3D Hologram Could Map Black Hole Contents says Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking has been at it again, being all controversial and awesome. At a meeting of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm he has given a talk that may go someway to explaining the Information Paradox of black holes.

In the 1960s Hawking became famous for proving the existence of black holes and that nothing, not even light, is capable of escaping their vast gravitational pull. In the 1970s he became even more famous for disproving his earlier proof. He then contended that something could indeed escape a black hole, a type of radiation that went on to bear his own name. The idea that black holes can evaporate away via Hawking radiation is one of the concepts behind the Heat Death of the universe, the theory that the universe will 'end' by merely ceasing to contain a single atom of anything several trillion years from now becoming a vast expanse of uniform, cold nothingness.

There is a problem, though; if black holes irrevocably swallow up matter and energy then the information, or properties, of that matter and energy are lost and this violates key tenets of quantum theory which says that information must be preserved. Physicists and mathematicians studying black holes have spent the last several decades trying to find a way around this conundrum.

Hawking, in collaboration with University of Cambridge physicist Malcolm Perry and Harvard theorist Andrew Strominger, have proposed a potential mechanism. Like many things on the cutting edge of physics it sounds a bit abstract and difficult to follow but, who knows, maybe this will be high school level knowledge a decade from now. As far as I understand it, which is by no means fully, they are suggesting that as an object, let's say Iain Duncan Smith, passes the event horizon of a back hole, a record of his black heart and other wretched components will be forever preserved in the form of a three dimensional hologram. The hologram consists of two space dimensions and one time dimension and would need to be capable of storing enough information to theoretically map out the innards of the black hole and everything it has consumed.

They go on to claim that as Hawking radiation leaves the black hole it would somehow pick up a bit of the hologram data and that way information would be preserved and the laws of physics remain intact. However, the data would come out in a random, unreadable format thereby also preserving the idea that nothing useful can escape a black hole. An analogy was made to burning an encyclopedia; if you were to take an encyclopedia, you know, a paper one, and set fire to it and then keep all the ashes then technically you could say you still have all of the information it once contained, but practically speaking there's no way you could actually retrieve it.

I know, it sounds like an imaginative fudge to try and escape a tight spot, only time will tell. Indeed, it's difficult to say anything a this point as we only have a speech to go on, it will likely be some months before an actual paper is published for proper analysis. Once that is released it will no doubt get the proper scrutiny that such an idea warrants. Give it another decade or two and we might have it figured out, but we'll get there in the end.

Image used with permission

Another Nail In The Coffin of Homeopathy

Great news! A recently published judicial review of the decision by the Lothian Health Board to defund homeopathy has given a sound slap in the face to anyone still left out there that thinks homeopathy has a shred of credibility left.

To give a little background; in January 2012 the Lothian Health Board conducted a review of the homeopathy service it was providing and concluded that the service was not worth funding any further. Any sensible person would immediately realise that this was because it would be unethical to provide public money to fund a 'treatment' based solely on pre-Victorian era magic. However, an idiot by the name of Honor Watt decided to challenge the decision by instigating a judicial review. She was aided by an undisclosed charity, the word on the street is that it was the British Homeopathic Association (BHA).

Even hardcore homeopaths know that they can't win an argument on the science, witchcraft doesn't stand up well to logical arguments, so the tactic used was to say that the decision made by the health board was discriminatory. They didn't say which particular characteristic had been discriminated against so I'm going to go right ahead and assume it's stupidity. Now, whenever an NHS body makes any kind of decision like this it is obliged to carry out an impact assessment with regard to potential discrimination. They had tried to gather as much demographic information as possible before the decision was taken but this was somewhat hampered by the fact that the homeopathy clinics didn't bother collecting even the most basic information about their patients, a highly unusual practice when one is supposedly performing a medical intervention. Anyhoo, on the information available they concluded that no one group of people would be unduly affected.

The killer blow came at the end of the judgement (paragraph 32). The judge, Lord Uist, said:

In any event, even if I had concluded that the Board had failed to comply with its PSED, I would have refused to reduce the decision under review.  It is plain that the Board, as it was entitled to do, accepted the view that there was no scientific evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy and that funding for it was a waste of the limited funds at its disposal.  In these circumstances the countervailing factor in this case was so powerful, indeed overwhelming, that no decision other than the one taken by the Board was conceivable.  A different decision, namely, to continue spending money on a service whose efficacy was not established, would have been unreasonable.

This basically means that, even if the decision had been discriminatory, he would not have overturned it as homeopathy has no basis in medical science and it would be unreasonable to fund it under any circumstance. These are strong and unequivocal statements. There are very few boards in the UK that still provide any funding for homeopathy, I think we're in to single digits now, but even one is too many. Hopefully this judgement will provide the impetus required to finally eradicate this wasteful and potentially harmful practice from public healthcare settings.

Samuel Hahnemann, the originator of the nonsense that is homeopathy

ISS to Destroy Planet

Is it me, or is the International Space Station about to throw its javelin of destruction at the earth?

Watch out!

GMOs: Why the Disconnect?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post bemoaning the reluctance of the general public to catch up with the science of GMOs; it puzzled me as to why a technology that is so clearly a force for good in the world should be reviled as a kind of dirty, leprous freak. I have every confidence that in the fullness of time the public will get onboard and we will begin to reap the multifarious benefits such as increased crop yield, decreased pesticide use, increased drought resistance and increased nutritional content; in the meantime, though, we need to think of ways to push understanding forwards. A good place to start would probably be to try to understand what is at the heart of the distrust aimed at GMOs.

A paper published last month in Trends in Plant Science by a group of Belgian philosophers and biotechnologists may begin to do just that. They attempted to explain why there is such a wide gap between public opinion and the scientific evidence and why it is so persistent. The initial premise is that most people have no clue how GMOs are produced or what they even are. If you have no actual knowledge on a subject then you are far more likely to rely on intuition, folk biology and emotions. These can feel very compelling inside us and are easy notions to communicate to others.

One concept they proffer is that of psychological essentialism. This can make people think of DNA as an essential, primal, inviolable part of an organism, something intrinsic to it that makes it what it is, sort of the physical counterpart to a soul. If you take some of this essence from one organism and add it to another it can provoke a feeling of disgust. People also believe that the second organism will have some of the traits of the first. For example, an opinion poll in the US found that more than a half of recipients believed that a tomato that had fish genes incorporated into it would taste of fish. Which it wouldn't, by the way. This doesn't stop anti-GMO organisations playing up to such fears, however.

The paper looks at the disgust angle in some detail. It appears that many people think of the addition of genetic material more of as a contamination. Given that one of the main reasons our sense of disgust evolved was to stop us eating potentially harmful foodstuffs, this would be a compelling feeling in the absence of hard knowledge to counteract it. Once you feel that something is disgusting or amoral then it is very easy to believe almost anything else negative about it. I think this is very much a part of the strategy on immigrants today; first you make them seem sub-human, then you can treat them any way you like. Because the feeling of disgust is a subconscious one we will tend to look for a reason to justify it, and so we will grab on to any reason at hand, even a false one, as we all like to believe we're rational, sensible people.

These kind of primal intuitions about a topic are the most difficult to fight against. You can't use logic and reason to argue someone out of a position that they didn't arrive at through logic and reason. In terms of changing attitudes the authors best suggestion is that we just have to do our best to educate people as to the facts, starting with children of course. The problem with that is that the science of the classroom normally lags a decade or two behind the science of the laboratory and there are a lot of hungry people around the world that won't be able to wait that long.

Image used with permission

US Chimp Unemployment to Surge

Invasive scientific research on chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) appears to be on the verge of completely stopping in the United States. It comes as a result of a new rule introduced by the US Fish and Wildlife Service requiring all projects to apply for a new license. In this context, invasive research is defined as any that would harm, stress, harass or change the behaviour of an animal and would require a new permit. Even something as innocuous as drawing blood or taking a hair sample would need the new permit. And no one has applied for one. Not a single facility in the US has applied to continue with their research projects. This means that all work will have to have ceased by the September 14th deadline forcing chimpanzees across the country to down their rudimentary tools.

Public opinion in the US has been steadily but strongly turning against the concept of primate research in recent years and it would appear that none of the labs want to stick their neck out and risk the wrath of the populous. Behavioural research, which basically just involves watching the chimps, can continue.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this. Whilst I'm very against the unnecessary suffering of any animal I think there are situations where it is necessary that they suffer. Put in slightly less jarring language, I am in favour of animal research when it is appropriate and properly managed. In the UK there is a law that requires anyone planning an animal experiment to apply the three Rs when doing so; wherever necessary they must Replace the use of animals; Reduce the number of animals; and Refine procedures to limit suffering. I'm very much in favour of these guiding principals.

My concern would be in the potential limits now placed on certain types of research. How much will this hold back progress? Will there be a commensurate increase in research in other animals to make up for the reprieve of the chimps? Perhaps more macaques will now be studied and the overall amount of suffering will remain the same?  I certainly don't know the answers but I will be watching developments in the US with interest.