The equation of Creation

This is a link on the so called "Equation of Creation" purportedly linking the Hydrogen Fine Transmission line (Hlf), Pi and the speed of light (measured in 'Thoms') to some strange "Omega Constant" (0.0123456789). This is the equation:

Hlf.π/Ω = C

For the rest of this post I'm going to attempt to disassemble the paper defending this equation.


The main thing that sticks out in reading this paper is that the author seems determined to prove he can do multiplication, it is littered with "if you multiply a by b you get c" I'm not sure if this is an attempt to sound scientific or what but its very irritating show's nothing.


Anyway onto the 'science': I'm going to work through this section by section skipping over a lot of stuff but trying to pick out the main points.


The paper starts out with some odd justification of "I'm a scientist and even I believe it" kind and then goes on to justification of the use of Hlf, as you can see from the wiki link yes this is an important frequency. Light at the Hlf frequency will penetrate interstellar dust etc yes SETI search on it (along with many other frequencies) so what there are lots of frequencies that are searched for all sorts of reasons. Hlf has some half hearted justification that if you wanted to  send a message to humanity you would use a frequency that we are looking on but that's about it. The justification for the inclusion of pi is that it has been suggested that Intelligent life might transmit at a frequency of pi*Hlf as there are no natural sources at this frequency and pi is a number that almost any advanced civilisation should recognise.


My first major issue with this is omega, this is an arbitrary number, 1/81 is roughly the ratio of masses of the Earth to the Moon

5.9736*10^24 Kg - Earth
7.3477*10^22 Kg - Moon
R = 81.298
1/R = 0.012300425594

but not anywhere near acurately enough to justify 10 significant figures and the claim that 0.0123456789 is attached to the Earth and the Moon, it just isn't. Additionally what is the obsession with 10 significant figures with all measurements, apparently other than this one. Having 10 significant figures on your estimate if you can only measure to 5.


The next section "Where is the science?" contains one of the more comic statements, apparently π/Ω gives a value in milliThoms, reading ahead a thom is also known as a megalithic yard. now fogive me but pi is a ratio, omega is an arbitrary number possibly a ratio of masses either way a ratio of ratios is just another number, not a distance.


Now while a frequency multiplied with a wavelength gives a speed I've yet to see any evidence that we have a wavelength with which to multiply. Anyway the rest of this section is mainly "wow our numbers give us the speed of light in an arbitrary unit how cool is that?!" as well as pointing out that this value of the Thom scales the hydrogen line to the speed of light, well whoop you can solve an equation!


Next section the mysterious 'Thom' is explained: originally it started out as a unit used in stone circles, the fact that a length that is roughly one standard human's pace was used throughout many many stone circles isn't that amazing is it? If I had the time (maybe later) I would see how accurate this number is, given that 0.8297 gives us fractions of millimetres I will be VERY surprised to see if there is evidence for this.


Anyway there is an "exact" method to calculate the Thom so don't worry - it's 1/366th  of the transit of Venus across the horizon. This section finishes with how it turns Atheists into Creationists and other such voodoo as well as how there is still more! yes, the Thom relates the circumferences of the Sun, Earth and Moon!


To relate the circumferences you multiply the full value of the Thom (0.829417864 metres) by some number (to get a second arc), then 360 (to get an degree arc) then finally by 366 to get the full circle. Now this is the first actual error I've found, but I'm pretty certain there are 360 degrees to a full circle as well as 360 arc seconds to a degree. For example using 366 Thoms to get a second then 360 and 366 to get the full circle you get 39,997.98kms, not bad given the Earth circumference is between 40,000kms and 40,008kms, using the standard number of degrees in a circle you get 39,342Kms not so good given that any number has been used. Further examples and their accuracy are given for the Moon and the Sun.


Using arbitrary numbers to get reasonably close to an actual number is not much of a skill or much of a challenge, especially when you are moving from values of an order 1 to order hundreds of thousands. The claim that:

As a side note, the values 100 and 40,000 used above in calculations of circumference, are not arbitrary numbers, but are very significant values in the large volume of research about the message embedded in the characteristics of the Solar system

is rubbish as well - until I see that evidence they are arbitrary numbers that help you get close to your goal value.


So what have we seen? Basically it is very easy to pick arbitrary numbers and make them look roughly like other numbers. For this to be evidence of a Creator I would expect much better than 99.9% accuracy especially given the very odd selection of units and mangled maths. As well as this complaint this whole paper has two massive errors: firstly the claim that π/Ω gives a length, unless you show me what Ω measures I will think of it as a number and nothing more, secondly in the proofs that the Thomis an exact proportion of the circumference of the Moon, Sun and Earth there are only 360 degrees in a circle.

As a final point below is the "proof" that my finger made the moon as I can use the length of my finger as a starting point for maths that calculates the Moon's surface area. This proof took about 5 minutes.

eg 8*8*16*365*100 = 37,000,000Km² the surface area of the Moon, 8 is the length of my finger (in cm), 16 is the average male age for puberty and 365 is the length of a year 100 is a special number we have evidence for.

Libel reform

This (should) be a quick post, for those of you who haven't seen there is a new website that I think you should all go an look at:
http://libelreform.org
it is a lobbying group that aims to improve the way libel cases are dealt with in the UK, have a read about on it have a look here for Ben Goldacre's info on it (he's one of the founders).

If you live in the UK and in any way care about science this is important, if you live elsewhere and care about science its important. If you don't care about science you should and then this is important.

Essentially our current libel laws are crap. The cost of libel in the UK is about 170 times that of mainland Europe, and the burden of proof is upon the defendant: ie when someone sues you for libel you are guilty until proven innocent.

For better (and probably correct) arguments about why you should give a fig about libel laws look around on the libel reform page as well as Ben Goldacre's blog or Jack of Kent's blog or just read up on what's happening to Simon Singh.

Please look at it and come to your own decision; this is important.

Link dump

hey guys (well ok guy)

here are a couple of links that I think people should read firstly:

911.wikileaks.org - transcript of 500million (I think) pager messages sent in the 24 hours surrounding 9/11 from the DC and NY areas

As a follow up to one of my earliest posts there is this report in the Guardian with the full report here.

Finally another follow up (of sorts) to this: there is a list here of "8 awesome cases of vigilantism".

The first I think was one of the most poignant things I have read in years and I'll say no more about it. I want to put up a blog posting as to my thoughts on it but at the moment im too tired and they're too conflicted so it'll happen another day - maybe.

The second was mainly for historic purposes and that it interests me.

The last is the one (surprise surprise ) that is most worrying. Aside from the standard "anonymous did it" fallacy (seriously guys the hint is in the name they're not organised they're anarchists even if they don't know it) it is a little worrying the pure psychological terror that the internet can aim at someone. Yes the people in this piece at least deserved something; but not the ire of 4chan.

Having watched the swell of a 4chan mob against someone its a sight to wonder at as well as flee from.

I wonder how many more people will find this out the bad way?

This is just cool

Howdy net!

This is going to be a very short post as I'm currently struggling to keep my eyes open (hooray for 12 hour day with 4 hours on public transport)

so I'll just leave you all with some awesome pictures

pretty pictures!

THE LHC HAS DATA!

Seriously cool stuff - they should be slowly stepping up the power over the next few months.

the FUD is coming! the FUD....

This is a quick post. I don't want it to be but currently I can't quite form up a good post about it (needs some work me thinks)

So until I get round to writing a post on it here's an interesting link.

Personally I think its FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) but it holds the promise of some interesting impending debates about the internet as well as some big problems if it does go through as written.

Step-hen free speaks!

This is more so that I can find it later but I recommend watching this:

What has the Particle Physics ever done for us?

Other than this? i.e. the internet.

While the LHC may not be about to give you a new version of the microwave a lot of the 'spin-off' tech is VERY useful (HTML, radiation imaging for medicine, modeling systems used in finance etc click here for more). More direct uses are common as well this is a report from CERN on a new experiment that's just starting up to look at how cosmic rays may affect cloud formation and climate change. There are also experiments being designed that will create x-ray lasers (XFEL, LCLS and one in japan who's name I forget)use linear electron accelerators, to create x-ray lasers that will allow us to probe matter at even deeper levels: being able to image the absorption of chemicals into a cell, for example.

Anyway that's it - just a micro-rant on "what have the particle physicists ever done for us?"

It may be a religious view but that doesn't mean you can use it to investigate

This is a somewhat depressing story, I don't have the full details but going on what's in this report the guy was sacked for believing that pyschics should be used to investigate crime. Fine by me, believe what you want; but if you try and follow through on that then expect to get sacked, psychic evidence is not permissible in court and should not be used as a resource.

If the guy was sacked for merely stating his opinion that psychics should be used then he's being persecuted, he's an idiot for suggesting it but he's allowed to voice such an opinion. If he tried to use or pushed for psychics to be used then its another matter.

Ah well

What's more irritating is this, again it's a case of not know enough: either the police force were (hopefully) following up the tip to reassure the family and on the off chance that a real tip was being obscured as pschic, or they actually wasted time and money on a psychic tip off. That being said it should have been obvious after finding no petrol in the guy that the tip off was rubbish

ah well

The burning stupid

This really hurts my brain. To suggest that being secular is what has caused the reduction in the number of births and overall family size is stupid. To quote a parliamentary report I found:

"The number of births in the UK has declined throughout the
century [1901 to 2001], interrupted only by the two post-war ‘baby booms’ and
a secondary peak in the 1960s. " [1]

Unfortunately I can't find any information about relative percentages of secularism to any form of religion other than in 2001 when only 15.5% [2] identified themselves as having "no religion (inc Jedis)". Now this strikes me as not really a reasonable way of accounting for the massive drop in birth rates over the last century:

"Between 1901 and 1905 the general fertility rate in the UK was
about 110 live births per 1000 women aged 15-44. By 1971 this
had fallen to 91 and in 1997 to 597." [1]

Call me scientific but might it just be that the number of people surviving birth has increased: 140 infant deaths per 1,000 births in 1900 to 5.4 per 1,000 in 1997. With more people surviving birth you don't need as many children, life expectancy has also increased (75 for boys, 80 for girls in 1999 compared to 45 and 49 respectively in 1901). A longer life expectancy reduces the pressure to have children at a young age, or at all.

Anyway, moving on from the stupid argument my main interest is this: over the last year what happened? maybe I'm being more focused in my reading but the number of public figures (Tony Blair for example) basically slagging off those who take a humanist or secular world view has seemingly massively increased.

As a standard test: re-read what Lord Sacks said but substitute the word 'muslim', 'black' or 'gay' where he says "neo-Darwinists". Not sure a bastion of great "interfaith relations" is he now?

Gripe the second: WHAT THE HELL is a neo-darwinist with respect to religion? They have nothing to do with eachother unless you happen to be some knuckle-dragging idiot. If anyone out there seriously thinks that secularists or humanists work from any sort of Darwinian principle they are utterly mistaken. We just don't believe in God. Evolution is an utterly seperate argument and the continued muddling of the two is stupid.

Repeat after me: "Evolution, The Big-Bang, Cosmology, Chemistry, Geology have NOTHING to do with the fact that I don't believe in any deity". They may both come from the fact that I think about things and draw what I think to be rational conclusions but one does not cause the other. 



[1] www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-111.pdf
[2] http://www.vexen.co.uk/UK/religion.html

mmmmm retinal projection...

This is insanely cool. Near real time translations subtitled and beamed onto your retina. Who doesn't want one? while I get the impression this will (initially) be like the voice recognition software of the late 90's (ie requires a fair bit of work for 50/50 results) it has several features that are very significant.

The actual translation system is the not too surprising amalgamation of voice recognition and translation software. While both these technologies have been around in vague forms for the last 10 or so years it has only been in the last 5 years that they have become truly viable. Voice recognition interfaces are pretty common now on dial in services (eg for national rail) and while they do get it wrong from time to time they are pretty good. The same goes for translation, most things can be translated by, for example, google translate; it may have some interesting turns of phrase but the fundamental message gets through and this is a free, web-based tool.

The most exciting feature of this though is the retinal projection, this is something that has been slowly emerging of the last year or so (either as micro screens or direct projection) and is one of the last technologies needed to achieve complete augmented reality. We nearly have complete internet data coverage (it may not be fast but there are fewer and fewer places where I can't get some sort of net) and with technologies like 4G, BT openWorld (all BT customers can jump onto free open net connections from BT) or the cloud all poised to become very common it shouldn't be too long before people are wondering how they coped without being able to access wikipedia while walking down a street.

Augmented reality is a while off yet (and still limited by battery life) but as more technologies start to use it (see the phone app layers) it is fast becoming reality. I would say that within the next 10 years at the latest people will have augmented reality headsets (most likely glasses) and that they will be common within 15 years. As a technology I suspect that it will be similar to voice recognition in that for the next year or so everyone will be claiming to use it with no actual utility. After that, and especially with things like the translator specs, it will start to re-emerge as general utility, to steal an idea from Charles Stross: wouldn't it be cool to have a map of the city your in over-laid on your vision and then be able to watch the progress of your bus towards you?

This is, I think, the most significant part of these glasses: not so much what they can do (which is very cool) but that they represent a protrusion of what so far as been a fun toy in labs into useful utility.

Smoking up a storm

yes ok I'll stop with the bad titles, this is the last one, maybe.

On to the actual purpose of this post: it appears that the government of our dear island has sacked Prof. Nutt from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). The reason? saying that by changing the classification of drugs to "scare" people from them you were "devaluing" the evidence. The BBC report on the sacking can be read here and the report on his comments here.

My main gripe with this is the lack of respect that politicians (of all parties) seem to have for the people who advise them. If you are employed to offer advice on a policy your agreement with that policy shouldn't be a contingent of your employment.

In this case I think that the Prof. Nutt has a very good point: we allow the use of alcohol and tobacco (which can cause, among other, things cancer and cirrhosis) but ban the use of cannabis (a chance of developing psychosis or other neurological problems).

Moving on from this to a more general outlook this seems to highlight one of the main problems currently experienced by the scientific community: our expert advice (a few dozen years studying a small field) is routinely being over thrown based on 'gut-instinct' and anecdotes. There is a distinct distrust at all levels of society of those with expertise. This would be less worrying if it wasn't for the fact that often this expertise is replaced by much more dubious sources of information: how many people now will take the advice of someone who uses 20 minutes at the university of google to discover that vaccines are bad over someone who has spent a greater portion of their life researching and studying exactly how vaccines work.

I think this is more than just a new anti-intellectualism (which it is), I think it's the beginning of global future-shock. As technology and knowledge moves on people are becoming increasing terrified by the change and looking for simpler explanations of how the world works. The continued inability of science to do what people expect of it (why do we still have AIDS why isn't my car flying yet) has given people the impression that as a group scientists are detached from the concerns of pretty much everyone else.

This leads me back to the reports on the BBC: people no longer want experts. They don't want people who are willing to tell them that we don't have all the answers yet, to tell them that actually drug abuse is endemic in pretty much all societies and has been for years. People are actually losing a lot of the rationality that drove us to where we are now. I'm not saying that we are going to back-slide, just that we might move sideways a bit. As this century progresses the number of new technologies in people's lives will drive many to consider it magic. People won't want to be told that the nanotech injection they just received is very carefully molded to them specifically they will want to just know that the magic juice will cure their cancer.

Science has raised us so much higher than we have ever been before and now most people cannot see the difference between it and magic. It's a shame but for many people I think that the 21st century will be one of magic and will miss out on the wonder that we can create.

how habitable is the earth?

If you have any interest in futurism and possible extra-solar habitation (ie living on other planets) this is an excellent post by an excellent author

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/how_habitable_is_the_earth.html

The rise of journal sharing?

There is a very interesting (and short paper) on the impact of and ease of illegal sharing of journal articles here.

For those of the tl;dr (too long didn't read) variety basically a large number of journals that practice closed access (you have to pay to read articles) are having their articles shared via websites etc. The estimated cost of one of these websites to the 2,000 odd journals whose articles were republished as $1.4Million (based on $30.00 per article).

I'm not a big fan of intellectual property (IP) laws (maybe because I have nothing to protect) but I feel that several things have come into play in recent years. The IP laws are now as likely to protect large companies from individuals as the opposite (in fact more likely as an individual will rarely have the resources to cover legal costs) and the rise of the internet which has blurred the line of what can actually be protected. Is code something that you can patent? that particular bit of code or the concept behind it. These issues have already been met by firstly music, then movies and now slowly the publishing world (look at the trouble google is having with news that they license and various books).

In the case of scientific publishing the real question is whether we should pay for information. Prior to the internet a lot of the work of publishers was exactly that: editing and publishing articles that would then be bound together and sent to those who were interested often costing a lot of money in the process. Now in the publishing world most of the work is done electronically, editing and organisation of the information is still important but the cost of actually printing the article is often no longer an issues as people will read the papers online. Should we then be paying up to $30 for an article?

I don't think we should. Information is at its best when everyone can access it, creating a situation in which multiple people can all review and learn from someone's contribution is far preferable to creating an arbitrary barrier for people to cross. This is especially true in the case of the sciences where people are interested but only a very minor percentage will want to pay up to $100 for a paper that they're only interested in browsing. The upshot of charging people to learn is that you create a capitalist market for information. On the internet this means that people will go where it's freely available (eg wikipedia) or where it's free but wrong (eg Answers in Genesis). As part of the purpose of science is the propagation of knowledge forcing people to pay to get good information seems counter-intuitive. This is more of a problem now when information is so freely available in general and people are treating science more and more like magic: either something to be feared or avoided as un-knowable. Giving good and easy access to genuine science will mean that those who are interested can get hold of the actual information that is needed and make their own mind up about it. I'm not saying this will stop websites like Age of autism from spreading misinformation but with access to genuine papers on vaccines or the LHC people who might otherwise take these websites at face value (especially when presented with the scientific world hiding its information behind a pay wall) they may read up and find out the real facts.

While this is a very similar situation to the one found in the entertainment industry I think the subtle differences make the case stronger for open access journals. While the entertainment industry should be free in some form (I pay for the cinema and yet still insists on adverts why!?) funded through pay-to-dodge ads or a pay-to-own system etc. The journals system should be completely free, a lot of journals already have adverts if these moved onto their websites in a "pay for the ad free premium version" system I would be more than happy.

"It's only a theory"

Interesting program on BBC iPlayer called "It's only a theory" hosted by Andy Hamilton and Reginald D Hunter, first episode has a very interesting man on talking about the possibility that the first 1,000 year old person has probably already been born. Seems to be a reasonable argument based on bell curve concepts.

The idea is that people being born now will likely have access to technology that will extend their life significantly and once they get old (again) the process will repeat to the point that essentially life will be sustained ad finatum.

The guy presenting the argument is awesome (HUGE beard) bit of a strange program not too well created, interesting idea with a reasonable approach to science but somewhat trying to hard for jokes that aren't really there.

Further VHDL adventures

Well I've finally made my shiny toy do something vaguely useful. With the amazing power of science (and several weeks hard work/hackery of other's code) I've made my board into an 8-bit binary to hexdecimal converter. It does this by changing the output of the seven-segment LED display to the relevant character based on the position of the 8 sliders.

That's about it. Next stop something genuinely useful.

First week

Well half way through my first week as a PhD (well technically MPhil) student and what have I learnt? Mainly that PhDs HURT I've spent the last 2 days trying to cram the better part of a terms worth of electronics (well logic mainly) into my brain. Doing fairly well so far.

I have also learnt that there are far too many annoying webmail systems that don't sync with stuff properly also that the new Microsoft Outlook live sucks utter balls.

anyway that's all I have to report at the moment (yes this was a worthless post but no one reads this so sod it).

will maybe post something more substantial soon when I think of it.

The obligatory late post

Hello again! I'm back (well while I remember this anyway). Various things to report: firstly I'm heading into a PhD so back to uni very soon (which is just awesome!) Also in a new flat (that's my excuse for lack of posts anyway) and finally loving the iPhone - if you use the net a lot while on the go get one.

Anyway on to something slightly less egotistical: interesting developments. The main thing of interest to me at the moment has been the prospect of building a CNC Milling machine (basically a computer controlled router - the type for carving). This is a project between me and a friend and we're hoping to start on it very soon. This will mean I should have access to an amazing carving machine: essentially plug in the information for what you want to build and it will (so long as it can be carved from a block of whatever).

Other cool gubbins that has been circling is that I've recently finished Iain Bank's "Crow Road" this is an amazing book if quite sad. Well worth a read.

Anyway looks like I can't think of much else to post and I'm ready to install Dawn of War II so I'm off to enjoy that

New Comic

Hey Guys,

I'm back again (briefly) to post a link to this a comic a friend of mine is drawing. Should be a good read once a week so take a look - only one up at the moment though so not too much to worry about.

In other news I'm still fighting with VHDL and my lazyness in trying to get my JAVA-fu going again. Will be posting up some more games reviews soon as well (mainly once I've got some second games down), I'm hoping to put up reviews for 'Race for the Galaxy' and 'Crunch' I've had a single game of RftG and a few of crunch and both are very good. As I'm off to a games club tomorrow I should hopefully have a few more games down to pass judgement on.

Lit-bots and Comp-scripts: how the world is getting faster...

I saw this while on holiday published in the International Herald Tribune I was going to blog about it then decided not to becuase it was an isolated case, well I thought it was then I read this about half way down Ben describes this:

"Professional complaints followed in May, mostly about individual chiropractors’ claims. Then, in June, blogger Simon Perry found the BCA database of 1,029 members online, containing 400 website URLs. He wrote a quick computer program to automatically identify all the chiropractors in the UK claiming to treat colic, locate their local Trading Standards office, and report them (more than 500 in total) automatically, followed up with printed letters."

This made me look up. If you haven't read the links here is my main interest in these reasonable disparate stories: they both use simple bots within a legal framework to spam requests. Respectivly one spams buy orders (buy for 1cent more and get a lot of money) the other spams legal letters requests for investigation. This has been online for a while in the form of trawling take down letters, these are simple bots that look for things that may be copyrighted material posted illegally and then spam the ISP of the concerned website with cease and disist letters. My main interest in this is that this sort of thing will produce an arms race, already this is the case on the stock exchange where groups are trying to out do each other with faster systems and smarter algorithms, legally similar systems are likely to evolve: clouds of company bots that exist to absorb the flak of other's take down bots and simlar...

for more ideas read accelerando by charles stross

anyway just thought I'd flag that up as it interests me

DNA databases, Charlie and Ben

This is going to be a pretty short post as there isn't much to add to this discussion other than what is said in these two reports: first Ben Goldacre on the bad evidence used to justify long term retention (ie 24 years retetion) of DNA data taken from those who are arrested but not convicted or cautioned. Second is this article by Charles Stross on the odds of being a false positive in a government database check (in this case CRB check and why he doesn't give school readings of his books).

The only thing really that I want to add to the debate on a database of our DNA etc run by the government is that the risk in terms of security of a database that will ultimately link ALL your information in one place if breached is pretty horrible. I'll briefly expand this: the DNA database would be likely allowed to expand (through ID cards etc) to cover everyone and be multi-use, ie your medical history would be there you NI number what ever. Even if this doesn't happen a single source of information would make identity theft a utterly crippling crime, especially as it would be most likely a random person who would be used to act as a patsy for someone else. Although this is less likely given the current technological state it is likely only a matter of time before the current DNA system starts leaking.