A Theory of Everything

I have used the often unreliable World Wide Web for much research concerning the area of quantum mechanics.

In one of my recent searches, I came across the notion that Buckmaster fullerenes, or buckyballs, may well have provided the essential seeds that have created life.

Such a leap of imagination is rather interesting to me. That somebody with probably far more intensive training in this area of knowledge should have even considered this notion is fascinating.

But then this notion is not so far fetched, once examined just a little.

Because on the one hand, the buckminsterfullerene is after all a varietal form of the element carbon, in the same way that diamond or graphite are different kinds of carbon. The name of this particular form is an homage to Buckminster Fuller, quite simply because of its shape similarity to the geodesic domes that he was fascinated by.

It seems likely that this kind of carbon atom does occur naturally, even in space, although it was first created artificially and identified by modern scientists in 1982 or thereabouts.

Interestingly, quantum entanglement is precisely that spooky at a distance relationship that Einstein himself talked about in the early part of the 20th century, when he was theorising about the nature of the universe in his relativity theories.

It seems that this particular form of carbon offers the possibility of faster than light connectivity between buckyballs, since the spooky at a distance collectivity appears to be instantaneous.

If this does hold out the prospect of multiples of the speed of light, which would be the only explanation if some external connection were to be the cause of this relationship, then some extraordinary possibilities seem to open up.

In my understanding, it is additional electrons which appear to be the reason for carbon atoms to be organised in this form.

And since electricity, perhaps particularly that form of electricity which is fundamental to life itself, which requires the movement of electrons, then perhaps quite simply everything that has generated electricity when it once lived might have left its footprint on the world, in some way that might find a spooky connection with other complex life forms.

This might seem unbelievable, if I wasn't virtually quoting Einstein himself.

But whilst all of this is on the surface at least semi-scientific, I have already hinted that my approach to this subject is at least partly motivated by my interest in creative writing.

If there is such a spooky and mysterious action at a distance involved at an atomic level in things, not only does it open up all kinds of scientific possibilities, such as faster than light travel.

And one of the major areas for research in quantum mechanics lies in quantum computing, to provide faster than imaginable computing options.

Yesterday, I watched The Forbidden Planet, a film which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

In the opening sequence, it is clear that the means of motion use by the spacecraft is based on quantum theory, which is the means by which its rate of travel achieves faster than light speeds.

Very little explanation is needed for the story to be compelling, and in the human world, just as in our capacity for sight, our brain will fill in the gaps without any problem.

And of course, interesting to an old cynic like myself, someone that wants dearly to believe but finds it difficult, the existence of such strangeness at a subatomic level does open extraordinary possibilities for a consciousness that perceives everything at all times and all places. And interestingly, it is clear in the story of The Forbidden Planet that belief in God is still essential and central to being human.

Perhaps life is something so special that it has been seeded by an allotropic form of carbon, that exists throughout the universe and can be the catalyst, in the right circumstances, for the development of complex carbon-based lifeforms.

You Have Mail

I am a great fan of film. On an external hard drive, I now have a collection of more than 700 movies, recorded from broadcast, and thanks to the nature of digital recording, with all traces of advertisements removed.

They are simply stored in alphabetical order, although I have occasionally mused about whether they might be placed into separate folders containing different categories of film.

But I have restrained myself from undertaking this kind of exercise, although I do enjoy imagining numerous sometimes unorthodox categories, over and above the obvious ones.

One such category might be the way in which certain films have entertained an audacious approach to American history, almost inventing a history that has never existed. This might include the National Treasure films, and Sahara, but there are as many sub categories as can be identified by anyone with personal predilections for subject matter.

Another exercise that I tend to practice in my imagination is to identify almost genealogical links between films, as if to identify which might have preceded the other and made it possible for a certain story to be told in a certain way.

This is entertaining, for myself, but is not necessarily something that would be of interest to a wider audience.

One of my recent new acquisitions is the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan romantic comedy You Have Mail.

I have only recently viewed it properly, and of course it could form a useful addition to those films that explore the way in which the Internet has become a means of communication in society, and how indeed it is transforming the way that we communicate.

In my own case, it has made me suddenly realise that there is a parallel with the way in which I write this blog on a regular basis, aiming to communicate my thoughts not to one individual, but as it happens to an extraordinarily worldwide audience that is always surprising me as to the range of countries in which English is clearly a shared language.

I am a particular fan of what might be described as ‘chick flicks’, and I am certainly much less interested in violent adventure films and have no interest in horror at all.

I am equally interested in observing the second-hand value of films, although these days I try to minimise my purchase of actual DVDs in cases.

It is always interesting to discover films that have retained an exceptionally high value, often much higher than the original release price for a modern DVD.

Bargains are to be found, and I have a friend who regularly combs the shelves of several town centre second-hand stores to discover where perhaps such bargains can be had.

Film is a fascinating reflection of social and cultural interests, and my interests are definitely those of an armchair anthropologist.

Digital Footprints In The World

Like so many people these days, I am fascinated by my family tree, and as a consequence, I have a subscription to one of those sites through which you can research records and build your tree.

But today, I was able to research something that was as equally fascinating as anything that my ancestors might have revealed.

I have the kind of subscription that enables me to discover any mention within newspapers and other more general media.

And this afternoon, I simply did a search on myself.

I found the results very interesting, in that this simple search made me realise how much we leave traces of ourselves in the modern world.

And since many of the traces of that we leave, are left within that part of the world that is is described as the public domain, we may not realise the full extent of the traces that we leave when we are making them.

In other words, nobody asks permission for certain kinds of data before it is revealed for the whole world to see.

Or at least that part of the world for whom it is a matter of course to be able to access the Internet and to make subscriptions to those kind of organisations that make this data easily available.

It is a sobering thought to discover the extent of these digital footprints, and I suppose in my own case, this has been most obviously through the fact that I have been a Director registered at Companies House on several occasions, almost always as the Director of a charitable company, and this in no way represents me as someone that has had a successful business career.

I suspect that many of us remain blissfully unaware of the extent to which we leave traces of ourselves in all kinds of contexts, not least of all in the United Kingdom through being registered to vote at a particular address.

Simply being on the electoral roll is sufficient for our place of residence to be listed, along with all of those also registered at the same address.

This is good news for anyone wishing to find or locate someone that has no reason to hide their tracks.

And it will constitute an interesting social history record for those in the future, wishing to undertake research as to who was living where and when, at some point in the future.

For I suspect this information will outlive most of us about whom it discourses.

Once a footprint has been made in this digital world, I suspect it is virtually impossible to remove it.

Quantum Entanglement - Towards A Theory Of Everything

I was always interested in science as a young man, and until I had to choose my A-levels, the sciences were the subjects in which I excelled.

I even confided to my mother that I wished to study to become a Doctor, something which she would never let me forget.

Especially after I chose to study arts subjects at A-level, and then went on to study Philosophy at University.

Now Philosophy is a respectable subject for study, especially when the University were I went to study it was University College London. One of the Russell group of universities, and certainly one of the best in that country.

However, there is no doubt that Philosophy is not a vocational subject, and from my mother's perspective, I believe she was always left with a sense of disappointment that I had not achieved the promise that I had shown as a young man.

The truth is simply that I wished to stop learning more and more about less and less, and to be able to study a subject in which I might genuinely contribute something that would benefit humanity.

The jury is out, as they say, and as I approach the point in my life where I am likely closer to my death than my Youth, perhaps I am better able to judge for my self whether I have succeeded at all.

Anyone looking closely at the list of my blog entries will become quickly aware of the scope of my interests. Which is very broad.

As to whether I have contributed anything unique to the world, that is for those that come after me to judge.

Perhaps my proudest achievements are my three self published volumes, two of poetry, and one of short stories.

In so much as I have little faith, these are perhaps more art a guarantee to me of immortality than anything else.

The simple fact of having to lodge copies of these books at the National Copyright Library, guarantees me that. Irrespective of any sales that may be achieved.

And the fact that the hardback copy of my first collection of poems has been placed in the local history collection of the county council gives me further cause for pride, where my book is rubbing shoulders with works from Shelley, Kipling, and Balzac.

I am under no illusions concerning the reasons for its inclusion in this collection, since it incorporates an essay about my meeting Dame Vera Lynn at the Queen Alexandra Hospital Home for soldiers, both of which are of sufficient historical importance to have guaranteed my volume of poetry inclusion within this collection.

The poems in this special edition are dedicated to Constance Gladys, Marchioness of Ripon, someone that in spite of her death in 1917, is still fondly remembered over at the Hospital across the road from me in Worthing.

It is a simple fact that towards the end of her prematurely ended life, she was one of the principal forces behind the way in which a century on, the Hospital still functions.

However, in despite of my disablement by multiple sclerosis, I have not given up by any means.

And through my blog in particular, I still strive to write thought provoking short pieces that may well continue to receive page views long after my death.

And indeed my next blog will take as its subject something that may well contribute in its controversial way to a subject that could well find its full flowering centuries after my death.

Which will be quantum entanglement. A subject that I have only recently begun to study as an amateur, but which I believe is a subject on which I could postulate theories as adept as someone studying physics might.

My reasoning for this is somewhat connected to my study of philosophy at University College, since my interests let me to take a particular interest in the European moderns.

An examination of the philosophy of the European moderns can just as easily be pursued by an examination of literature, such as the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre.

Since the theories concerning quantum mechanics are very much theoretical constructs, I would argue that an interested amateur might develop substantive theories as much as might be developed by someone engaged in practical experimentation.

And so, I shall be developing my thinking, and submitting it in this blog for others to comment upon, should they wish.

The Strange Truth About Dinosaurs

The Horizon documentary series on BBC Television continues to be informative and thought provoking.

This week, an extraordinary program threw new light upon every schoolboys fascination, Dinosaurs.

A woman that has been researching dinosaurs, in particular tyrannosaurus rex, for many years has shed new light on this most iconic of all Dinosaurs.

Based in Montana, which is apparently the most likely place in the United States for T Rex to be found, she has been the first person ever to be able to determine the gender of a dinosaur.

And by so doing, also beginning to change everything we thought we knew about these antediluvian creatures.

Since they did not survive beyond a cataclysmic asteroid impact 65 million years ago, it has been impossible to determine much about the structure of these creatures, and in particular because of the lack of any soft tissue surviving in the fossil record, it has been impossible to say how they have been connected if at all connected in evolutionary terms to other creatures.

Certainly the accepted wisdom has been that it was the death of the dinosaurs that enabled mammals to evolve into the most successful creatures that led ultimately to Mankind.

Strangely, however, this Dinosaur specialist has transformed our taxonomic appreciation of the dinosaur. Incredibly, she has been able to retrieve soft tissue from inside the mineralised fossil bones of a T Rex by dissolving the mineralisation content of a small piece of bone in acid.

Inside one particular kind of bone she then discovered a kind of material that can only be found in birds.

Given the fact that we already know that dinosaurs laid eggs in nests, this confirms that they are indeed the oldest ancestor of birds.

It seems that they did also possess hollow bones, just as we are used to conceiving of in birds, and with the potential to analyse soft tissue, although extremely degraded, it has been possible to observe with microscopic assistance, something of the cellular structure of dinosaur blood for the first time, confirming it seems that they were just like birds red blooded.

Analysis of the DNA may be partially possible, from an examination of material that has been preserved within the long bones of these creatures.

But before we get excited about the prospect of eventually making truth of the Hollywood romance, determining the entire dinosaur genome may have been made virtually impossible thanks to the contamination of the best likely specimens by treasure hunters.

It seems that the best specimens might have come from Mongolia, and specifically the Gobi desert.

This has been a desert since the time of the dinosaurs, but since the most complete skeleton of a T Rex was sold at auction some years ago for $7.6 million at Sotheby’s, treasure hunters have been pursuing this best lucrative possible treasure. And thereby making it almost impossible for an undisturbed and uncontaminated discovery to be made.

I was stunned at the implications of this documentary.

As a child, I was as fascinated by dinosaurs as children today, and this confirmation that they seem unlikely to have been birds of a most extraordinary scale is quite remarkable.

Although there has been over the years theories that modern birds are the remaining descendants of dinosaurs, this is the first time that I can recall ever having to consider that they were all birds.

Perhaps unlike what we see today, but it is startlingly terrifying to consider that dinosaur behaviour might have been bird like in terms of flock and group behaviour.

The Bird Man On My Doorstep

I have been fortunate to have lived in some of the worlds most visited cities.

For three years, I lived in Edinburgh, and before that, for a year in Glasgow.

And then, for 10 years I lived in Leeds in Yorkshire, perhaps not on the itinerary of every international tourist. But at least the home of one of the U.K.’s great opera companies, Opera North. For whom I had the privilege of working, not as a singer, but in its education department.

And so you can imagine my delight to have discovered that yesterday I was simply a stones throw from a truly international event.

Perhaps not up to the standards of some of the events I have been accustomed to, but certainly international.

And so I trundled in my electric wheelchair the several hundred yards to get a view of the pier in Worthing, which is the focus of this particular event.

Which it would be possible to say has its origins back in the 15th century, when a man first dared to contemplate that he might strap on wings and fly like a bird.

That man of course was Leonardo da Vinci, and there were not too many in his mould at this particular event.

It has of course become almost a grand joke, or perhaps an excuse to jump legally off the pier into the sea. In the height of summer.

And we are after all having a summer in Britain this year. This is almost enough to make anyone jump off a promontory into the sea.

But it is here on my doorstep. And it may be an unlikely international event, but it is here. And like the proverbial mountain, since it is here, I may as well climb it.

Fortunately for me, in these days of political correctness, space is set aside for people in wheelchairs to view the grand spectacle from the Lido, not perhaps as spectacular as the one in Venice Italy. But nevertheless, an outdoor bathing spot on the coast, with a balcony that is reserved for us wheelchair users on this occasion.

It’s quite a while since I felt as special as this.

And quite a while since I have simply relaxed by the sea, listening to the relaxing sound of waves slapping the beach below. Quite spectacular.

There is a £30,000 prize, should a flight actually succeed. And the festival is divided into a section open to all, and a section for the more serious competitors for the prize.

In truth, it really is simply a spectacle of eccentricity.

And perhaps the prize money would be easily paid should some form of actual flight take place, simply for the publicity it would generate.

Oh, to be in England, in the Summer!

Restoring Humanity

I had an unusual conversation today. With my carer.

It was only unusual to the extent that, perhaps sensibly, not every conversation that we have feels with hindsight as if it might change your whole life.

In some respects, everything we do or say should have the capacity to represent who and• what we began and are as people. As human beings.

But of course, in the modern world, it is not typical that we reveal ourselves always honestly and with clarity.

The conversation was at one level simply concerning an advertisement for promoting the numerous ways in which it is possible these days to watch television. Using portable devices that have in the last couple of years changed mobile telephones into multi media devices connected by the Internet so that they can receive television, and to be connected to social networking sites, from virtually anywhere that we find ourselves.

This is all in simple terms a natural progression from the simple technology of mobile telephones.

 But as the conversation developed, we began to talk about the way in which it is on most impossible to engage in a one-to-one conversation without the other person responding to the insistent demands of their communication device.

If for example they receive a text message, or some notification of something trivial from their social networking friends.

A little later in the afternoon, I have had in effect a continuation of this conversation, in the context of a discussion about the way in which people are losing their basic human communication skills, as they become more and more dependent upon these communication devices.

Devices which are often a consistent and continuous means of connection to our network of friends, but at the same time as they provide a continuous connection, to that network of social contacts, they have begun to trivialise the way in which we communicate and remain in contact with our friends.

There is a very real sense in which there is a danger that these devices become a substitute for the face-to-face communication and contact with which we are all very familiar.

 But with which perhaps inevitably we will begin to lose our competence with. It is not difficult to perceive the rapid development of these communication devices as something that is getting in the way of what has for decades been the normative behaviour of most people. To talk and to listen to others and by so doing to share ideas with other people.

Perhaps it is simply that human behaviour is evolving as rapidly as this technology is developing.

This week, a good friend of mine experienced the loss of his handheld communication device, quite simply it got fried, so that its overnight charging submit deprived him of his only means of communicating with the world, because he had one of these devices that connect to the Internet, and enable all of his social interaction.

And the management of his diary, via the Internet.

Sudden loss of this device becomes a disabling event. As he had become totally accustomed to make most of his social contacts through this single means.

And so, suddenly, in my afternoon conversation about just this subject, the idea came to me that perhaps there is a need to rescue humanity from itself.

To restore those more basic means of human interaction, which are already suffering as a consequence of these technological devices.

I learned a new word this afternoon, which describes this process of somebody not paying full attention to a conversation, because they are trying to answer a text message at the same time as they are participating in a human conversation.

When I heard this word, it struck me immediately that it was in reality simply a euphemism for what otherwise we might think of as somebody simply being downright rude.

And my first thought was, that we should call this thing what it really is.

Rudeness. Because that is what it is. Not slubbing.