About Me Just Got Revised

I realised today that I haven’t updated the About page on this site in quite a while, and I’d like to think that I’ve changed over my years of blogging. I don’t think it matters especially, as my About page rarely gets much attention. Clearly I have captivated you so much with my brilliant writing

We aren't quite sure which equation God actually used. It's probably down to quantum.

skills. Don’t laugh, it’s rude. You wouldn’t want to hurt my feelings, would you now?

An About page should ideally help the reader understand what the blog/blogger is on about. Or so I was told. So I’ve had to think long and hard about how best to get this information across to you. I’m sure you will give me some allowance, as it is extremely hard to condense the entirety of me into a page that you are actually going to read. I thought about doing a rap, but, you’ll be grateful to hear, only for a very short amount of time.

But then I realised I was being silly. You’re sitting here reading this, aren’t you? I hope you are. I’ve been told that people read this. Well if you’ll read this, you’ll read anything, including my About page. Indeed, especially my About page, being as you’re reading my blog. It’s common sense really. So here, ladies, gentlemen and significant others, is the story of me.

About Johz

I was born in Birmingham. This may be an issue for some of you, but I am refering to the Birmingham that lies in the British Isles. It could well be considered a dump, but that would be rude to dumps, which are usually upstanding moral members of the community. More accurate, and perhaps more polite to everyone involved, would be to call the city a melting pot. There is everything in Birmingham. Food, people, clothing, drugs, whatever else you want to name. Birmingham does not hold many records (although there are more canals in Birmingham than in Venice*) but this is probably because it is quite happy to have a go at everything. It should be noted that people from a place called Solihull may try to convince you that they are from Birmingham. They are not. Solihull should be burned with fire.

My parents are lovely. I have to say that because they read this. They work extremely hard to ensure my welfare, usually by banning me from doing anything interesting in the hope that I will turn out to be a lovely, well-rounded person. I have previously argued against this plan of action with much vigour, but I am now attempting to come to terms with the fact that it seems to have worked. I also have a brother. He doesn’t read this, so I’m allowed to insult him, but this well-rounded person stuff means that I’m unable to seriously express much dislike for him. The key problem is that he actually is quite a nice person.

My family is Christian, and I’ve managed to inherit it, like an unfortunate case of HIV/AIDs in a poverty-stricken area of Africa. This is perhaps slightly rude, being as I have not only become a Christian, but also have decided that I actually believe all this God stuff. Looking back, that was probably where I went wrong.

Perhaps to compound my dyed-in-the-wool cloth-headedness, as that highly influencial theologian and all-round religious expert Richard Dawkins might call it, is the fact that I enjoy science. Now of course, science and religion are not immiscible – one can have faith, and believe in the power of the same time. However, where many people merely have to worry about simple problems such as the issue of evil, and whether original sin was not actual original at all, but copied off someone else, I now struggle with the scientific method, and whether God is a viable theory. This is irritating, but I feel that it just makes me a more rounded and beautiful person. It also means that I have a bad habit of criticising the belief of others because it isn’t rigorous enough. For this I can only apologise. Well no, I could apologise and try to do something about it, but that would require some effort.

Anyway, I am a Christian, and I am headed on to become a scientist. Currently I am studying for my A Levels (A Levels stands for Advanced Levels, but since the Ordinary Levels have now been abolished, it’s not quite as exciting as it seems), which are in Physics, Further Maths and Chemistry. You may well, therefore, be skeptical, but I thrive on academic study. Interestingly, I have recently entered the grammar school system, whereas I was attending a comprehensive school before (Note to Americans and other foreigners: grammar and comprehensive are both types of school), which has troubled my already tumultuous adolescent soul. But I’m sure I’ll get over it, now I’m not mingling with those poor types. As you read those words, my mother is now disowning me, not realising that I am joking. I don’t hate poor people. Indeed, I even have poor friends.

I am excited about heading to university within a worryingly sort amount of time. Indeed, assuming all goes well, I will be studying Physics with the big boys by the end of September. I am lead to believe that this is a good thing, and refuse to listen to any alternatives. After university, I expect to stay at university, although not necessarily the same one, and do some postgraduate work. After that? I don’t really know, although I’d like to do further research into theoretical physics. I do worry about me sometimes.

This blog is a compilation of my thoughts. I aim to publish at least once a week, although I do so in much the same way that a drunken darts player in the pub aims to get the bullseye. I try to talk about everything, from the arts, through science and religion, to current affairs and politics. I consider my remit to be the world and everything in it, and a large proportion of the things outside of it, although there is a small spot just east of Alpha Centuri that I refuse to discuss, due to previous bad experiences. I won’t talk about them now, but let me just say that if you ever end up playing cards with a telepath from Rigel-6, don’t try and cheat.

My own personal ideologies are generally mixed. I am a liberal type of guy, who sees the best in everyone, and who thinks the world would be a better place if everyone just shared more. However, I am also a moral conservative, who thinks that any words worse than ‘bother’ should be banned from television before nine O’clock. I believe in a nuclear family, but I also believe in gay marriage. I’m a fan of education, of almost any type, except faith schools, home schools, public (Americans: read private) schools, and, to some extent grammar schools. I think that guns are bad, on account of people dying as a result of them, in the same way that I think knives are bad. My concession to knives is that I struggle to chop carrots without them. The same cannot be said for guns.

I enjoy Doctor Who. I’m not sure that this is an ideology, but it’s very important. I think that an open house and an ability to be hospitable at any time is one of the greatest gifts you can offer other people. I believe that humour is important, and that there should be no topics that are off-limits, but I also accept that simply insulting women due to their abnormal genes isn’t always funny. I particularly think that people who are especially full of themselves, like Christians, should have humour poked at them. And I think that the most important thing is to love everyone. Yes, even Richard Dawkins. Yes, even your mother-in-law. Well, maybe not your pet rock, because that’s a bit weird, but nonetheless, be nice to it. You never know when the rocks will take over.

Please ask questions, either here or on the actual ‘About Me’ page. Please also laugh, because I didn’t ever really lie, but I may have exagerated the truth slightly. And please take the time to continue reading, or to subscribe (there’s buttons everywhere these days) or bookmark this site, or even just write it down on a piece of paper. Thanks.

* Citation desperately needed.

Physics Isn’t Working…

The first use of a hydrogen bubble chamber to ...

A Neutrino in a Bubble Chamber - The subatomic equivalent of a jacuzzi...

Physicists across the world are aghast. Not content with blowing up a fuss the first time round, the physicists at the OPERA collaboration in Switzerland have had the indecency to repeat their results using a more accurate method, and have stumbled on a potentially profound, but nonetheless fairly irritating discovery. They are fairly sure now that physics isn’t working.

To summarise, because physics tends to be small-town news, the OPERA collaboration have fired neutrinos at a detector and, despite using extremely sensitive equipment, checking their calculations carefully, and praying to all the gods they have ever known, the team have, for the second time, found that neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light. Truly, they are quaking in their boots.

It is very easy to imagine that physicists are heroes among men, warriors for a valiant truth, who will strike out against fallacies and untruths. However, physicists tend to be rather conformist. It’s not nice to be working on a minor theoretical aspect to the conductivity of superfluids in zero-gravity ionic-array structural solvents, only to find that one of the modelling assumptions you’ve made turns out to be wrong. Plus there’s a bit of hero-worship going on. Einstein was quite a cool physicist, and, let’s face it, how many times have you looked at Stephen Hawking and thought ‘wow, he’s totally rad man’?

Indeed, after a long and arduous freedom of information request, and five minutes of extremely quick easy phone-hacking, I can now produce a transcript of the initial meeting where the OPERA collaboration team realised that, for the second time, something was going wrong…

“So, ah guys, we got the results, and, well, I’m sorry to say that we’ve done it again.”

“What, our neutrinos went faster than light? I thought we had rigged the experiment so that they couldn’t do that. It was embarrassing last time…”

“Yeah, clearly it didn’t work. The fundamental laws of the universe are clearly having an off day. Does anyone know if something weird has happened? I dunno, a temporal instability, or the Merkel and Sarkozy agreeing on something? I wonder if something has triggered the collapse of the universe?”

“You know, why don’t we just pack the whole thing in? Blame it on a dud satellite and campaign for an improvement to the GPS service.”

“I invented a new form of mind-wiping machine the other day, we could try using that. And if you want to get your memories back, you just reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.”

“Neutrons don’t have a polarity.”

“They don’t? Bother. I’ve just discovered a new impossible thing.”

“What was the point of this whole experiment anyway?”

“You know, I’m not actually sure. I was just trying to see if I could aim for Berlesconi’s head.”

“Well I was trying to destroy the pope.”

“Wait a second, who are you?”

“I’m, ah, Richard Dawkins.”

“But you’re a biologist!”

“I am? Ah, sorry, probably the wrong room. Never mind…”

“Who actually published the results? We should have kept things a but quieter. Apparently physics has even been mentioned on Radio Four! Physics? On the BBC? I thought they dealt more with the social things. Why people congregate around the water cooler, and all that.”

“Oh, sorry, that was me. I had an intern in, and I clearly didn’t explain to them about the whole impossible thing, so they went ahead and published.”

“Ah well, nothing we can do, really. Just got to grin and bear it. Does anyone want a cup of stone cold tea in a mug that they haven’t washed since the early 90′s? Good, I’ll go and get some then.”

As the physicists file dejectedly out of the room, the only positive thing in their lives being ionised nuclei, a solitary figure, half shrouded in think, velvety shadows sits. A white cat rests in a box on his lap, in a state of perpetual uncertainty. The person smiles, and his teeth glint slightly in the dim light.

“Excellent,” He says, his accent a combination of old Soviet Union and German Nazi. “Everything is going to plan…”

Bad Physics

USSR stamp dedicated to Albert Einstein

Image via Wikipedia

So physics is broken.  Or at least that’s what you’d think having heard much of the comment on the news yesterday that researchers have detected neutrinos appearing slightly earlier than expected.  So early that they appeared to break the speed of light, a feat which contradicted Einstein’s theory of relativity, which is much respected, and indeed provides a cornerstone to much modern physics.

 

In some ways, therefore, this could be a big discovery.  But researchers are more wary.  Indeed, as stated repeatedly on the CERN website, and by physicists worldwide, they want someone to check their figures.  Having published their report online for free, they’re looking for other knowledgeable experts to be able to point out the additional error in, for example, the GPS system that they used, or the fact that they failed to take into account a random solar flare.

 

The experiment they did was quite simple in some ways.  They made a lot of tiny particles called neutrinos at their laboratory in CERN, and fired them at Italy, presumably aiming to take out Berlesconi on the way.  These particles are almost undetectable, and pass through us from space all the time.  However, in Italy they have a device that can detect neutrinos.

 

The experiments have taken place over several months, and are certainly not rarefied instances like Fleischman and Pons’ cold fusion.  The setup has been checked repeatedly, with a timing mechanism that is as accurate as it could plausibly get using modern technology.  The distance is a long enough to minimize error as much as possible.  The whole experiment should work.

 

Yet accidents happen.  Take, for example, the time that the LHC‘s forefather, the LEP, was brought down because a researcher had left a pair of empty beer bottles in the path of the electron beam.  There could quite plausibly be something completely obvious that they are missing.  In an extremely complex procedure, we can’t assume that they will have got it perfect first time, which is why they are passing the research on in the hope that others will find a reason.

 

For the public, this is a great time to understand the ideas behind theories, laws, proof and other such scientific terminology.  Especially when areas of the Christian right wing are moving to attack much of verified science, we all need to know what these terms mean.  When we say, for example, that Darwin’s theory of evolution is only a theory, that’s because science does not deal in absolutes.  When Einstein published his theory of special relativity, it was only an idea.  But as these ideas are tested, with a lot of rigour involved, we realise that we can describe the world this way, and also that it makes predictions about the way our world works.

 

This is an example of a theory in dispute – and a great and time-honoured theory as well.  If theories such as this can be disputed, of course so can evolution and the big bang.  But then we don’t have evidence that disputes them.  And, as shown here, the first thing we should do isn’t to immediately start dismantling the older theory.  We must ensure that our new evidence is up to scratch first.  And if it is, we must look for alternative explanations – string theory might perhaps give us some of those.  If we can find none, then yes, Einstein will be overturned.