Tag Archives: science

Reflections on the Hubble Deep Field image

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“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”

– Albert Einstein.

Turns out Einstein was better at Physics than jokes.

“In awe I watched the waxing moon ride across the zenith of the heavens like an ambered chariot towards the ebon void of infinite space wherein the tethered belts of Jupiter and Mars hang forever festooned in their orbital majesty. And as I looked at all this I thought… I really must repair the roof on this toilet.”

– Les Dawson.

That’s more like it.

Sit down and prepare to be terrified. The following picture is of a region of the sky smaller than this full stop.


Figure 1. The Hubble Deep Field. It is unclear whether the correct response to this is laughter, screaming, or suicide. Bear in mind that each little spiral is a whole galaxy. Bear in mind that if the universe is infinite then the whole observable universe is itself a negligible part of the whole universe. I often have a bear in mind (Yogi, if you must know).

I advise printing this out and looking at it whenever your life blows.

I was sittin’ on the bog in an Odeon on an industrial estate the other day (Prometheus 3D (washout)) and the picture above slipped out of my pocket on to the floor. I looked at it and then caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and had an epiphany.

Here endith the front matter and any pretence of humour.

This blog post makes the following assumptions:

  1. The universe is infinite.
  2. Materialism is true.

I aim to show that if these two assumptions are sound then we are immortal. Furthermore, if they are true then Hell exists, and your actions have no consequences.

1 You are the motion of material. I call this your Shape.

2 Your shape depends on its environment but part of your shape is unchanged by this process. I call this unchanging part your Essence.

3 Your Essence is composed of a finite number of objects which can have a finite number of arrangements.

3.1 In an infinite set of randomly arranged finite forms there will be an infinite number of each type of arrangement if and only if the total possible number of objects is finite.

3.2 You and your Essence are composed of a finite number of objects.

3.3 In an infinite set of arrangements of the objects that are contained in your Shape there will be an infinite number of realisations of your Shape and your Essence.

4 If you want to believe the truth then you must base all personal decisions on the assumption that there are an infinite number of your Essences making all possible decisions in an infinite number of both identical (your Shape) and different (your Essence) environments.

5 All your choices have an infinitesimal impact on the universe since they are repeated and contradicted an infinite number of times by an infinite number of yous (your Shape).

6 For as long as you are possible you are. You are immortal and will always exist if and only if the universe exists.

 * * * * * * * * *

Every major scientific discovery (starting with realising we have a bum-hole around 1 million years ago) has essentially told us ‘you are less significant and unique than you thought you were’.  Currently, we base our significance on believing we are the only life. Come off it. No serious person does not believe in aliens. The next realisation will be we are not alone. Then we will realise that we are not the only version of us in the universe.

  • There is infinite suffering.
  • Hell exists.

And then I realised it wasn’t an epiphany… it was diarrhoea.

Best regards,

My eye

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I’m going to talk about my eye. For just over three years the pictures it has been showing me have degraded into a dull ache now. A soft, mild brown blur. Even things like a crying child seem to bore me. I’ve been to the doctor. He says that it is a common problem and that he can prescribe some sort of palliative drug that will intensify colours.

After a week of trying the new drug I can see in more detail but the overwhelming feeling is still one of mild displeasure. Finally the doctor suggests an investigative operation in combination with weekly video sessions in which I can be shown extreme pornography that has been developed by NHS researchers. Initially, the images are only vaguely distressing. After three weeks of this he decides that it is time to strip away the outer layers of my face, remove the eye ball and insert a new one that has been donated by a schizophrenic with the opposite problem.

The whole thing has been a complete palava. I’m fed up with it and say
– I’ll keep the old eye on the left. I’ll put the other down to experience.
– Fair enough, a lot of people find that to be a better solution, he says.

Chill out m8,

The remarkable achievements attained in the field of neuroscience

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The current state of the art is described and critiqued. Avenues for further work are set forth and discussed. A prediction is made.

Using only one single five million dollar functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, Professor Veronica Smith produces a picture of my brain. Over coffee she talks me through the picture and explains her latest results, which suggests that thinking is not done in the brain, as commonly thought, but rather is done by the kidneys. In turn she believes that the main function of the brain is to ‘clean the blood’ and ‘frazzle the bejazzle out of snazzle-pops’. I’m visiting the Department of Cognitive Science at University College Hospital along with a handful of other journalists drawn by the seemingly rash claims of the group.


Early primitive attempt to render character visible, alongside a more accurate modern version (of gubbins).

Professor Smith has managed to impose a complete use of the passive voice upon all her employees in order to develop what she calls a ‘pure science’. By speaking entirely in this rudimentary language composed of subject predicate object triangle sentences she claims to have removed any possibility of error or evil. We are drinking some liquid brain fuel when the Professor presents me with a peculiar triangle sentence suggesting that our bodies might be too strange. Instead she suggests she may be able to ‘blend’ us into a sphere, or at the very least some sort of cuboid.

I’m given permission to speak to a number of other members of the group, each of whom reveal startling facts about the nature of research taking place in the building. There seems to be a complex ecosystem of men and women forming a large super-hierarchy. Money is dripping in to the mouth of Professor Smith and is trickling down over a champagne glass tower of employment. At ground level a base layer of humanoid foundations holds the entire structure. Using the triangle forms to bind the humanoids, Smith has crafted a congealed mass of brain organs supported by super brains and sub brains, with snacks fetched by the body brains.

“It is now possible to measure which, if any, regions of the brain are alive during a quiz while showing the subject photographs of a kitten in peril” – Dr Smurthwaite.

As each flesh unit morphs to spheroid the pyramid smothers into shape. The sides become slides to ejections and incepts leaving flaming gasses oozing from the cracks. It is a sight to behold and goes some way to explaining the remarkable achievements that have been made here. The future of Neuroscience is in safe hands!

Yours in truth,

Galileo you absolute wuss!

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Galileo
The earth moves.

Vatican
Say that again and we’ll kill you.

Galileo
Did I say it does move? I meant it doesn’t. Where do I sign?

Socrates took the hemlock, Jesus bore the cross, and Galileo did a runner.

I would have stood up for my beliefs like I do with this web log every week,

The disgusting nature and exploits of the rose

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In which I set forth the vulgar behaviour of the garden rose and ask that we reconsider our love affair with it lest we be dragged into the filth along with.

One doesn’t need to invent devils to witness the true horror of the world. One need only look in the garden to see the murder and chaos. The bleak terror of the roses’ perverse interspecies sex acts. The red light to young insect. The invitation to oblivion. And mine own heart is drawn by the flower whores. I have taken from the cup of nature and had my soul torn.

And it is science that has revealed these nightmares of the universe. The harlots! The mistresses of thorn, seducers of bee, and ruin of man. Off with her dead head!

Your humble advisor,

An experimental investigation into the sleeping habits of my mother

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Introduction
Middle aged humans are a common phenomenon that can be observed at a wide range of locales. From the wine aisle in Waitrose to that at Sainsbury they can be identified chiefly by the appearance of moderate wrinkles on their faces and bodies and by their possessing an often timid demeanour.

This study is concerned with the development of a new methodology for measuring various character traits by the control and disruption of their sleep. Specifically, we observe the fifty five year old human female Sharon Shirley (herein referred to as SS Old Bean) by means of an observation deck concealed in its bedroom.

Methodology
Recent advances in toilet design (Figure 1) allow the scientist continuous access to the bedrooms of the middle aged for the first time. We employ such a shed/toilet approach using the older Prod With Stick (PWS) method for waking my mother.


Figure 1 Experimental setup.

Results and Discussion
The most striking aspect of this work is surely the violent reactions from Mrs Shirley upon being woken (See Figure 2).


Figure 2 Swear words per sentence as a function of time of sleep disruption. The red squares show a fifteen week average. Blue squares show the night of the burglary. The green square is clearly an outlier. The ‘leisure time’ shown in yellow was occupied with basic literature, tv and reminiscing about teenage sexual exploits.

Specifically, the PWS method produced massive eruptions of swearing and violence when repeatedly applied between the hours of 03.00 and 05.00 GMT. Indeed, the author had to resort to the hose to keep his mother at bay on three occasions. The first being coincident with the burglary, which was left to take its natural course in order to avoid any possibility of artefactual data. The other two showing no coincidence with experimental conditions but both accompanied by identical protestations relating to ‘work in the morning’. Clearly, the middle aged are a strange animal with complex behaviour and oral communication systems.

Conclusions
The middle ages are some of the toughest in our lives. Here, we show how a modern approach to them can increase hostility between family members under certain conditions.

Thank you,

Stephen Hawking: prick or dick?

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In which I offer a considered reaction to The Grand Design, the latest publication of Prof Stephen Hawking.

“We each exist for but a short time…”

That ‘but’ along with the other words in the book’s first sentence ensure that by the end of it you already have more than a little stomach acid at the back of your throat. However, this early pretension is but a preface to the imminent whirlwind of diarrhoea-ish shit hell. He rapidly progresses to such monumental glibbery as ‘philosophy is dead’. One can’t help but draw the conclusion this man is but a drunken precocious teenager stuck in the body of a great intellectual. but.

“It is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God” – Yes, my mind has been (utterly) blown, but I think this should be attributed to Michael Smith et al. (Comment on Newsround website, 2005).

His book is part GCSE revision notes, part self help bog rag, but what is Hawking the man? Cynical publishing mastermind or genuine arse? Harmless egotist or mad, bad, and deeply offensive egotist? Prick or dick?

The title of Chapter 3 is “What is Reality?”.

Cheers,

Is science good or shit?

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I can’t decide.

Everyone knows the old hack debates about roses looking better to a poet than a scientist or some shit. I’d always written them off but am starting to agree. Who cares what the world is actually like? What has that got to do with me? Genuinely. Stumbled across Blake’s Newton on google images and thought “yeah, he’s right, Newton was a wanker”. Also, they’ve put a copy of it outside The British Library. What exactly are they trying to say with that? They have science books in there but they are simultaneously taking the piss out of it in the forecourt.

Quite a few people go on about how good it is. It’s not that good. I mean at best it’s fine. If they make a terminator I’ll concede it’s good. There’s your challenge science. Come back when you’ve done something other than tell me we live in an unsympathetic universe. Yeah, thanks I really needed to know that.

Tell you what, I’ll work on talking about something I have a fully formed opinion on next time.

Thanks for reading,