us, so we can witness it by looking back in time with our own eyes at the light from the early Universe. In 1965, two chaps called Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias inadvertently stumbled upon the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), because it was interfering with the radio receiver they were building (they subsequently won the Nobel Prize for this discovery). They couldn’t figure out what was going on and at one point, they even got out some brushes and cleaned the receiver because they thought it might be bird poop that was causing the problem.

Bird Poop? Really?
BIG BADA BOOM !

When that didn’t work, they had to think of something else. They, and subsequent observers, noted that the radiation noise they were picking up was uniform across the entire sky, and in every direction. This discovery provided definitive proof that the Big Bang happened. Had there not been a Big Bang, the temperature of the sky would be different in different parts of the sky because it would not have been causally connected at some point in the past when the Universe was much smaller. General Relativity predicts how the universe should have evolved since 10-36 seconds after the Big Bang and guess what? It has, and to a ridiculous degree.

Winter is Coming….
First Photograph of a Black Hole clearly showing Hawking Radiation

Extrapolating from that history and continuing to follow the natural implications of General Relativity, Scientist can also predict pretty well where the Universe is heading, and you’re going to need a coat because it’s going to be cold. They call this the Big Freeze. We now know that the Universe will never shrink or contract, it will keep on expanding and everything in the Universe will continue to get farther away from everything else. As it expands, the Universe will “cool” and eventually, all matter in the Universe will be consumed by black holes. These will then evaporate, and as they do Hawking Radiation will be produced (a whole bunch of massless photons). Eventually, the back holes will go “Poof” and disappear too, and all that will be left are the photons in a cold, dark, very uniform Universe.

So, pretty much the whole of science agrees on the history of the Universe from 10-36 seconds after the Big Bang to now and have effectively proven this history by what we can actually see. Science is also agreed on the predicted evolution of the Universe to a cold empty sea of photons as I just described. It’s just that bit at the very “beginning” and the bit right at the very “end”, that is giving everyone the Ick.

“Well of course it is Creasy, but if they would just open their eyes they would see that God is the only thing that could have set it all in motion, and Judgement day will mark the end of everything”

Whoa, steady on there. Way too early to lay down those particular cards matey. I haven’t finished yet.

So, I’ll bet that most of you out there think the Universe started with the Big Bang right?

“NO IT DIDN’T !!!”

I bet you thought that the sequence of events was:

  1. Singularity (a bit of a mystery where this came from – leaves a bit of a crack in the door for God)
  2. Big Bang (Start of the Universe but we don’t know what made it go bang – door open a wee bit more)
  3. Inflation (a period of rapid exponential expansion of the Universe just after the Big Bang)
  4. Expansion (Long and much slower expansion of the universe just after Inflation ends)
Burn baby, Burn!

Well, that’s just wrong! Where on earth did you get that idea from. Honestly, I wonder where my tax quid goes sometimes. I might as well tip my tax in the back garden and set fire to it!

The right sequence is :

  1. Inflation (Not originating from a singularity and it occurs before the Big Bang)
  2. Big Bang
  3. Expansion (as per #4 above)

So, no singularity then? Now it seems like a small thing, and perhaps you are thinking that this has changed just recently but no, it’s not a small thing and apparently it changed about 40 years ago and those scatter-brain scientists didn’t bother to tell us! Apparently, the sequence we were all taught at school had a few problems that were incompatible with inflation happening after the Bob Big Bang. Moving Inflation to before the Big Bang solves these issues precisely, and better explains the Universe we currently find ourselves deployed in (for a very easy read about this and the problems solved have a read of Ethan Siegel’s article entitled “What Came First: Inflation or The Big Bang” in Forbes here).

“So is there anything else you haven’t told us that we should know about before we declare God the winner Creasy, because you still haven’t explained the origin of the Universe yet”

Well, there is this one other thing. There’s this other chap called Sir Roger Penrose (Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford), who is also having a bit of a rethink on how everything “started”. Penrose worked with Stephen Hawking on black holes and he’s a Nobel prize winner, so that’s pretty good then.

His latest theory, called Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC), postulates that our Universe is just one aeon in an endless succession of aeons/Universes. It’s an alternative theory to the Big Bang without throwing out Big Bang altogether. CCC is consistent with our current view of the History of our Universe in that it stipulates that Inflation happens before the Big Bang, but instead of thinking of the Big Bang as the beginning of everything, it is more useful to think of the Big Bang as marking the end of the previous aeon. The new aeon/universe then expands and evolves directly in line with Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity with all matter being consumed by black holes in the latter stages of the aeon. They then evaporate leaving only massless photons behind (Hawking Radiation).

All sounds familiar so far. You still with me?

“Yes Creasy! This is fascinating”

Ok, good! Let me know if you need a fag break…

Salvadore Dali

In this late stage aeon, where we only have an ocean of massless photons, the related concepts of time, distance, big and small will lose all meaning and to all intents and purposes, the Universe “loses track” of how big it is. Due to this lack of “awareness” of its size, Penrose states that Big and Small are effectively the same thing and therefore the conditions for a new Inflationary period exists (rapid expansion of the Universe) which will then be followed by a transition to the slower expansion of the new aeon/universe of the kind we are experiencing today. This transition point is what we recognise, in our classical history of the Universe, as the Big Bang.

Nope, don’t say it. We’re not finished yet!

The Energy required to bring this Inflation and Big Slow Expansion about (much better nomenclature), is provided by the ocean of photons left over from the evaporation of the Black Holes at the end of the previous aeon. Even though photons do not have a mass, they do have energy. Hold onto this thought because it’s important.

Energy doesn’t go anywhere. The law of Conservation of Energy states that in all cases, energy comes from one store and can only transfer to another. Energy cannot be created and it cannot be destroyed. All the energy present at the Big Bang is therefore still present in our Universe today. If there was an aeon previous to our aeon as Penrose suggests, then all of the energy from that aeon would be present at the end of that aeon too.

The following excerpt is from a Cornell undergraduate Sara Slater, who went on to study at Harvard as a post-graduate student and who is now a researcher at the Kavli Institute, MIT. Sara sums up how matter arises naturally from energy during the early stage of the Universe.

“In the beginning, there was not yet any matter. However, there was a lot of energy in the form of light, which comes in discrete packets called photons. When photons have enough energy, they can spontaneously decay into a particle and an antiparticle. (An antiparticle is the exact opposite of the corresponding particle–for example, a proton has charge +e, so an antiproton has charge -e.) This is easily observed today, as gamma rays have enough energy to create measurable electron-antielectron pairs (the antielectron is usually called a positron). It turns out that the photon is just one of a class of particles, called the bosons, that decay in this manner. Many of the bosons around just after the big bang were so energetic that they could decay into much more massive particles such as protons (remember, E=mc2, so to make a particle with a large mass m, you need a boson with a high energy E). The mass in the universe came from such decays.”

HOLY SHIT! There it is! At the end of one of Penrose’s aeons there are only photons, and at the beginning of ours what do we have? Only a whole bunch of photons that haven’t decayed into particle pairs yet, init-dough?

Coincidence? Je ne pense pas mon brave!

“Hang on Creasy, now it’s you who are jumping the gun isn’t it? Is there any evidence…at all…that any of this wish-wash from Penrose could actually be true? All seems a bit far fetched to me”

What, more far fetched than a Big Bang that nobody can explain where the energy to make that Big Bang happen came from unless it was an omnipotent being you mean?

The notion of a cyclic cosmos, with no beginning and no end, that appears to be fully compliant with all the laws of the Universe and that provides the perfect ingredient at the end of an aeon to seed and power the next, sounds pretty intuitive to me.

Of course, a little physical evidence would go a long way toward making me a firm believer though.

Fortunately, Penrose claims that we can actually observe the results of this process, by identifying what he calls Hawking Points in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). He defines a Hawking Point as the signature of the Hawking Radiation caused by the evaporation of Black Holes in the previous aeon. These would appear as very precisely sized circular temperature variations in an otherwise wholly uniform CMB. Penrose and his colleagues published a paper in 2018 which states that he and his colleagues have in fact made such observations of precisely the right size, in the Plank and WMAP satellite data, with a very high degree of confidence (+99.98%). So that’s pretty good then.

You had me at “Hello” Rog!

In the interests of full disclosure and objectivity, despite these observations, many people in the Scientific community have been pretty scornful and an itsy-bit rude about this theory from Penrose, but remember, Science starts out from the point where it tries to disprove a theory. This wouldn’t be the first theory that Scientists peed on, only to discover later it was right in the end. Until there is general acceptance that there is in fact irrefutable evidence to support CCC, then it remains just another theory.

“So it MUST be God then Creasy”

Well, I can see why you might think that. I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that. If all these bright scientists can’t agree and prove that it wasn’t, then why not God? I get it. I don’t believe it, but I get why this becomes an option.

For the life of me though, I just can’t fathom the purpose for an absent God. I don’t understand why he can’t just come to dinner and show us that he is God. I can think of a million things I could ask him/her to do that would help me believe that s/he is God.

“Go on then, walk on water”

“Sink under the water, and stay there for a day without any mechanical breathing apparatus”

“Fly”

“Grow wings and fly”

“Take me to heaven and let me have a look around”

“Let me meet my mum and dad in Heaven”

“Help me find my GoPro in the Red Sea by parting the waters right where I lost it”

“Make the Smyths sound good in my ears”

“Reduce the population to 500m”

I could go on all day

“Make Donald Trump a good person”

“Make Jeremy Corbyn useful”

“If Jenny has three bags of sweets with 12 sweets in each bag, and Bradley has a box of 4 chocolate eclairs, and Sue has a puppy with floppy ears, how many Km have I travelled if I have 23 postage stamps and a flask of coffee?”

“How many fingers am I holding up behind my back”

Any one of these things would constitute incontrovertible proof that God was real, but s/he’s not coming to dinner is s/he because for some reason, having Faith in God is way more important than having Knowledge of God? Because of that, I just don’t know what s/he is for, so instead of “Why not God” I end up with Conformal Cyclic Cosmology.

God can’t just turn up, shoot enough energy into a singularity to create the Universe and then naff off for the next 13.8bn years without a by your leave. And anyway in that theory of the Universe, creation only took less than 10-36 seconds because everything after that doesn’t need a God because science can fully explain everything as a natural process. What did s/he do before that? If Penrose is right, there is no “before that” because we are in an endless cycle of aeons that needed no kick start. If the Big Bangers are right, then what has God done after that? If we are saying that God’s useful purpose lasted between time mark 0 and 10-36 seconds to set everything in motion, then, really?

Don’t we end up with Occam’s Razor? This states that all things being equal the simplest solution is generally the right one. For me, the simplest solution is that we have not yet figured out what natural process took place, but we have a bloody good theory in Conformal Cyclic Cosmology and I believe, that in due course, we will find the evidence needed to convince the rest of science and everyone else that CCC is true.

But that evidence is a pretty important missing piece, isn’t it? Angry atheists, the real anti-Religion anti-Godders like Richard Dawkins or Ricky Gervais, tend to skip on by this “how did everything get kicked off” and simply adopt a more aggressive “people who believe in God are a bit stupid and so are their religions, because there is no proof for a God” argument, without stopping along the way to provide any scientific evidence for how existence came about. They forget that Science is in the middle of a massive cosmic game of Cluedo, and the only thing we know for sure is that it wasn’t Colonel Sanders in the library with a candlestick!

Placing one’s faith in science today, regardless of whether it is the classical view of creation or Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, is no more justifiable than placing one’s faith in God. It’s that simple. It’s also why you should never discuss religion at the dinner table.

Something else that is simple, is that regardless of whether there is a God or not, there is no getting away from the fact that humans are spiritual beings. The spiritual experiences we have throughout our lives tend to be cherished moments. It can be as simple as watching a drop of rain slowly run down the glossy slope of a leaf, or as momentous as lying sheltered in a shallow culvert on a mountain in the middle of a blizzard.

These moments are when I feel connected to something outside of me, to the natural world around me and to the impossibly elegant feats of natural engineering like a spiders weave, or the way trees sometimes lean in toward each other when they should all be leaning in the direction of the prevailing wind. Why do they do that? Are they aware of each other? Do they need the physical and spiritual connection of another just like us? I know that observing these connections between things, emotionally and spiritually connects me to them too. I can’t explain it. I can’t prove it. I only know it’s true.

It would be very easy for me to conclude, as someone who has placed his faith in science to ultimately explain everything, that life is a fortuitous accident and that there is no grand purpose or meaning; things are the way they are because that’s the way they are. However, I have been increasingly drawn to the notion that our purpose is finding the connection to everything in the Universe, starting with the pebble in my shoe.

The Lakota people call this Wakan Tanka which is often translated as Great Spirit, but also as Great Mystery. Wakan Tanka is the sacredness or power in everything. Every grain of sand, every cloud, every star, every river and every being whether that being is a person or a mouse, a flower or a tree. I, and everything else in existence, have borrowed energy from the Universe and that energy flows through everything and between everything. Energy and Mass are equivalent, so every “thing” in existence is ultimately energy. Today that thing exists as matter, and one day as a function of entropy (the state of any system tending towards randomness), the Universe is repaid as it decays and returns to energy. In this sense, we are truly eternal because the law of Conservation of Energy states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed. Today I exist as Matter. Sometime in the future, what was me will become energy again.

Maybe it is our intuitive understanding of this flux between energy and matter, that gives rise to concepts like the soul, reincarnation, eternal life and spirituality. We have a natural tendency to anthropomorphise: “It can’t be just the way it is, it has to be more like me“. Maybe this tendency pushes us to add personality and intelligence to the energy that flows through and around us, and we call that God?

“in a gentle way, you can shake the world” – Mahatma Gandhi

I have always maintained that there is no upside to atheism. Not much to look forward to really. Hope is what keeps us going, isn’t it? Isn’t it comforting and hopeful to believe that we are eternal and go on after our lives have finished? For me, the knowledge that everything I am, and everything I have ever been will persist, is comforting, but I choose to believe that persistence is not a soul in the religious sense but rather the conversion of the matter that makes up me, into the energy borrowed from the Universe. Everything I was, gets to be part of the future and one day in that future, some of the energy that was me might be lent to another Mozart or another Gandhi or another Georgy Best, on some distant planet in another galaxy, or even in the next aeon.

The worst of all lives is a life without hope. A life without belief in something leads to a life without hope. So, whether you believe in God, Science, the Great Spirit or the leprechaun at the bottom of your garden, nobody can prove you are wrong (but that last one is ridiculous because everyone knows leprechauns live at the end of Rainbows to guard the gold). So I say ignore the sceptics and those who would ridicule your own particular brand of Faith because, in the end, these folks tend to be a bunch of smug pseudo-intellectual wankers when you get right down to it. So, give to other Faiths the same respect you would like from them. Keep an open mind. Keep hope alive and keep the Faith.

Fiction, Light Relief, Philosophy, Science & Technology

Shouldn’t you leave my GoPro alone?

4 Comments

I love to travel, don’t you? It’s such a buzz. The excitement builds the closer the trip gets until it’s only a few days away, and then it gets all frenetic and busy.

” Have you checked us in online?

I can’t find the passports babe!

Have you booked the car into the valet parking yet?”

I love the valet parking! Just drop it off and leave the keys, and then a few short steps to the terminal building.

I love the limo pick-up more. 

Oh lovely Limo Pick-up
How I love thee though
I love thee twice, nay trice as much
as going low price, cheap eco....

Then there’s my favourite bit of all, well almost. Fast-Track. I LOVE FAST-TRACK. It’s not the fact that you get through customs quicker, I couldn’t care less about that. It’s the walking past the big, huge queues of angry looking people who don’t have Fast-Track that does it for me.

As the doors of the Business Lounge swish open, welcoming me into the sumptuous interior, I always have an incredibly strong urge to turn and shout at the top of my lungs

“I AM ENTERING THE BUSINESS CLASS LOUNGE WHERE I WILL DRINK AND EAT FOR FREE! I MAY TAKE A NAP ON A FULL-LENGTH BED, OR HAVE A HAIRCUT OR A MASSAGE WHILST ALL OF YOU TRY TO FIND SOMEWHERE TO CHARGE YOUR HUAWEI PHONES!”

Then there’s the sitting in the huge mahoosive seats in Business, sipping champagne and nibbling a canopé, whilst those same, now red-faced on the verge of a meltdown people, file past with their backpacks and their Costa coffees and their half-eaten caramel raisin muffins, muttering under their collective breath about how these bastards have never done a real days work in their lives, and Lu in the background bitterly complaining…

“My Entertainment system only has 73 channels Daddy and my seat is too wide and I cant kick Mummy’s seat in front because there’s too much legroom, and why does it keep turning into a bed with duvets and pillows and everything when I press this button?”

“yes, yeS, yES, YES, YES, YES, 7,7,7,7…. “

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s slow this thing down before we all do something we regret, shall we?

My point was, I love to travel. Always have. And whilst my wife and daughter say I’m a travel snob (dunno what she’s talking about), let me tell you that I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. 

OK, that’s not mine. That was from that great scene in Blade Runner with Rutger Hauer, but I have seen some pretty amazing stuff.

I’ve stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon and watched the sun set over the desert. I’ve swum in 3 out of 5 of the earth’s oceans. I’ve driven across the US, coast to coast, in a car that cost $250. I’ve bummed all around Europe and lived on a beach in Greece for 6 months. I have sat and warmed myself amongst the ancient ruins of the Acropolis, with a bottle of Retsina, a loaf of bread and Plato’s Republic. I’ve swum with Sharks and Whale Sharks in the open sea. I’ve seen some of the most beautiful reefs you can imagine, in the bluest, clearest waters of Thailand, the Maldives and the Red Sea. In fact, here is a great picture of an extremely healthy reef in the Red Sea. Notice the sleeping octopus under the brain coral?

Oh, hang on a mo. Just a tick. Yes, that’s right. That picture is on my GoPro SITTING ON A CORAL REEF AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BLOODY RED SEA!!

“HOW ON EARTH DID THAT HAPPEN CREASY?”

Well, I’ll tell ya if you’ll just calm yourself down a bit.

We, that’s me, my wife and daughter, were on vacation in Egypt. Amazing country and amazing people. It was the perfect sunny, hot Egyptian day. We decided that we would go snorkelling in the Red Sea, because why wouldn’t you? It’s only one of the best snorkelling/dive locations in the world. Crystal clear waters and some of the healthiest reefs I have ever seen.

I love to snorkel on coral reefs, but I always wished I had a record of what I had seen. So, a few years back, I decided I would get a GoPro so I could film these soon-to-be-gone natural wonders. I also decided to get a headband that attaches to the GoPro to leave my hands free. I don’t know what for. Maybe for grappling with a particularly aggressive parrotfish or to point dramatically (with both hands), at some point of interest.

Now, these headbands are great. Everything you see, the GoPro also sees. You have to learn to turn your head slowly and get the angle of the camera right or it ends up looking like you’re being attacked by a Great White whilst examining your own nipples. Once you have cracked these two though (head and angle, not the nipples), these headbands are the dog’s bollocks.

Anyhoo, we’d decided to go snorkelling in the Red Sea and we managed to find a good boat that would take us out to the really nice reefs about an hour or so offshore. Once or twice, the crew pointed out dolphins gambling around the boat as my wife and daughter read and sunbathed on the afterdeck. I spent most of my trip making sure I had my GoPro all set up, in the right waterproof case and properly attached to the headband and with plenty of battery life.

When we arrived, I got all excited about getting into the water. I rinsed my mask in the soapy water provided, donned my fins and mask and then I slipped the GoPro headband onto my head. I changed the angle of the camera to where I knew my nipples would be absent from the shot, and I was all set.

One of the key things to remember when you are using one of these headbands is to make sure you hold on tightly to the camera as you enter the water. Two reasons really. If you are jumping in from a high deck, the force of the water can change the angle of the camera lens and we’re back to nipple shots. The other rather obvious reason is to prevent the headband from coming loose and falling off.

I know what you’re thinking. Creasy forgot to hold onto the GoPro as he jumped into the water and it slipped off and sank down to the reef below.

WRONGO!

I held on perfectly. I struck the perfect pose as I entered the water holding both mask and Camera in place. So you shouldn’t jump to conclusions, should you?

Once I was in the water and back on the surface, I looked around to see what’s what. Either my wife or my daughter was calling to me from the boat, so I raised my mask and said

“HUH?”

Whoever it was muttered some gibberish which I pretended to hear, and then I pulled my mask back down and started my Red Sea Reef Adventure. As I glided along, I made sure to slowly move my head from left to right so as to capture the fullest view of the reef 25ft below. When I noticed something of particular interest, be it a colourful fish or a bright coral, I would stop and look directly at the item of interest and be still for five to ten seconds to get a good shot (you can make stills from them later), before gliding gracefully away to the next spot.

The reef was magnificent. Nowadays, it is quite common to dive on a reef only to find that it has bleached and is dying. If ever there was a more telltale sign of Global Warming, it is the destruction of the world’s reefs. I always feel very lucky when I come across a healthy reef, and particularly happy that my daughter is creating memories of something that could well be gone by the time she is all grown up.

After an hour or so, I glided back towards the boat feeling relaxed and content. I was intrigued to see what the camera had picked up that my eye might’ve missed.

As I approached the ladder of the boat, I bent down to remove my fins and passed them up to a crew member. Then I reached up to remove the GoPro and….I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that it slipped off while I was snorkelling around the reef.

WRONGO AGAIN!

It had actually come off when I raised my mask to listen to the inane babble of my wife and daughter.

“WHAT A DICK CREASY!”

Steady on. It’s a simple mistake to make. As I had raised the mask, so the headband had been flipped off behind me and the GoPro had sunk to the reef below. What? Have you never done something incredibly dumb in your life?

What made it worse, is that it dawned on me what a complete and utter twat I must have looked, paddling around, slowly turning my head left and right, to my mind demonstrating to any onlooker the correct way to get impeccable GoPro shots.

vot a deek Creasy!

Of course, the boat had drifted while I was out, so the odds of the GoPro still being directly below us were about as strong as Neddy the Blackpool donkey winning the Grand National. Nonetheless, I pleaded with the crew, who took the whole thing very seriously, to come and help me look, and implied that there would be a magnificent reward for the recovery of the GoPro.

These lads were like fish. We were in about twenty-five, maybe thirty feet of water, and these boys were up and down like a bride’s nighty as they attempted to first find, and then recover, the GoPro. All to no avail. We searched around for about 20 minutes but it soon became clear to everyone that the dumb white boy had properly lost his camera and there would be no reward today.

WTF Creasy Bhenchod!

A gloomier boat ride home you have never seen. Mostly the crew, who appeared to be truly distraught that they had missed out on the reward. It was clear that they blamed me for ruining their day. I was none too cheerful myself and not entirely sure I would make it back to the dock. Lu had her head back in her iPhone and didn’t give a monkey’s, but the wife? She chuckled contentedly all the way home. When I implied that had it not been for them distracting me it would never have happened in the first place, she chuckled a bit harder. This one would take a while to get old.

When we got back to our room, the conversation took a different turn

“Shall we get you a new one babe? No? You sure? I bet we can get one here in the hotel if you want one babe? Are you sure you’ll be able to hang on to this one though Jacques? ……heh heh heh”

Lu had something else on her mind.

“Daddy, what will happen to the GoPro now?”

I stopped and reflected for a moment before I said,

“Well baby, it’s probably still on and capturing all sorts of images on the reef, but eventually it will run out of battery and just lie there. Maybe a tourist will stumble across it and it will somehow make it’s way back to us?”

“But what if nobody finds it?”

“Well in that case, as the years go by, the coral will hopefully grow, and eventually the GoPro will become embedded in the reef until it is finally totally buried.”

“So will nobody ever find it then?”

“Well, never say never baby, but it’d be pretty unlikely…unless”

And then the Irish kicked in. Want a good story? Go to any pub in Ireland and buy a man a drink, and he will regale you with tales of leprechauns and the Republic until you buy him another drink, and then he will regale you some more.

“Unless…..one thousand years from now, all the people become extinct due to global warming. Then twenty-five thousand years later, after every sign of humanity has been covered over by the sands of time, a shining, slender, silver craft descends through our atmosphere, down through the clouds and swoops low and fast over the land. Searching. Searching. Until finally, its course takes it out over the clear, blue, unpolluted waters of the Red Sea, where it sinks lower and lower until it seems like it is just skimming the tops of the waves.

In a moment, the craft comes to a halt and hovers silently over the water. If there had still been people to hear, they would have heard the low hum of the craft increase as it starts to circle slowly around the same spot on the water. Has it found something? What can it be? Its sensors have picked up something. Something small and in the water. Maybe it’s nothing at all, but the sensors….something is there.

A small aperture in the belly of the craft seamlessly opens and seven shimmering orbs emerge. Immediately, they drop and sink beneath the waves, too small to hold beings but perhaps they’re drones of some sort. Seekers.

A little while later they surface and gently rise to meet the craft overhead. The aperture opens and the orbs slowly disappear inside one by one.

Onboard the craft, the visitor lifts the object that one of the Orbs has recovered. It has clearly been manufactured. It’s anything but natural. The angles are measured and symmetrical in a way that nature rarely is. The visitor became thoughtful. Scans of this world revealed no signs of any civilisation and yet here was this object. There are symbols on the casing of some kind. Perhaps the linguistic science group will decipher this later.

The visitor notices a button on what looks to be the top of the object. Pressing the button achieves nothing. Perhaps its energy source was depleted? Examining the object further, the visitor identifies the energy port and touches a panel in front of him. A fibre as fine as spider’s silk flows from the panel and connects itself to the energy port on the device. He presses the button again.

The screen on the device flickers into life. The visitor touches another console and the images on the screen of the device slowly appear holographically in the air in front of the visitor.

The visitors capacity for learning is clearly advanced, and before long the visitor has worked out how to playback the recorded content, which now starts to play on the holographic display.

Really?

Beings! The moving images on the device are clearly biological beings. Tactile beings clearly familiar with one another. Close. A family unit perhaps. Two mature beings and one smaller being. A black furry being also appears to be part of the family unit.

As the visitor continues to watch, images of structures, large groups of structures and rudimentary ground, air and marine vehicles are displayed. There are also many, many beings. The bipedal beings appear to be self-aware and intelligent. They make organised, systematic sounds that can only be language, and less ordered sounds that can only be emotional responses to stimulae. Other species are also apparent but appear to be less capable of organising behaviours or verbal communication. However, the black furry creature, who the bipedals in the recording refer to as “Bob”, appeared to have emotional responses at least as well developed as the bipedals.

As he watched, it became clear that the extremely good looking, and physically fit bipedal was the alpha in the group. The other’s referred to him as John or Creasy or Daddy or Babe or Handsome. These designations seemed to be entirely interchangeable.

As the visitor watched, the bipedal known as Creasy was now on a marine vessel and had evidently attached the device to his head via some means. Looking at the device now, the visitor could see no sign of how this attachment could be achieved and concluded that it must, therefore, have been either some degradable headband arrangement or the heads of these beings were magnetic.

Creasy was now looking down at the water from the edge of the vessel, before raising his hands to hold onto the camera and what appeared to be a mask. This being then suddenly launched himself into the water from the vessel and became briefly submerged before surfacing and looking about, gasping and spluttering for air.

The camera had picked up some sounds emanating from the vessel. Creasy turned to look in the direction of the sound. It appeared to be coming from the alpha’s mate. A creature of such beauty and grace that the visitor had to wonder what had attracted her to Creasy in the first place. She was calling out to creasy…

“Hey baby, are joo hokey in dere? Joo looked like joo landed flat on joor stomach!”

For some reason unbeknownst to the visitor, for it would not have affected the audibility of the exchange between the two beings, Creasy reached up and lifted his mask. As he did so, the recording device fell from his head and submerged beneath the waves drifting down toward the large crustacean organism below.

As it drifted down, it would periodically point upwards to show Creasy propelling himself frenetically along the surface, slowly moving his head from side to side as he did so. Every now and again, Creasy would halt in the water for quite a long time staring at something on the large seabed organism. Then for no apparent reason, off he would go again.

“WHAT A DICK CREASY!”

As he watched, the visitor’s shoulders began to shake and then heave as the realisation of what had just happened dawned on him. The visitor opened his feeding orifice and emitted a long loud howl.”

I stopped, opened my eyes and looked at my daughter expectantly.

“Why do you always do that?

“Do what?”

I said.

“That. You always end up goin’ on and on talkin’ rubbish when I could be on my iPhone”

I was a little saddened by, although not unused to, her response.

“I think I needed a way to make being such a plonker ok. I like the idea that all those memories we captured are not lost forever and that someday, someone will see them and remember us. All of us.

I think I just needed to convince myself that we should just leave my GoPro alone and let time figure out what to do with it. Now I don’t feel so bad about your Mum making me lose it, and we can forgive her and move on.”

She never did replace that GoPro.

Sometimes, me and Lu wonder if anyone found it or whether it is now buried in the coral. Whenever it does come up though, so does the story about the visitor, and Lu smiles and comes a little closer to hear it again.

Here’s a thought. If visitors do come, and we are gone by the time they get here, maybe they’ll find my GoPro, and then, because they have superior technology, they’ll be able to find this blog too!

So, if you are a visitor and you are reading this, first of all, Nanu-Nanu. Second of all, we were called Humans, Mankind, Humanity or Man and we were of the genus known here as Homo and the order known as Primates. Despite the nomenclature, 50% of our species were actually female – we called them women! We were sentient and in our history as humans (circa 200,000 orbits of the nearby star), many civilisations rose and fell. It may well be that other, less advanced, primate species have survived on Earth. That’s what we called this place you have come to. Earth.

We made some mistakes. Actually we made a lot of mistakes and it got us into trouble. So much trouble that unfortunately we cannot be here to greet you and welcome you to our world.

When we were here, it was still a beautiful place despite the mess we were making. During our lives (we lived, on average about 80 orbits of the star we called The Sun), it was becoming increasingly clear that the way we had created our society would not last. We were many, and we crowded together in great cities. We burned natural resources and filled our air with gases that warmed our planet too quickly, and we filled our land and oceans with our day to day detritus. We burned, and cut down the forests which were able to clean the harmful gases from our atmosphere. We didn’t think. Earth’s ecosystems were dying and we started to talk about the 6th great extinction event on our world. We didn’t believe.

Wilfred Owen Poetry Foundation

We fought wars. Sometimes we fought on a planetary scale. Often we fought so that one group could control more resources than the next. Sometimes we squandered our youth for no reason at all.

We stifled our imagination and creativity in the pursuit of material wealth and we consumed and consumed and consumed.

We lost our way.

It must sound horrendous, and in many ways it was. Perhaps you feel that it is a good thing that such a species has gone. We were not all bad though. We achieved some amazing things too.

We were scientists and learned how to harness the power of a nucleus by splitting it or by fusing them together. Our scientists were closer than ever to finding a single unifying theory for everything.

We were explorers, it defined us. We built machines that took us to the bottom of our deepest oceans. We built rocket ships so we could leave the confines of our planet. We visited our moon. Men walked there. We sent probes to the farthest reaches of our star system and some went beyond into interstellar space. Is that why you are here? Did you find one?

SpaceX vision

We began the development of the technology that would take us to the 4th planet in this system. We called it Mars. We were going to make a colony there and protect our species from any extinction-level event here on Earth. I suppose that didn’t happen?

We listened to the stars. Once we knew how, we listened every hour, of every day for one sign that would answer our most important question, “Are we alone?”. We didn’t hear anything. We dreamt about a time when maybe one day, friendly visitors would arrive and announce themselves, and we would finally know there were others. We could learn from them and maybe they could learn something from us but either way, things would be different from that day forward.

If we couldn’t hear anyone else and nobody came, we imagined a time when we might go to the stars and meet, well, you.

We were poets and artists and musicians too. We created works of art of such beauty that, if you could only see them or hear them, your heart would fill and your eyes would weep. I hope you find examples as you explore this place.

We knew how to love. We knew how to hold each other close when we were feeling sad and alone, or hungry and cold. Then we were at our best. You would have liked us, then.

I hope you are seeing our world the way we found it, not the way we left it. I envy you this. I think you would probably have to travel a very long way before finding somewhere that has the beauty and richness of our world.

But no need to go find somewhere else. Stay awhile and explore the beauty, grace and diversity of our world. Maybe you shouldn’t stay here forever though. Come and visit of course, but keep Earth’s location a secret. Find out about us and our ways, but learn from our mistakes. Make sure that others leave the Earth alone. Guard this place the way we should have. Let it stay an unspoiled paradise again. Oh, and maybe you should return my GoPro to the reef.

Until next time, stay well. Creasy signing off

Body Politic, Light Relief, Science & Technology

Shouldn’t we play a prank on the ISS?

2 Comments

It’s going to be April soon. More specifically April 1st.

There will never be a better time. We’re all down here. They’re all up there. Down here with us is the Coronavirus!

Oh come on! You have to see the practical joke potential in that for God’s sake!

Hang on. Rewind a bit. Just make sure we are all on the same page. The ISS is a big spaceship (International Space Station), which, at 357 feet is about the size of an American football pitch. It’s big, always occupied and orbits the earth 16 times a day. There are usually 3-6 astronauts there at any given time, floating about, doing all sorts of experiments and such, but it has been continually inhabited for the last 20 years. In total, 239 people have lived there. There’s a ton of other facts and figures about the ISS here but you get the point. Big spaceship, people on board, going round and round and totally away from the ole Coronavirus.

As long as we can control the uplinks to the ISS, we can tell them anything and they won’t know any different. Our current predicament presents an opportunity to execute the best prank since Orson Welles told us the Martians were coming!

There’s going to be a bit of co-ordination needed to pull it off mind, but there’s still time if we all dig in and put our minds to it.

What we should do (you’re gonna love this),….on April Fools Day (Larf? I nearly Coronavirused meself)…..just before the Astronauts wake up (can’t believe I came up with this)…..wait for it…………iiiss…….

WE SWITCH OFF ALL THE LIGHTS ON THE PLANET, GO SILENT AND MAKE ‘EM BELIEVE WE ARE ALL DEAD AND THEY ARE THE LAST HUMANS ALIVE!!!!!!

They’d be like

YAWN….”Hey Jess what time is it?”

“Hmmm? Mornin’ Andy. I dunno, I was asleep until you woke me, you dork”

“Hey Ollie, What time is it man?”

“Do I Lyook lyike a clyock you cryazy Amyericyan? Ayctyually I knyow thye tyime byecyause I am effyicyient Rysussyian Cyosmyonyaut….iyt’s Lyunchtyime”

“Ollie that can’t be right we always get woken up at breakfast time”

“Hold up Jess, he must’ve got that wrong. Need to get yourself an American watch Ollie!”

“Andy he’s right! We’ve missed breakfast – look at my superior American watch…IT IS LUNCHTIME!”

“WHAT? What in the name of snap, crackle and pop is going on down there in Mission Control”

“Houston? This is ISS. Come in please”

“Houston?”

“I’m not getting any response Jess”

“Thyat’s byecyause you hyave infyeryior American ryadyio eqyipmyent…lyet mye try on nyew myodyern Ryussyian Ryadyio Syystyem”

“Upravleniye poletom? Eto Olli, ya propustil zavtrak iz-za etikh imperialisticheskikh amerikantsev, zakhodite?”

“Privet, upravleniye missiyey?”

“I thyink thyey myust hyave gyone tyo lyunch. We hyave myany byeef styeaks in Myothyer Ryussyia”

Then, just when they are trying to figure out just what in tarnation and the heck is happening, we send the “Recorded Message”

ALIEN VESSEL, ALIEN VESSEL, COME NO CLOSER

This is a warning message from the ex-inhabitants (Wo/mankind or Huwo/manity) of the third planet (we called it Earth), of the star system with 8 (maybe 9?) orbiting worlds, to all Alien vessels (in the sense of extra-terrestrial, not immigrant) approaching Earth.

ATTEMPT NO LANDING ON THIS PLANET!

Our civilisation was attacked and annihilated by a Global virus called the Coronavirus. This virus attacks the respiratory system and unless you wash your hands, in the country we call the UK, you will die (cluster of little islands to the right of the big ocean, that looks like a squirrel eating a big nut. The nut is called Ireland. Note, you can wash your hands and survive in the North East of the nut but NOT, I say again, NOT, the South East, South, South West or West of the Nut.

ATTEMPT NO LANDING AND PLEASE MARK THIS PLANET WITH A SOPHISTICATED BIO-HAZARD BEACON (like in that awful movie After Earth) TO WARD OFF OTHER INTERSTELLAR VISITORS.

Live long and prosper.

And the ISS be like….

Nothing flusters Jess, but Andy and Ollie are crappin’ it. Especially Ollie who is apyoplyectyic!

“THyIS CyAN NyOT ByE HyAPPyENyING, THyEY CyOULDN’T DyROP US A NyOTE OR SyOMETHyING?”

We leave ’em stewing for about twelve hours with the message repeating over and over and over and over and over. This is plenty of time to stew a Russian, but you really must stir him every hour and a half if you want the meat to be tender.

We leave them twelve hours because no lights anywhere is going to be a bit inconvenient for us down here. Then, after twelve hours, all of a sudden, we turn on ALL the lights in the world at once, and we get the Bedouin nomadic tribes of the Sahara to make a huge sign with their campfires that spells out…

and the ISS be like

“PHEW!”

“But that was a good one eh Andy?

Andy?

Oi, Ollie where’s your bloody Soyuz gone?

Ollie?


ANDY?? OLLIE?? Where TF ARE YOU? IS THIS A PRANK?

She’s crappin’ it now.

See? We can only do this specific prank now because of the circumstances we find ourselves in, so shouldn’t we carpe diem the shit out of it?

A bit cruel you say. A bit inappropriate given the circumstances, you wonder. You feel I may have let my imagination get the best of me.

In my defence, there’s nothing to do because we are all locked in, and I’M BORED!

It does make you think though, doesn’t it?

I mean, I wonder what other specific things one might be able to do now, in these new circumstances, that we couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do before?

How often do you speak to your family? Especially if they live far away? I know I don’t do it very often, yet there is absolutely nothing to stop me. I have the time, and I am both a witty and interesting conversationalist. Who wouldn’t be delighted to hear from me? Who knows how much joy and light I might bring into their sad and mediocre lives!

Dunno why he keeps waking me up at 4 am…what the hell is wrong with him?

“Hey Google. Set reminder to call my sisters at 4 am every day”

I’m up with Bob at that time anyway so I’m sure they won’t mind.

Wasn’t it Reagan that said

“…. I couldn’t help but say to him [Gorbachev] , just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species, from another planet, outside in the universe. We’d forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries, and we would find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this Earth together. Well, I don’t suppose we can wait for some alien race to come down and threaten us, but I think that between us we can bring about that realization.”

Prophetic words. Nobody said the Aliens needed to be big, ugly, drooling, energy weapon totin’ human hunters. Turns out our Alien is a tiny little thing with pretty flowers sticking out like Shrek-ears, but look at how it’s affecting us. Our whole society is changing in a matter of days or a few short weeks. We have been confined to our homes and are unable to walk the streets without drones carrying megaphones telling us to get back indoors. Not here in the UK yet obviously, because we are made of sterner stuff and are impenetrable to the virus, but everywhere else.

Tangentially, the whole drone thing is just amazing out-of-the box lateral thinking and technology application. I cant wait to see ’em buzzing down our streets here in the UK blaring out….

“If you wouldn’t mind terribly returning to your home, it’s nearly tea time after all”

The most striking aspect of this crisis though is that we are all witnessing some very unusual human behaviours. On the one hand, you have the Moron Brigade hoovering up store loads of paper products, whilst on the other, we have whole streets of Italians standing on apartment balconies singing Bitch better have my money by Rihanna. This latter is just one example of how people are coming together, as confined, physical or online communities, to help practically or just to make people feel a bit better about what is going on.

People on Facebook and Twitter are circulating little leaflets to push through the doors of elderly or vulnerable people, offering help and support. Shop windows advertise local community support groups that are being set up to provide people in isolation with the aid they need.

Surely this is what Reagan was talking about. In our normal virus-free lives, altruism begins at home and rarely makes it out of the front door. We might donate a few quid to our favourite well-digging, child-caring, orphan-adopting charity every month, but bottom line? If you’re not a blood descendant, then you’re basically on your own.

(Sir) Bob Geldoff

Of course there are exceptions. That Irish chap did ever so well with Do they know it’s Christmas, Feed the Wooorld and Live-Aid. Then there’s Comic Relief that does a sterling job of raising money for good causes every year.

Over the past few years though we have increasingly seen less and less societal cohesion and more and more division. Urbanisation, Globalism, populist politics and careless thinking have all contributed to a society that more and more people are finding ruthless and unfulfilling.

Here’s the thing. I believe that the more we behave as though we live in a village the more we see the best of humanity.

I grew up in a village in the North of England. We left the doors open. People would just walk in and make themselves a brew. Simon, the milkman would come swooping around the corner on his bike, like a knight in shining armour, to defend the young kids on the street from any local bullies. We did visit ‘Lizbeth at the end of the road when she got dementia, and we sat with her as she asked “What time is it?” for the hundredth time in an hour. We all knew each other’s business and it was a good thing because it meant we were not only nosy enough but cared enough, to find out all about you before we went spreading rumours about you.

I lived in London for 23 years and barely knew who my next-door neighbour was.

So when I see village behaviours coming to the fore, when I see people giving a damn about not just their own family but everyone else’s, I become hopeful. How weird is it that all it takes is a little germ, admittedly capable of killing us, for us to change completely and be concerned for everyone.

I suppose the real question is, can we capture that and keep it safe? can we keep it up after we have expunged the little buggers? We live in interesting times. I’m hopeful.

Oh and Jess, Andy and Ollie. Don’t worry, we wouldn’t do that to you. After all, you’re the only ones who can see us all from up there.

But I could though.

Heh, Heh

Until next time, Stay well. Creasy signing off.

Science & Technology

Shouldn’t we spend all the money on fusion?

4 Comments

“We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon…We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.”

John F Kennedy – Sept 12, 1962 Rice Stadium, Houston, Texas

It’s all about Mass Defect. Remember that. We’re going to need that later in this one. Mass Defect and Einstein. That’s the magic in this article.

When I was a child, my Dad would wake me in the middle of the night and take me out into the garden. On those cool, dark evenings he would say, “Look at the stars“, and I would look up at the heavens rubbing bleary eyes. It wasn’t random. He would wait for those nights where the sky was cloudless, at it’s darkest and when the Milky Way was laid out in all her majesty. When I moved to the city, I discovered that you can’t really see the stars. There’s too much light. But up North, where we lived, and where everything is better (it just is, so get over it), it seemed like you could see them all. Great clouds of stars that make up our galaxy.

Shouldn’t we rename Sirius Bob?

My Dad was in the Royal Navy during WW2. He was a navigator. He had been trained to navigate by the stars, so he knew their names and the names of the constellations, and he would try to teach them to me. Cassiopeia, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor with Polaris, the North star, hanging off its tail. The Dog Star, Sirius, shining brightest on the sniffing nose of Canis Major. So many, but he seemed to know them all.

But he wouldn’t just show me the cosmos, he would tell me all about it too. I was 7 or 8, so a lot of what he said I really struggled to get my head around. He told me that the universe was 14Bn years old, and that there were more stars in the sky than there were grains of sand, on all the beaches, in all the world. He told me that when we looked at a star, we were looking back in time. The star was so far away that the light from it could take thousands, or millions, or even billions of years to reach our eye. When the light hits our eye, we are seeing the star the way it was thousands, or millions, or billions of years ago. It might not even be there anymore.

But he shared a lot more.

He told me our nearest neighbouring star system Alpha Centauri was about 4 light years away so it would take us 4 years travelling at the speed of light which was 186,000 miles per second to get there but it was impossible for anything with mass to travel at the speed of light because when you go faster your mass increases and so you need more energy to go even faster and when you go faster your mass increases and then you need more energy to go faster and by the time you get close to the speed of light you would have close to infinite mass and so it would take all the energy in the universe to go the speed of light and that didn’t make any sense did it and what was funny (lol) was that as you went faster time went slower than if you are just standing still and that’s nuts but for someone travelling to Alpha Centauri at the speed of light which was impossible because of the whole mass-energy thing it would only feel like 2 weeks there and two weeks back but here on earth 8 years would have passed for everyone and that was called time dilation and ooh gravity isn’t a force like people say it is “that’s the force of gravity that is” it’s actually the curvature of spacetime and spacetime curves around anything that has mass from a particle to a star or a black hole just like a bowling ball would bend the fabric of a trampoline if you put the ball in the middle of the trampoline but in all directions and that everything that has mass creates a curvature in spacetime and things that have less mass and that get close enough just fall into the gravity well of the thing with more mass and it looks like it’s being pulled but actually its just falling and we call that gravity and so that’s freaky isn’t it?

Can I go back to bed now please Daddy?

He also told me that our Sun was just another a star, and honestly I was surprised but at the same time, knew it had to be true. So all those pin pricks of light, scattered across the velvet black of night, were just the same as our Sun? Yes. Give or take. But all of them, every single one of the 1 billion trillion stars in the universe, worked exactly the same way, and the way they worked was called Fusion, and gravity makes fusion happen in a star.

For years, that was where I left it. That was the sum total of my knowledge of Fusion. A word and process that carried no meaning or understanding, just something I associated with how the Sun produced its energy without actually knowing how. At the risk of lumping everyone into the same dumb-shit basket of ignorance as myself, I would argue that pretty much everyone else has done the same.

“But why do you keep talking about Fusion Creasy? Why? Why?”

Fair question, and one which deserves an answer before we all take a deeper dive into how Fusion works. Yes, we are going to do a deeper dive, so ping the bell, and get off right here, if you don’t have the stones to follow me down this particular black hole.

And that’s like, a really good analogy? Because like, while I was writing this? It like, felt like there was no way out?

Data from Vaclav Smil (2010).

In the last 51 years, our energy consumption has spiked. Big Time. Our consumption has increased relative to population growth. Unsurprisingly, given that the vast bulk of our energy has been created by burning Coal, Oil and Natural Gas, CO2 emissions have also grown steeply, and now look what we’ve done. We’ve only gone and started the whole climate change thingy, or loike, the sixth extinction event or sommat!

There is some good news though. According to a report by McKinsey “Global Energy Perspective 2019“, energy demand will slow down and plateau around 2030, albeit Africa and India’s energy demand will double by 2050 in line with their predicted population growth and industrialisation. In addition, the mix of supply will shift in favour of renewables, so that by 2035, renewables will make up about 50% of the mix.

More good news! The CO2 emmissions are forecast to fall by up to 20% by 2050! Unfortunately, even with McKinsey’s lower energy demand forecast, which I’m not really bought into, a better outlook for the uptake of renewables and lower CO2 emmissions, we will still be on a pathway for a greater than 2 degree oC increase in global temperatures by 2050.

Thufferin’ Thuccotash, doeth’nt ithe melt at that temperature?

The scientists are telling us that we are out of time, and whilst ordinarily I might take that with a pinch of salt and file that particular nugget in the drawer marked “For my kids to solve”, the other day I got a letter from my water supply company calmly telling me how to preserve water now because climate change meant that we should expect hotter and hotter summers and so less and less water. Not in a few years time mind, right now.

I’M MELTING!

Antarctica has just experienced its highest temperature on record at 18.3 oC . The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, a glacier the size of Great Britain, is currently melting much faster than expected and will, on its own, produce enough melt water to raise global sea levels by half a meter. If the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet melts completely sea levels will rise by 3.2 meters. I don’t need to tell you how much it will rise if all the ice melts in Antarctica. Ok I do. It’s 61 meters!

That last scenario is a bit out there in terms of probability given the average temperature of -37 oC , but even with the 3.2 meter scenario you can wave goodbye to all those holidays in the Maldives readers. Oh, you haven’t been? Seriously, you should go. It’s amazing. Go soon, because they will be beneath the azure waters of the Indian Ocean in a few years. I would recommend the W or Conrad at Rangali, as the reefs and everything there are just spectacular.

Whilst losing the Maldives is clearly a worry, the likely displacement of 3bn other people, who have foolishly chosen to live at the seaside around the world, might just be more worrying. They aren’t going to give up the ghost and just be washed away in the flood are they? No these 3bn folks will have a bit of warning the flood is coming, and they’ll buy boats, or make a great Ark! They’ll think they can stop the flood! Miami is doing a pretty good impersonation of King Canut by spending a fortune on shoring up its sea defences, but one can’t help feeling that the ‘gators are going to be kickin’ it in the clubs of Miami soon. So where will all these people go once the oceans, unstoppably advancing, wash through the streets of New York, London, Miami and Los Angeles? Paris and Rome would have really worked well here instead of Miami and Los Angeles, but they’re not coastal.

WORK WITH ME CITIES! WORK WITH ME!

All these people are going to move inland to where we, the sensible folk, are. Prices will increase, as everything from housing to food will become less available. What do we do when we are competing for resources? Well, those of us with big guns go and kick the bejesus out of the people with little guns, and then we take all their shit.

On top of all this, our population is set to keep growing (“Shouldn’t We Weaponise Babies“). Extreme population is the central pillar of climate change. It is the driving force behind higher resource consumption. All the resources we consume require energy to produce or provide. So despite what McKinsey say, the predicted growth in population to ~10bn by 2050 WILL net-increase demand for energy. However, I agree that as we increasingly move to renewables, the CO2 emissions will fall, but at what rate and what’s our plan to scrub existing CO2 from the atmosphere?

If we wanted to stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow, to radically and rapidly reduce CO2 emissions, we could. It would mean a return to the stone age, but we could do it. Not really practical though is it? We just can’t build enough efficient renewable supply, to quickly replace the energy provided by fossil fuels though. Even if we could, I don’t think we should be tacking around ocean based wind farms just to get a look at the horizon. Whatever we do has to be practical and allow us to live in a world without these scars.

Energy.gov – Fission Power Station Schematic

We could increase our use of Fission based Nuclear power massively, but we have all heard about the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. The idea of our power stations melting through the centre of the earth whilst dosing us, and our food supply, with high levels of deadly radiation, understandably, frightens us. Going down this route also gives us a multi-millennial, and dangerous, waste problem that nobody wants. But, a lot of energy providers want to go there because it is a comparatively clean, and reasonably long term, solution to fossil fuels. I know because I did work for some of the big ones, and saw the forward plans that include more Fission.

Also, once we choose to go down a particular path, we have a tendency to stay on that path until it’s all used up. I give you fracking. I think the same genius that came up with the US constitution and the electoral college system came up with fracking. Having sucked up all the easy oil and gas, what do we do? We drill down beneath the water table and go breaking up the shale to release the hidden, and hard-to-get, oil and gas. All the while your corporate douche at the top is saying “It’s impossible for the gas to penetrate the water table”, whilst drinking a glass of on-fire-water from the local tap. A few earthquakes in Preston and the same douche is still fighting for the right to keep doing it.

We will go to insane lengths to stay on the fossil fuel path. If we push down the more fission route, it’s going to take a long, long time to “use up”, and while we are using it up we will be burying a lot of waste and living with the inherent risk of fission power station accidents. For these reasons, and because the more fission we do the less reason we have to spend all the money on fusion, I vote that we spend not another penny on fission power plants, and decommission the one’s that are still working.

What about Hydrogen though Creasy?

OK, fair point. On the face of it, Hydrogen looks hopeful. It’s clean, abundant and relatively safe, and merits more investment for certain applications. I would say transport in particular, as hydrogen fueled cars can be refueled in the same time it takes to fuel a petrol driven car, which I still think is a major barrier for mass take-up of pure electric vehicles. However, producing high volumes of hydrogen from it’s primary source on earth, water, is both expensive and energy inefficient (i.e. use almost as much energy to produce as you get from the hydrogen). Further, burning this kind of hydrogen, in large quantities, in power stations, to make electricity doesn’t make any sense, when we could fuse tiny quantities of hydrogen isotopes and get way more energy.

It’s time to rapidly move to a new, viable, clean, safe, economic and globally abundant fuel source that completely replaces fossil fuels and meets our future primary energy needs.

Only one solution ticks all of these boxes and it’s Fusion. So let’s make it’s acquaintance and then together, make an informed decision, to go spend all the money on it.

I want you to stay with me now. I promise you, you will feel better once we have been through this experience together, and it will bring us closer together in the “Shouldn’t We” family.

Now obviously, I’ve know all about Fusion for years. Way before I ever came to write this post. Some might call me an expert in the subject, but I couldn’t possibly comment. It’s a gift really.

I certainly didn’t research the subject to death, just in case any reader of this blog (and it probably will be singular), asked me a question about the subject and showed me up for a complete and utter charlatan of the worst order. Nope. Known all about it for yonks.

Do you remember right at the start I said it was all about Mass Defect and Einstein?

Pop quiz.

Hands up everyone who has heard of E=mc2? Ok, getting a few hands out there. Pretty much everyone I see. No, I see one way in the back there. Erm dude? Yes you. Checked shirt, tooth and the red MAGA baseball cap, 3rd row from the back? Might want to go find another blog. This one is just going to piss you off.

Hands up everyone who has heard of Mass Defect? 1….2….Really? Nobody? It’s no wonder we are where we are.

Anybody know what E=mc2 means? Know why it has any relationship to Mass Defect? So that’d be just me then. Shame on you. Shame on all of you. This is just so basic! I can’t believe you don’t all remember this from your physics lessons like me. Your poor Mum’s and Dad’s who worked so hard to give you a good education. I don’t know, I really don’t.

Energy = mass * the speed of light squared. Bet most of you knew that. But what is this formula telling us and what mass is it referring to? Well the answer to the second question is, any mass. Plug in any quantum of mass, multiply it by the speed of light squared and you will derive the energy equivalence of that mass. In answer to the first question, Einstein’s formula is telling us that mass and energy are interchangeable. Equivalent. The same thing.

Why is this useful when thinking about nuclear energy? Because of Mass Defect. I am going to use Mass Defect + E=mc2 to hopefully explain why so much energy is generated by a Fusion event. From that explanation, you should be able to intuitively understand why fusion produces 4 times the energy of fission.

I said before that the Sun and all the stars are powered by fusion and that is true. the Sun is just a big ball of gases made up of Hydrogen (70%) and Helium (28%). Carbon, Nitrogen and Oxygen make up 1.5%, and the rest is small amounts of neon, iron, silicon, magnesium and sulfur. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe, which makes sense when you think how many stars there are.

Because the Sun is such a big ball of elements, the mass of the star is also very big. It’s mass is the sum of the masses of all the Hydrogen (H) and Helium (He) and all the other bits and bobs (Tee hee – I wrote boobs first), which turns out to be 1.989 × 1030 kg. #v.effing.big

With this kind of mass, you can imagine the size of the dent the sun makes in spacetime. It’s humongous! It’s such a big dent that the gravity well created is so deep that all of the hydrogen and helium and whatnot, all fall in towards the centre of the sun. As they fall in, they all get squashed up together like commuters on the Northern Line at rush hour. There is so much downward pressure (gravity) that as they get squashed together, they speed, or heat, up. Wow, just like commuters on the Northern Line at rush hour, but they heat up a lot more than commuters. In fact they heat up to about 15 million degrees oC, at which point all of that gas becomes a superheated plasma. A plasma is just another form of matter like liquid, solid and gas.

Note that the nucleus of an atom is positively charged. If it comes close to another nucleus, it’s natural reaction is to repel the other nucleus just like when you hold the two positively charged ends of a magnet to each other, they push each other away. It will do the same if you hold the two negative ends to each other also. This is called Coulombs law and, fun fact, led to the dating saying ,”opposites attract”.

Fusion Schematic

When Hydrogen gas becomes a plasma, the Hydrogen atoms are moving at very high speeds. If one hydrogen atom collides with another hydrogen atom, the Coulomb force is overwhelmed and the Strong Nuclear Force takes over and pulls the two nuclei of the atoms together; Fusion. The product of this Fusion is Helium (He) plus 1 neutron and a whole bunch of energy. #so.much.effing.energy, that it’ll cook a Russian in Dubai in about 1hr 20mins (depending on the size of the Russian), but you should turn and baste the Russian every 20 minutes if you want the meat to be tender.


передай мне масло моя любовь
(Pyass me thye byutter my lyove)

Well that’s great! We just need to recreate the conditions on the sun and we’re cooking with plasma!

Well yes, that’s right actually, but making plasma here on earth is quite hard. For a start, we don’t have the Mass of the sun to help us create the kind of gravitational pressure needed to squash the Hydrogen atoms together. However, we can actually heat hydrogen gas up to 15 million degrees oC no problem, but without the gravitational pressure we won’t get a plasma.

To get a plasma here, without that gravitational pressure, we need to heat the hydrogen gas to 100 million degrees oC, 6 times the heat of the Sun, (#v.effing.hot).

Hydrogen has three forms, or isotopes; Hydrogen/Protium (1H) Deuterium (2H) and Tritium (3H). The fundamental property of all three, that classify them as Hydrogen isotopes, is that they all only have one proton each (Protium has no neutrons, Deuterium has 1 neutron and Tritium has 2 neutrons). We (that’s the Royal we), have found that the best isotopes to create plasma from are 2H and 3H isotopes.

To heat anything up to 100 million degrees oC, takes a lot of initial energy. Way more than you need to heat a pizza. The good news is that we have even conquered that, and now, we can reliably create a plasma. We’re creating them all over the place and in all sorts of ways, but I’m not going to talk about all the different methods and machines that are under investigation for Fusion today.

At 100 million oC we can fuse a Deuterium nucleus with a Tritium nucleus if the hydrogen density in the plasma is great enough to guarantee collisions. We do it pretty often now. The product of this fusion is a Helium isotope called 4He which has 2 protons and 2 neutrons. You also get one free neutron and a whole bunch of energy #4.x.more.energy.than.fission.

We’re going to take a wee Spanish pause here to understand why so much energy is produced when these two tiny little pieces of matter fuse together to form Helium. We are going to talk about Mass Defect.

The nucleus of an atom has a measurable mass that is called the atomic mass unit or, amu. The total amu of the nucleus is calculated by summing the amu of all the protons and neutrons in the nucleus. the various nuclei all have different amus of course as some have more or less protons and neutrons than others. Some are heavy like Uranium (235U) which has 92 protons and 143 neutrons, and some are light like the hydrogen isotopes 1H, 2H & 3H which all have only 1 proton and 0,1 or 2 neutrons respectively. If we look at the exact amu of the hydrogen isotopes we are using as reactants in the fusion event, then

  • 2H has an atomic mass unit (amu) of 2.013553 (1 proton one neutron)
  • 3H has an amu of 3.016049 (1 proton and 2 neutrons)
  • If we add these up we get a total of 5.029602 amu

When these two nuclei fuse they create products of:

  • 4He which has an amu = 4.001506 (2 protons and 2 neutrons)
  • One free neutron (1.008665 amu)
  • if we add up the amus of these products we get 5.010171 amu

Notice anything? Still awake?

The total mass of the reactants is slightly bigger than the total mass of the products. In fact it is precisely 0.019431‬ amu bigger. That’s a tiny difference though? In the noise. Two fifths of 5 eighths. Not worth talking about right?

WRONGO! It’s very important! Why would I be writing all this crap down if it wasn’t important?

This mass difference is everything baby. It’s the juice. It’s the filling in my sandwich man. It’s like Mass Defect Bra’. It’s gonna be the “m” in E=mc2 dude!

First we have to convert it to Kg though. There are 1.66054×10-27 Kg to 1 amu, so all we have to do is multiply our Mass Defect by that to get our Mass Defect in Kg

So m = 3.23 x 10-29 Kg (trust me, it just is)

The speed of light, denoted by the letter “c” in the formula, is 3.00 x 108 meters per sec (trust required again here because this is totally a constant everywhere in the universe)

So now we just have to run Einstein’s formula to find the energy released from a fusion reaction measured in Jeules (J)

  • E=mc2
  • E = 3.23 x 10-29 x (3.00 x 108)2
  • E = 2.91 x 10-12 J

Yeah baby! Everyone still with me? That is a totally awesomely huge amount of energy bro’!

Remember I said that having understood how fusion produces so much energy, you would be able to intuit why fusion produces 4 times the energy produced by a fission reaction? Can you? At first I didn’t understand why, but then it occurred to me, and it’s sort of obvious. If it’s all about Mass Defect and E=mc2, and the key term in the function is m, then ipso facto the Mass Defect produced by a fusion reaction must be greater than the Mass Defect produced by a fission reaction. Basically, bigger the “m”, bigger the “E”.

Unfortunately, our current fusion efforts do not produce quite as much energy as we need to heat the gas to ignite the plasma. What we are looking for, is a net positive energy output of say 10 x the ignition energy. If we could get the plasma to be self sustaining after the initial reaction, we wouldn’t care about this. The energy produced from a sustained reaction would soon outstrip the amount of ignition energy, but we can’t sustain the plasma yet, because it turns out plasma is really unstable. When a plasma becomes unstable (Plasma Disruption), it breaks down and all the heat is lost and you have to start all over again. It’s not a simple problem to fix and we will need some clever engineering to control it. Whilst we are getting closer to overcoming these problems, progress has been slow (we’ve been trying to solve Fusion since the 40’s).

When we have solved these problems, 80% of the energy produced will be carried, by the free neutron product of the fusion, outside of the plasma, at which point we can capture it and convert it to heat. We use that heat to heat water and make steam, which we then use to turn a steam turbine, which then powers an electric generator to make electricity for us to use. The other 20% of the energy is kept within the plasma and is used to maintain the heat of the plasma. Introduce more fuel (hydrogen gas) to maintain the density and off we go again, but this time without the external ignition energy. Now it’s self sustaining!

Zeus

I would argue that solving these problems is humanity’s single greatest priority, ever. When we solve these problems, we will become masters of one of the Universe’s primal, most fundamental and powerful processes. Only then, can we stand over Zeus, on Mount Olympus and wrench the lightening from his hand.

This is not theoretical physics anymore, it’s an experimental physics and engineering problem. It’s now about designing and building a machine that can do it, and keep doing it, as long as we keep providing fuel to the process.

ITER Tokamak schematic

I believe our best chance of building the first working, fusion reactor capable of sustaining a plasma for more than a few seconds, is a project called ITER. ITER is a collaboration of 7 states, which includes the EU, the US and China. This collective is constructing the worlds largest Tokamak . The device is planned to hit its “First Plasma” milestone in Q4 2025. They intend to maintain fusion for long periods and to achieve net energy. This won’t be a power plant though, this will be an experiment to prove the viability of Fusion energy production.

Having produced a viable fusion reaction though, how long will it take to design, build and test the world’s first commercial Fusion Power Plant? How many obstacles will be thrown in the way by those trying to keep the fossil fuel industries alive? Will funding continue and, if so, at what level?

I propose we set forth a Kennedy-esque Mission statement:

We should commit ourselves to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of building a device capable of a sustained Fusion reaction, and building the first of many Fusion power plants. No Single project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important to our future; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish

John F Kennedy & John A Creasy – February 2020

The Fusion mission,will be every bit as complex as the Apollo program, if not more so. Arguably it will have more significance to the future of Mankind, both here on Earth and as we reach out to the cosmos.

In today’s money, Kennedy invested $660bn in the Apollo program over 10 years. Today, we are planning to invest ~$22bn in ITER and we’re moaning about the overspend. The poor buggers even have a donate button on their website for Christ sake! In the grand scheme of things, the current level of investment is buttons, and we ought to be ashamed of our inability to grasp the awesome magnitude of the discovery and bounty that awaits us, if we could just focus our best minds.

I suggest in the title of this post, that we spend all the money on solving fusion. That’s clearly click-bait but the idea is right. Funding fusion research correctly is simply a symbol of the priority we, and our representatives, choose to give this enterprise.

So let’s compare Fusion as a priority to another.

Globally we spend $1.8 TRILLION each year on defence. Really? each year? WTF? Sometimes, we truly demonstrate that we haven’t really evolved very much at all. I’d call us apes that have lost a little hair, but I’m not sure the apes aren’t smarter.

How about this. I’ll alter my demand for all the money, and instead ask that we take just one year off defence spending in 2021, and give all that money to Fusion research. We can go back to the mindless development of smart bombs after that to keep the dimwits happy. Come on. One year? It’s nothing. You’d still have all your old bombs, ships, subs, planes and missiles to play with. Topple a regime here, prop one up there. You’d hardly miss it.

Ok, half of all defence spending. How’s that? $900bn. That’s a great deal. With $900bn left you could easily destabilise and invade a decent sized Middle Eastern country. What about Egypt? We haven’t done anything to Egypt since the colonial days. What am I thinking about? Iran. Oooh Iran eh? Anyway you choose, but give Fusion research and development the $900Bn so they can do something useful for the next decade and put all of you lot out of work. If there’s no oil to squabble about what will you do with yourselves? Jeez, that’s a bit scary init?

The work in Fusion may be like rocket science, but deciding to back and prioritise it, really isn’t. Government only ever acts when the outcry from the people becomes a clamour and is as loud as canon fire. This article is my opening salvo.

We must not trust those we have elected to make good calls in good time. They won’t. It’s up to us to make them make the right calls at the right time. Make some noise. You’ve gone to the trouble of reading all this, so why not go the next step and write to your MP, representative, local terrorist organisation or warlord and ask for half of next years military spend to go to Fusion Research. Worst case he chops your head off with a machete, but maybe he’s having a good day and says ok?

I look forward to the day when major energy consuming nations will take all their primary energy from this new technology. I can also imagine this technology providing light to places in our world where today, only candles light the dark. I can imagine it powering the habitats we build on the Moon or Mars, and the vessels we will use to explore our deepest oceans and the farthest reaches of our solar system. Maybe, one day, our neighbouring stars. New shores. Distant beaches.

I can imagine a time when the smoke stops and the air is clear and clean. What will it taste like? How will it smell? I remember vividly what I felt like watching Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969. I was 7, and I still understood what a vital moment that was.

I hope I will be alive to witness the moment we ignite a star here on earth.

___________________________________________________________________________

Please leave a comment and I’ll reply. Share with a friend. This is my first time out as a nuclear physicist so if you see any errors in the above keep them to yourself so I don’t feel stupid (not really – go ahead and tell me – if you must).

Body Politic, Science & Technology

Shouldn’t we take the parliamentary out of parliamentary democracy?

6 Comments
Image by Julius Silver from Pixabay

Calm down, calm down. This is not a post about Brexit. It’s mentioned but it’s not about it.

So relax. Wooosa. Woooooooosa.

Smooth, calm water. Breathe in……Breathe out.

It’s been a bit of a wild ride for the last few years eh? Bit of a roller coaster. What with the old US Electoral College process? That’s a corker eh? Some genius came up with that one. Trump becomes president despite not commanding a majority of votes from the people he is supposed to serve. He becomes the Nero of our times, but with nukes this time, because of some arcane compromise dreamt up by the Founding Fathers.

Then along comes old Cameron with his wheeze of offering referendums all over the place.

“Were bound to win” he says, “I mean, who would vote to leave? Narf, narf. Pass me the porter old boy”.

And that was just the Scottish referendum in 2014. I’m betting he had a bit of trouble with the old sphincter muscle during that one ‘cos, for a time, it looked a lot like Scotland was going to vote for Independence. Just squeaked it.

Bolstered by his “victory” in Scotland, and getting ready for the General Election in 2015, he pops another bullet in the chamber and spins the barrel again.

“I know”, he says, “We’ll offer a referendum on whether we stay in the EU in the Manifesto. Nobody’ll vote to leave the EU – no way! But it just might get me a second term”.

Morning after the night before….

The EU? Are we talking about that least democratic institution on the planet bar Kim Jong Un, EU? The same EU that everyone in the UK has been moaning about for the last 45 years and who are still alive to vote in the referendum? That one? That EU? Really? We didn’t see that one coming?

Click! BANG!! Ooopsy! Alas, poor Dave, we knew him well. Awww….apparently, she makes dresses that don’t make you look fat now.

Then there was the aftermath of the Brexit Referendum Leave vote. Oh Dear Lord. Three and a half years of absolute carnage while all the “democrats” who lost the referendum, tried to clamber aboard the parliamentary equivalent of a DeLorean time machine. Such determination to get the leave vote overturned. “They didn’t know what they were voting for” and “Everyone has changed their minds” and “Just run the referendum again, with the questions we want, that’s all we want…pleeeeeeaaaase?”.

And then the political betrayal. All the grubby, disingenuous politicians, from all parties, scrabbling around in the dirt trying to find a way to use Brexit to win power and in so doing, forgetting that the majority had spoken. This ain’t Star Trek people! The needs of the few do NOT outweigh the needs of the many!

Luckily, and I do mean luckily, a sort of democracy prevailed at the very, very last minute, and the original referendum result was sanctioned via an overwhelming majority for the Conservatives in the 2019 General Election. If the general election hadn’t taken place it would have been close. The will of the majority may well have been overturned. It’s as close as we’ve been to a civil war since, well, the civil war.

Meanwhile in other news, the Democrat held House of Representatives in the US compile a treasure trove of evidence of Trump’s alleged malfeasance and corruption, the like of which has not been seen since Pirates of Caribbean. The House elects to impeach Trump but everyone knows he’ll get away with it because he’s going to be tried by the Senate, which is controlled by guess who? His very own Republican Party! We know they wont convict because they have stated that they wont convict, no matter what the evidence is! Did the same genius that came up with the Electoral College system come up with that one too? Since Trump took office, he has single handedly shown that the American Constitution is a toothless instrument, if you just have the will to simply ignore it.

So all in all then, WTF??

Mariam-Webster Dictionary

There’s an old saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. There’s another old saying, “if it’s Fubar, then throw that shit away”.

Parliamentary democracy is Fubar. Very fubar. Tremendously Fubar. It’s so Fubar it couldn’t be more Fubared if it tried. It has shown that it can no longer be trusted to serve the will of it’s master, the people. For this crime, there can be no reprieve or pardon. Orff with its head! or as the French would say “En route par Madame Guillotine”. Time to throw that shit away.

We are gathered here today brethren, to consider an alternative to Parliamentary Democracy. A better democracy. A democracy that re-empowers the people. A democracy that returns sovereignty to the people and rids the world of second rate, partisan, unintelligent, dishonest and self-serving politicians once and for all.

It is my thesis that Parliamentary Democracy is no longer fit for purpose. Further, I will show that a new, better and pure form of democracy is available today that could never have been available before . Moreover, I will argue that it’s implementation is feasible.

I’ll state up front that whilst on the face of it this might appear to be a simple proposition, in fact, it’s not. I spent the morning in my kitchen the other day redesigning democracy and, it turns out, it’s quite tricky. However, nothing worthwhile is easy, so I persisted, and by lunchtime I’d cracked it. I think if we all work together, stay objective and really get our shoulders behind it, I think we can get this all sorted out by Christmas. So come on let’s get started!

The Vision

Bob

We are going to keep democracy, but we must move away from a system of indirect representative government, to direct government by the people, supported by an expert administrative infrastructure.

We will replace national and locally elected representatives, and the unelected house of Lords, with a clever little App on your phone called Bob (My App, so I’ll call it what I want). More about this in a mo’ because Bob (the App not our dog), is the key in the door.

There will be no general or local elections because there isn’t going to be anyone to vote for. Political Parties will be abolished. Why should we be limited by one party’s manifesto and voting habits inherited from our parents and their parents? We should be able to progress any idea no matter where it comes from, and we should all be sufficiently well educated and informed to know the difference between good and bad ideas.

Just to show that this is not some lefty, Che Guevarian anti-establishment rant, we are going to keep the Monarchy. Firstly, we really like the Queen (not so much Charlie, but you win some, you lose some). Secondly, the business case for our monarchy is overwhelming and we, the people, are not stupid……..cha-ching!

Taken From Brand Finance Monachy Report

Annual taxpayer cost of £292.6m against a contribution of 1.8Bn? Sheeeit, I’ll take dem numbers eva’ day of the week Bra’ (Side Note: my wife has suggested I really oughtn’t attempt urban slang very often or indeed at all, but I tend to think it makes things so much more jolly) .

The Civil Service will be empowered to run the administrative departments of government (Transport, Defence, Education, Health, Trade, Foreign Affairs etc). Heads of department will be appointed based on their subject matter expertise in the specific responsibilities of that department. These heads will not change every 5 years. Their pay / bonuses will be tied to achievement of prioritised SMART goals (Specific, Measured, Achievable, Realistic and Timed), set by the people. If they don’t perform, or deliver, they get fired by the people right then via Bob (the App not our dog).

Apart from these national bodies, there will also be local Administration at the County and Town level, so that local issues can be decided by local people and not be held up by national priorities. Bob (the App not our dog), will handle both.

Any individual aged 18 or over (we’ll call these people “Adults”), can propose and, if a simple majority of the people support it, be paid by the state, to create or amend national and local laws with the support of these local and national administrations. Similarly, any Adult can propose new national or local initiatives, that do not require new law to implement (like building a new local bridge or something).

A word about the Ministry of Defence. Defence is tricky. All sorts of secrecy and ability to act when faced with threats to National Security issues to deal with here. We are going to need some deep and expert thinking about the processes needed to authorise, and subsequently scrutinise, military action when we no longer have an executive branch. These processes will need to maintain our ability to act in time, whilst maintaining the secrecy our intelligence and military communities need to operate. This means that whilst major strategic military interventions (wars) can, and should, be approved directly by the people with a simple majority vote via Bob, tactical or counter terrorist interventions cannot. At least not by all of them. We might need a suitably qualified people’s COBRA (Cabinet Offices Briefing Rooms, Briefing Room A) that can come together quickly, on-line or in person, at times of National need. Like I said, lot of thought needed here.

Oh, and we will repurpose the Houses of Parliament into a very nice bowling alley (you can see all the way through from the Commons to the House of Lords you know?), with nice cafés and bars in the lobby. Bungy Jumping off Big Ben and a zip wire across the Thames to the Big Eye. Anyway, we wont be doing any lawmaking in there any more.

Hey, the White House already has a bowling alley, so you just need to turn the oval office into a Starbucks and you’re all set! Bham! (See? Jolly).

It’s time to take a look at how all this could work, which means we need to take a closer look at what Bob can do (The App not our….Ok, so I might need to rethink that app name. Got it! BobsApp!).

How it’s all going to work.

Even though Parliamentary Democracy is broken, it has been around a while. The first parliament, called an Althing(i), was formed by Iceland in 930 AD). Britain’s Feudal system was actually a form of Parliament because William the Conqueror established it in 1066 to take advice from the nobility and clergy. Our first proper parliament here in Britain though, was created in the early 13th century and the Parliament we have today is directly descended from that.

I decided to take a deeper dive into how the Parliamentary Process really works to see if there is anything that we could salvage from the wreck of our current system to build into BobsApp (much better).

UK Passage of a Bill – www.parliament.uk

I mean, for something to last this long, and pass the test of time, it must have had some inherant goodness that prevented the people from sweeping it away in a barrage of musket balls.

Checks and Balances. I think it’s fair to say that the entire current model, is a way to make sure that we, through the offices of our representatives, don’t introduce just any old crap onto the statute books. this is achieved by forcing Bills (Proposal for new laws or amendments to existing laws), through many different stage gates. This process is orchestrated across three different institutions before they can finally become law. In its simplicity and practicality, it’s beautiful really.

Which is a bit of a bugger to be honest, and in the hands of another Blogger, might have caused something of a hiccup in the narrative. Not I. I am made of sterner stuff.

DOWN WITH PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY! Down I say! It can no longer serve….ahh shit.

I can’t do it. it’s really not that complicated. Everything about Parliamentary Democracy works except one thing. Politicians are untrustworthy. Shocker. ‘Twas ever thus. The process is fine. The institutions are fine. Just think about the collective legal, constitutional and every other kind of wisdom aggregated in the ancient heads of the Lords. Do we really not want that collective wisdom to take a peek at the laws we want to introduce? Well I do. I wanna keep the Lords, and I want them to keep doing what they are doing.

I think Occam’s razor applies here. “All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one”.

We can’t burn down the whole house because one window won’t close. The problem we all have is that we don’t, and can’t, trust our politicians to vote in such a way that the will of the majority is reflected in the outcome. Ergo, the simplest solution is, don’t let them vote. Everything else can stay the same.

Any vote which currently takes place in the house of commons will now be taken by the people via BobsApp. We can leave the Lords alone, because ultimately power resides in the Commons, and we are going to move that power to the people.

There is no question about the viability of the technology. Each of us intuitively knows that such a voting app can be built. Every day I get crap coming into my phone via different apps that I’m supposed to do something with. It’ll be nice to have something important arriving for a change.

Removing this power to vote from our MPs however imposes a great burden on us the people. It will be up to us to follow, and be informed about, the proceedings both in Parliament and in the body politic. I think we are more connected today, more than we have ever been, but we’ll need to do more.

We will need to read the document that we are to vote on, and to understand what it will do. The way Laws are written will need to enable comprehension by lay people. This isn’t to say that lay people are not bright enough to understand them, but they can be complicated documents to read. If you aren’t legally trained or experienced at reading legislation, you could miss something.

There is a general assumption though that people are just too dumb and cant be trusted to deal with this stuff. These same people hold down jobs, drive cars, run their household budgets, put food on the table, take care of their families, go to church (or not), obey the law and sustain the fabric of society every day of their lives. They are more in touch with what matters to people than anybody else, because they are the commoners and they deal with real life all the time.

I would trust them every day of the week and twice on Sundays to make the right call over the Members of our Commons. It will be a new skill for sure but it will develop over time. We can add it into the school curriculum and get the kids to learn it from an early age. My daughter Lu (11) can tell you all about fusion, I think she can handle politics. In any case it has got to be better than what we have today.

So, Shouldn’t we remove the Parliamentary from Parliamentary Democracy?

Well no. It turns out it’s a really well designed system and we shouldn’t just throw that away. We should limit the power of it’s Members though because they now serve themselves more than they serve us. We can finally grant that power to all the people through our technology; BobsApp!

I hope you enjoyed this article! Please leave a comment and I’ll reply to you 🙂

Philosophy, Science & Technology

Shouldn’t we be polite to siri?

2 Comments

I was doing some grocery shopping in Sainsbury’s with my 8-year-old Daughter, Lu, a while ago. I was just heading down the pharmacy aisle on my way to Milk, Cream and Yoghurt. We needed full fat Greek yoghurt because I was doing my famous lamb biryani for dinner that night. We must have had someone coming over because we only do it on special occasions. We’ve done it for Christmas dinner a few times just to give Christmas time a bit of a kick. What can I say, people seem to like it.

Anyhoo I digress.

Yes, I was on my way to the yoghurt when I heard Lu speaking quite rudely to someone. Now we have made a point of raising her to be a very polite little girl, and whilst admittedly Lu can be something of a blunt instrument at times, she’s very chatty and generally speaking she is very polite unless she is fed up with who she is talking to (“Why don’t you just shadap Fatty Daddy”). She’s a one that one.

Anyway, whoever she was talking to was really getting it.

“You stupid thing, why can’t you answer a simple question”

I was taken aback.

“Oi oi, who are you talking to madam?” I admonished.

“Hey Siri, tell me a joke” she commanded.

The immediate sense of “God that’s so rude, what happened to please and thank you?”, didn’t diminish, as I realised, she was talking to my phone. In fact, I was every bit as disappointed in her as if she had been talking to a human being. I was surprised. So, I stopped right there, next to the indigestion tablets, and turned to Lu.

“Erm, Lu?”

“What?”

“I dunno why, but I just feel that you are being really rude to Siri. Do you think its ok for us to be rude to her just because she’s an AI?”.

“Huh?”.

The thought that came to me originated elsewhere, and I said to Lu:

“Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference; we should each be treated with appropriate respect.”

Arther C Clarke 2010: Odyssey Two

What followed was a discussion, about the nature of our future relationship with Artificial Intelligence entities.

Lu is going to sort out Fusion, right after she has met nerdy Brian, who keeps pushing his glasses up on his nose (in like a really cute way?), during her Quantum Physics Masters at Cambridge, so I felt having this conversation was just a relaxing meditation for her, a musing if you will. We covered a lot of ground. Not physically. We only managed to get from Indigestion tablets to Fishermen’s Friends during our discourse, but philosophically, we climbed Everest. Actually, that doesn’t really cover that much ground does it? We crossed the Sahara!

If you were walking through Hyde Park, would you kick a tree? Just walk up to it and kick the living shit out of it? Why don’t we see people doing that? How come we don’t just all spend our time walking from tree to tree screaming abuse and kicking the bark off those tall, leafy bastards? What would that say about us? I’m pretty sure it would say we were bad people.

Maybe we don’t do it, not because we don’t want to, but because we wouldn’t want anyone in the park to see us doing it. In this age of environmental “awakeness”, it would be unacceptable. People would run over and tree-kick-shame us shouting “how would you like it if I just walked up to you and kicked you?”.

“Leave that poor innocent tree alone you horrid person!” they might exclaim. They might even swear and threaten you with physical violence. Look what a hard time we are giving the people burning down the Amazon! Such is the level of empathy we are supposed to have with the environment these days.

Acid question though. Would you kick, or shout at, the tree if you were all alone in a forest and no one could see or hear you do it? I don’t know that I would, you know. I think I’d be ashamed. I’d feel guilty. I think most people would. Which is weird when you think about it. Our current understanding of trees suggests that the kick or the insult itself wouldn’t be “felt” by the tree. It’s not going to spend the next few days wondering what it did to deserve that kicking from that hiker. It’s not sensient, but it is alive, and generally speaking we give it due respect.

Is being alive the quintessential attribute of “being” though? Loads of stuff on Earth is alive but I wouldn’t say they are all beings. I don’t think of amoeba’s, or phytoplankton, or daffodils, or flu virus or trees as Beings. So I don’t think it is just about being alive. Descartes said “I think therefore I am”? So is it thinking that makes us beings then?

Bob!

Meet Bob. Bob, is our family dog. He’s so cute. Yes you are! Yes….you….are! Look at dat face. We love him to bits because he is so cute, but also because he is the cleverest dog ever! Not because he does tricks (he can do a few), but because of how much he understands and how much he communicates. He solves problems. He won’t come in after he has done his last pee of the night, until I give him a treat. I can’t just say the word “treaty” because he knows I might not give it him. It’s happened ok? I’m not proud of it, but there have been occasions where I said “treaty” but didn’t actually deliver a treat. So he has learned that could happen, and now, he waits until I have it in my hand and throw it into the kitchen and then he comes in, let’s me wipe his paws and then gets the treaty from the kitchen. I’ve tried teaching him to wipe his own paws, but honestly, if I cant get my 24 year-old University student son to do it, I’m not sure why I have such high expectations of Bob.

Bob has obviously thought this through. His actions are deliberate and calculated to get the outcome he wants. He has shown some creativity in his solution. He knows I want him to come in. I want to go to bed. He stands just out of reach, on purpose, and if I try to grab him he’ll bugger off to the other end of the garden and then only comes back, tail wagging, when I’m back indoors.

There is no question in my mind  that Bob is a sensient, loving, thinking, disobedient and creative Being who has his own ideas. I have no hesitation behaving toward Bob as I would anyone else. When I want him to give me something, I say “please”. When he gives it, I say “thanks”.  Anything else would be rude and disrespectful. In every sense of the word, he is a member of the family and is treated accordingly.

We, and about 32 million other dog owners around the world, grant Bob and the canine masses this respect, despite the fact that Bob can’t talk and shows little understanding of any academic subject or the universe. I am prepared to bet good money that there are no circumstances where Bob could pass the Turing Test yet we still offer the respect and courtesy we might show another human being.

“The Turing Test?” you enquire. Yes, the Turing Test. Now, I know all of you know what the Turing Test is, but for the people reading who have been buried under a rock since WW2 (I’m not explaining that abbreviation, I’m really not), a brief explanation is needed.

This test is named after Alan Turing, the chap that figured out how to crack the Nazi Enigma Machine code during World War 2 (dagnamit!). Ze Germans used this machine to communicate real time troop, air and naval movement orders, so pretty important really. It was believed to be uncrackable because the encryption key was changed every day which meant you had to crack the key every day. Turing realised that every order was signed off “Heil Hitler” and this therefore provided a constant he could use to crack the entire code every morning. Basically he won the war for the allies. For his efforts, and in true British enlightened fashion, he was thanked by HM Gov. by being sent to jail for being a homosexual. Hurrah! Gawd blesss the British Empire Ma’am!

A close up of a logo Description automatically generated

Anyway, the basic premise of the test is that if an interrogator (C opposite), is unable to tell the difference between responses from A or B (where A is a computer and B is a human), then the computer is judged to have Artificial Intelligence.

How long does it take you to figure out that you are talking to a computer when you have one of those automated Service Agents answer the phone? 5 seconds? Maybe 3? Imagine if you genuinely couldn’t tell the difference? Imagine if Freddie in Mumbai was actually an AI? Bad example, we all tend to get a bit irritated with Freddie, so lets go with Marge in Newcastle. You’d be polite and courteous to her because to all intents and purposes you would be talking to another being, and one with a natty Geordie accent, which apparently we all love. The fact that she is based on silicon wouldn’t matter because you wouldn’t know. If you were rude to her on the phone you would probably hang up feeling a bit guilty.

Lee Sedol

Well, an AI cant do any of that yet. Far from it. AI is very good at learning how to do narrow tasking but not so good in the arena known as General AI. Narrow AI is good though. So good, that it often surpasses human capability in the same task, very quickly. For example in March 2016 Google’s AlphaGo was able to beat 18 time World Champion, and 9 Dan (=very good) Chinese Go player Lee Sedol, 4-1 on its first outing. Go is the most complex game ever devised by man (or woman), with more possible positions available than there are atoms in the universe! So that’s pretty complex then.

But there are loads more out there and still more in the pipeline. In the field of Medicine, we now have AIs that surpass human ability to identify tumors from radiology images. Everything we know about autonomous driving suggests that it will be significantly safer than humans. Intelligent homes that combine personal assistants (Google Home or Alexa) with smart home devices (thermostats, lighting, camera’s etc) are already here. They are in financial markets, Business Intelligence software, travel experience apps, music streaming, shopping and, and, and, and. Narrow AI is already with us.

But no matter how “intelligent” these narrowly focused AI are, no matter how much data they can digest or how much machine learning they do, they cannot yet do, what Bob does, and they come nowhere near what Lu can do. Narrow AIs do not have ideas. They lack empathy. Their creativity is limited. They do not demonstrate understanding of the world, or the universe or of self.

But, they are getting there.

When General Artificial Intelligence (GAI) is achieved, how we treat GAIs and what rights we grant them, will be the issue of our time. We can treat them like we have every other minority in human history or we can treat them with “appropriate respect“.

“Good Morning Dave”

Until then, I want Lu to be well mannered when talking to Siri, because I believe that if she finds it easy to be rude to Siri, she will find it easy to be rude to people. What does it say about us if we can’t be polite? How much easier will it be to integrate with future GAIs, if we have been treating their less bright forebears with respect and dignity? I’m not sure we will want them irritated with us, especially when they might be so much brighter than us.