Whatever you look at will be history before you ever see it.

Posted on May 15, 2022 by Mick's Muses

The headline may seem something of a strange statement, but it is perfectly true. Whatever we see is already in the past although we may think it is in the present, the here and now. The same is true even for the words that you are reading now, albeit on the screen of a computer of mobile phone will already be part of history before you view them.

Most people understand that light travels at a fantastic speed, about 186,000 miles per second. This means the furthest that can be see, even with the most powerful of telescopes, is some 13.7 billion light years away. This is known as the observable universe. Anything beyond that distance simply cannot be seen, because any light beyond that point will not have sufficient time to reach us.

Sometimes it is a bit mind-boggling to comprehend such vast distances, but if we think in more parochial terms of just our own solar system, we know it takes about 8 minutes for the light emitted from our sun to reach us. That means when we look into the sky during the daytime, the clouds we see are being illuminated by light that is already 8 minutes old, the same as any object we see on the earth.

Condensing these figures into broad understandable terms, it means that if you hold your hand about one foot in front of your face, it takes the light reflected from your hand, about one billionth of a second, known as one Nanosecond to reach your eyes. Although for all intents and purposes we would consider this instantaneous, it still means that a given amount of time has elapsed between the moment you looked at your hand, and before the reflected light from your hand reached your eye. Technically that is now in the past and not the present.

It does not matter what you look at, or how close to your eye something is, a given amount of infinitesimal time will have elapsed before the light reaches your eye.

This means that technically we can never see the present, only the past.

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As time goes by.

Posted on January 8, 2018 by Mick's Muses

2015 On Athletics All Weather Running TrackYesterday was my 72nd birthday and many thanks to all those that sent me birthday wishes. This morning when I awoke for some reason the thought immediately crossed my mind of how different, if not alien, the world I was born into must seem to someone born today. I was born just after the end of the war in 1946.A little simple arithmetic shows deducting my 72 years from that date is equivalent to a person being born in 1874 when I first entered the world.

The oldest person I knew in my family was my paternal grandmother who was born in 1881 and I am now talking of a time before even that year.

To me like I suppose it must seem to all of us old un’s, that I remember my childhood well, my school days, my early working life, followed by my fire service career until I eventually retired. Again I suppose like most of us it still seems like yesterday but the world I was born in must appear as alien to a youngster today as the world of someone born in 1874 must have seemed to me.

I don’t want to hark on about the tin bath hanging on an outside wall, the outside toilet, gas lamps or coal fired cooking range which many of us grew up with. but for many born in 1874, even these basics must have seemed a modern luxury compared with the like of the no sanitation at all world they were born into.

Many of us grew up in a victorious but war torn nation. The war heavily influenced our childhood with hundreds of thousands of servicemen who had experienced its horrors coupled with a recently Blitz blasted civilian community fresh in everyone minds. Now 72 years on, the vast majority of those people and their memories have now passed on. To many youngsters today, WW2 must now seem as remote to them as the battlefields of 1874 would have seemed to me. As an example, the Zulu wars did not occur until 1879.

My grandmother was born in Camberwell, south London in 1881 an maps of the time show almost everything south of the Peckham Road was open land containing many market gardens. All that had disappeared under rapid urban expansion by the time I was born, but likewise much open land I knew as a youngster has equally disappeared. It is as difficult for a youngster today to visualise the open fields I once knew as it is for me to visualise the open fields of my grandmothers time.

One only has to look at a zoomed out aerial view on Google of London and the southeast to see the blur created by buildings now runs almost unchecked from Heathrow in the west, to Shoeburyness in the east, bar for a small break in the middle. Compare that against a immediate post-war map showing buildings to see just how much land a rapidly ever growing population is gobbling up. I do not know what the remote future will hold, but it is things like the above example of the rapidly disappearing countryside that tell me it will not be in the too distant future, that governments will seriously be debating birth control measures.

No doubt in another 72 years, those newcomers to the world being born now will also have similar thoughts.

Yes in the past 72 years the world has changed a lot. But I cannot help but think when compared of my imaginary 1874 predecessors or what the great as yet unborn will face, we probably have experienced the best of it.

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The not so humble push-button.

Posted on May 4, 2016 by Mick's Muses

Push ButtonI was recently thinking about my dear old paternal grandmother who was born in 1881 and such a kindly soul. Every time she crosses my mind I cannot but help think about the wondrous things that were invented during her lifetime. My grandmother lived to the ripe old age of 92, quite long lived for her generation and when she was born, the horse and cart still reigned supreme. Her father, my great grandfather, was a farrier by trade so my Gran would have been very familiar with the ways of horses.

When Gran was born, apart from the horse and the horse drawn omnibus, the only other viable forms of transport were the railway which was still in a state of infant expansion and barges via the UK’s extensive river and canal system. What certainly did not exist in the UK at that time was the motor car, electric trams, motorised omnibuses or the aeroplane. All of these my Gran would have seen come into being, and even some passing into history like the electric tram. On a more domestic front, electric lighting,  the radio, and later television were to later enter her life.

I was born just after the end of World War 2, one of the original baby boomers and I too was trying to think what came into greater prominence during my life. All the things I have already mentioned existed by the time I was born albeit many of them were still a bit basic. Radio and television originally powered by valves has since blossomed into a flourishing international electronics industry.Although considered indispensible today, the electronic computer had already been invent by Alan Turin and Tommy Flowers in secrecy during WW2 for the purpose of decrypting coded messages generated by the German Enigma machine.

Then it occurred to me that although not new, as a young boy the humble push button was considered by most children at that time to be somewhat futuristic and space age. Most electrical equipment like lighting was either operated by a simple switch or a knob that required turning. Push buttons now so common they are almost hidden in plain sight  and which do not give rise to a seconds thought, were still comparatively rare just after the war.

My father would occasionally take me to the Science Museum in London and my eyes would always light up in the Children’s Gallery which was situated in the basement with its numerous models and demonstrations that could all be operated at the push of a button. I could hardly wait with childish delight to move onto the next display with yet another button to push. The only problem was the buttons were of the small brass pin type that were both difficult and sometimes painful for small fingers to push.

When I was a junior school, my schoolmates and I would go to a nearby housing estate after classes to play a game of Tag which involved everyone trying to escape a “chaser” and if touched, it was your turn to chase the others. This housing estate had lifts, (elevators), as well as long corridors and stairs. The lifts which could be called at the touch of a button, were still comparatively rare in most working class areas. The presence of the lifts added a whole new dimension to the game. Most of the games came to an end when residents came out to complain about the noise at which time we would move on to the next apartment block on the estate.

So next time you have occasion to press a humble push-button, perhaps you might remember there was a time when it was not so humble at all.

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Not just a Penny

Posted on May 19, 2014 by Mick's Muses

One PennySometimes authors suffer from a lack of inspiration known as Writers Block. It’s a position where a mental block on new ideas arises. Fortunately I have never found myself in that position, only the problem of sometimes finding time to write. To me the world is full of inspirational subjects just waiting to be picked up and mulled around in the mind before being translated into words.

One such subject came completely “out of the blue” the other evening when I pulled a hanky from my pocket. Along with the hanky came a penny coin embroiled in its folds and which fell to the ground with the lightest of sounds. As I stooped to retrieve the penny the thought popped into my head, I wonder what the life story of this penny is?

Thought and  reasoning is a strange process that seems to work at the speed of light. No sooner had the thought crossed my mind I realised attached to this penny was a tale so vast, it stretched all the way back to Big Bang and the creation of the Universe. It is amazing how a vast concept can fill our minds in a fraction of a second but it can take a lengthy period of time to even verbally express them to others.

Piggy BankMy first though was to examine the penny a little closer and I saw the year 1980 stamped on it meaning the coin was minted 34 years ago and had been in circulation ever since. How many people have owned and used this coin in all that time? It is an impossible question to answer but potentially it could be millions. It may have been in my possession several times without my even knowing it. It might also have been silently sitting in a child’s piggy bank for a long time or many other peoples pockets or purses. The penny will have visited many homes, all the time unconsciously unobserved by its temporary owners or perhaps joined many of its companions in slot machines or shop tills from time to time.Who knows? it could even have travelled abroad many times as loose change in the pocket of a tourist. Whatever the potentially far and numerous journeys of this coin, it has travelled free and unnoticed and it still is only worth a penny.

Although the face value of my coin may only be worth a penny, it does make one wonder how many times it has been used in purchases. If it had been used say one million times in the last 34 years, this one coin would have purchased £10,000 worth of goods and services. On the face of things that seems impossible until one considers that monetary systems are essentially gyratory with the same money constantly circulating around the system from person to person, shop to shop or bank to bank. That alone throws up even more concepts of how coinage became a convenient common denominator to replace bartering systems. A banking system to control the circulation of money. Legal systems to ensure money maintained its value by making counterfeiting illegal and  that wrong doers were punished. Systems of government and trade including taxation. Even monarchs have fought and died, Empires grown and fallen all because of the value represented by coinage yet this single coin is still only worth a penny.

When my penny was newly minted it had a bright and shiny copper appearance but this quickly tarnished to its current dull brown appearance through the effects of oxidization. So even in its appearance my penny has a story to tell about chemistry..

Moltem metalBeing minted in 1980, my penny is made of bronze created from a mixture of copper, zinc and tin. Since 1992, copper-plated steel has been used instead. This is where the formidable story of my penny coin expands even further. Each of the composite elements of this coin originally had to be mined, each metal coming from different parts of the globe. Not only was each metal mined, but all had to be refined, and transported before being molten and blended together to create the new metal alloy of bronze.The metal ores themselves needed to be discovered first so just the creation of my penny coin required utilisation of exploration, mining, refining, transportation, the science of metallurgy and finally the craft of minting just to come into being. It’s a mind-boggling though that one day the value of my coin may go towards financing all of the above to produce even further coinage. However my single coin is still only worth a penny.

The story of our various metal ores that make up my penny does not start with them being mined from the ground, that is only the beginning of their more recent adventures, nor does it start with these ores being buried in the ground for a millennia. The stories of these metals goes back to the creation of the universe before they even existed as metal.

UniverseHow the universe was created is as yet unknown but the beginning has been dubbed “Big Bang” whatever its cause. At the time of creation atomic particles formed only  the simplest of atoms which where hydrogen and helium with miniscule trace amounts of everything else. All this would have happened in complete darkness as stars which provide light simply did not exist at this time. Although there are various estimates, for about the first 200 million years of the universes existence, everything was in darkness with nothing else other than vast gaseous clouds of hydrogen and helium.

As lightweight as we consider these gases, never-the-less all atoms have weight and slowly these clouds of gas were drawn together by their natural gravitational forces until they began to condense into huge balls of gas. As these balls of gas grew ever larger ever growing gravitational forces caused them to compress. Matter that is being compressed starts to give off heat in exactly the same way air in a bicycle pump gets hot when compressed. This mixture of heat and intense pressure eventually caused the process of atomic fusion to begin and the first stars began to appear in the universe shedding light to the previously dark cosmos.

Even these early stars bursting into existence did not create the molecules for the metals of my penny, it is only millions of years later when a star eventually runs out of fuel does this process rapidly happen. As a star burns it transforms its hydrogen into helium. Once a stars burns through all its hydrogen, it fuses the helium into carbon and then into nitrogen, oxygen, neon, and sodium, and then into silicon and sulphur, and then into iron, nickel, cobalt and copper. Depending on the size of the star, it rapidly contracts in its last moments throwing all this matter like an expanding shell to drift throughout the universe.This newly created matter will continue to drift through the cosmos until again under the effects of gravity it is condensed again either into new stars or into planets which will circulate those stars.

So when that penny fell from my pocket, the real story behind my initial though of “its only a penny” has touched on many aspects of our lives stretching all the way back to the creation of the universe.I cannot help but feel I have touched on but a few of those subjects and omitted many more.

Just to briefly recap the “life story” of my penny. It has been involved Big Bang, Star formation, celestial transformation, exploration, mining, refining, transportation, metallurgy, minting, chemistry, commerce, trade and banking, governance, law making and empire building to name but a few.So much from one small coin and its value still only remains a penny.

Whoever said “A penny for your thoughts”?

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The Dark Side of Science

Posted on October 8, 2011 by Mick's Muses

Although I have touched on this subject before, I recently watched a documentary attempting to explain what Dark Matter, Dark Energy and now Dark Flow are.

Since mankind began to think and reason, the question of what lies beyond our own world has arisen. In history it appeared to be part of the human psyche that the knowledge vacuum created by what could not be explained or understood at a particular moment of time, was rapidly filled with superstition or religious dogma. This approach often temporarily satisfied the human psyche by filing such thoughts under the “Things mankind is not meant to know” section of the human excuse filing cabinet.

During the passage of history, individuals would appear, capable of thinking outside the constraints of mankind’s self-imposed dogmatic boxes. Such people with independent thoughts often caused fear and alarm in those who preferred to remain in a comfort zone of blithe unawareness. The independent thinking of such people was often perceived to be a challenge to authority figures and many lost their lives for committing heresy by daring to dispute approved thinking and belief. Bit by bit, individual human determination has slowly thrown off the shackles of constraining superstitious or religious dogma.

In the ever unslaked thirst for knowledge on the creation of the universe, the theory of ‘Big Bang’ emerged. It is a theory with which I have no problem and one I believe is correct even though the causes of Big Bang are as yet unknown. According to this theory, our entire universe was created at the same time and point in space which has been expanding and evolving ever since. However scientists noticed that the temperature throughout the universe is almost constant as is the distribution of matter in galaxies. Scientists say such even distributions of heat and matter would not occur naturally in a real explosion and consequently created the concept of missing Dark Matter to help smooth out this anomaly in the Big Bang theory. Dark Matter is believed to have helped dampen out expected temperature differences throughout the universe.

I firmly believe Dark Matter is proving to be an inhibitive new shackle to original thought. The problem arises according to calculations that this mysterious invisible ‘something’ dubbed Dark Matter would comprise 23% of the theoretical matter of the universe. Huge sums of money have been spent seeking or attempting to detect this missing quarter of the universe and despite what appears to be a few false alarms, so far without success. I suspect Dark Matter will never be found because it simply does not exist.

I cannot help but think that Dark Matter is nothing more than a theory created as a stop-gap measure to smooth out an apparent anomaly in the theory of Big Bang.

It was also further noticed that the universe was continuing to expand at an ever accelerating rate. In the vacuum of space, even in the unknown space which lies beyond the boundaries of the universe, the rate of expansion should remain constant. Some theorise that internal gravitational forces from the remainder of the universe, would eventually cause the expansion of the universe to slow before coming to a halt and eventually collapsing on itself. A form of Big Bang in reverse. Because it appeared some unknown and invisible force within the universe was pushing the universe apart with ever-increasing speed, another theory was created to explain this further anomaly to Big Bang theory. Thus was Dark Energy created as a reasonable explanation to this irregularity in Big Bang theory. As far as I am aware, no one has yet found or detected Dark Energy either.

Like Dark Matter, I believe that Dark Energy is yet another inhibitive shackle the scientific community has created for itself and one that is constraining thought to other possibilities.

While Dark Matter and Dark Energy may have temporarily papered over what appeared cracks in Big Bang theory along comes a further observation in the universe creating yet another anomaly. It has been observed that clusters of galaxies between the Vela and Centaurus constellations are racing towards and apparently converging on a point in space which is beyond our sight due to speed of light limitations. This effect has been named Dark Flow, as the cause as yet is unknown. It appears like water draining towards an unseen plug-hole. Unlike Dark Matter and Dark Energy, Dark Flow is not a theory, it is something that can be detected.

The word Universe implies that only one such singularity exists. Others including myself have long believed other universes exist beyond our own. Such universes, if they exist, have been named multiverses as the prefix UNI would no longer be appropriate. It would not be possible to see such multiverses once again due to speed of light limitations but Dark Flow may well prove to be a physical indication that they do exist and are exerting gravitational forces on a section of our own universe.

Although mankind has long moved beyond believing the world is the centre of the universe, difficulties are experienced by some in accepting that anything could exist beyond our universal boundaries. I find no such difficulty with such a concept. The forces that created our own universe are unknown, but would it not be of the unreasonable for mankind to assume that this event has only occurred once in the endless infinity of time and space? I do not know if the possibility of the existence of endless multiverses beyond our own has ever been named but if not, I would describe it as The Cosmoverse. A Cosmoverse would help explain why our own universe has been pulled into a regular shape, from external gravitational forces surrounding our own universe rather than the so far, undetected Dark Matter. A Cosmoverse would also help explain that external gravitational forces are causing our own universe to continue expanding at an ever accelerating speed. It could well be that Dark Flow is external gravitational forces drawing a section of our universe towards another multiverse. Such a Cosmoverse would eliminate the need for the theoretical and elusive Dark Energy.

In other words it would mean, our universe is gradually being pulled apart by natural external universal forces rather than pushed apart internally by force from a so far undetected Dark Energy. Although these gravitational forces would be on an awesome scale, they would still be a natural and easily understood phenomena of cause and effect.

It’s all a question of continuing to think outside those constraining boxes no matter what their origin.

It is unlikely within either my lifetime or those of anyone reading this article that my theory of a Cosmoverse will ever be proved. By the same token it is equally unlikely that such a theory will be disproved either. In the meantime those that believe in Dark Matter and Dark Energy will continue with what I believe to be a futile search. Who knows, but one day may arrive when if mankind has still not found what it seeks, maybe it will be tempted to think, What if?

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” Albert Einstein

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