The age of the Offensive Laser

Blasters, Phasers, Laser Canons. Every Sci-fi series has some sort of directed energy weapon. Imagine Star Trek without Phasers or Han Solo toting an Uzi. It just does not work. At this point I must congratulate the Sci-Fi Channel’s (when it used to be called that) Battlestar Galactica and its use of real ammunition and more realistic physics. Until then, I don’t think that anyone would even consider a futuristic show without putting in a ‘Ray Gun’ of some sort into the mix.

Real science’s best attempt at such a device includes mounting it on a Boeing 747 and using such dangerous chemicals to power it, you were as likely to kill the operator as hit the target. (Try getting that in your holster, Han.) Well, that is until now! Solid State Lasers have finally reached the same power levels as Chemical Lasers. The latest Arms Show at Farnborough (Yes, we thought it was an air show as well!) shows off this new weaponry shooting down UAVs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10682693

Of course, the laser is invisible until it comes into contact with something. You can’t sell something that is invisible, so you either dress it up with a half-naked female (like car manufacturers selling 80mpg in the city) or you get an artist in to draw the ‘ray gun’ line. Trust me, once they get this thing down to hand-held size, there will be a female in the wings ready and waiting to hold it for the camera!

Venus and the Higgs Boson

The Register (That bastion of IT and Science reporting professionalism, almost on par with such tomes as Private Eye) published a story on the 25 June entitled “Venus home to lost cities left by long-dead aliens, says ESA” with the by-line “Well, it was strongly implied.” The summary of the story was that ESA have published an article to declare one time there was an abundance of water on Venus. The register invites us to spin our own Friday afternoon notions from there. Their idea such a notion involves long uninhabited Venusian cities with nuclear bunkers containing DNA ready to be cloned in to fully fledged Aliens. I am willing to bet that David Clegg (our two headed beast at the head of Government) didn’t see that one coming when they put together their latest immigration policy.

What caught my interest was the report on a theory by Eric Chassefiere that the water on Venus existed only as a mist in the air. This reminded me of the description of the Garden of Eden in the book of Genesis (Chapter 2 and verse 6 if you must know) where most decent translations recognise that a mist (fog or vapour) came up from the ground to water everything. Now could it possibly be that Venus was once our Garden of Eden? That would mean that our ancestors were then banished to Earth as a living Hell and the fires of the sun are the flaming sword that prevents us from ever returning to paradise. (Not that this stops NASA’s robots and the cast and crew of Defying Gravity from going there. Maybe we should consider sending them there as punishment for making such a dismal first season as to get such a wonderful idea cancelled before the season even finished!)

Consequently, could we really all be Venusians, all illegal aliens and possibly all delusional.

Moving on swiftly! Douglas Adams postulated in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe that “There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.” Well, the Higgs Boson has been discovered to have spilt personalities. This is of course a disaster. Physicists were hoping that this so called God particle would be this fat bloke in the sky that gives everything else meaning (or was it mass? It’s all getting rather spiritual.) Now that there are more parts to it than they originally reckoned, are they going to call the new boson family “Mount Olympus?”

Anyway, the Higgs Boson discovery would not be so bad if it were not for the discovery of Neutrinos’ ability to transform themselves into other types of neutrino in a harmonic kind of way. What starts out as one type of neutrino can end up oscillating between types as it travels. And if that was not bad enough, what is really getting physicists’ goat is the fact that an anti-neutrino is not in fact the opposite of a neutrino. So the Standard Model of physics is not so much back to the drawing board as in the trash can. Can anyone remember when it used to be Protons, Neutrons and Electrons?

“There is another theory which states that this has already happened!”