Religious and moral evil in the central 'scientific romances' of HG Wells

Bravely, Elberry has decided to publish a university essay he wrote on TS Eliot. This sent me down to the basement, past the various women I've kidnapped over the years, and into the labyrinthine recesses of my voluminous personal library. Here, between various dusty parchments and palimpsests, I uncovered my university English literature notes, and in particular the essay on HG Wells, submitted to Professor Parrinder, which forms the title of this blog.

It's rubbish, so I shall spare you all but an extract from the first page:

Whilst the Martians in the 'The War of the Worlds' are certainly portrayed as fearsome enemies, the narrator refrains from describing them as morally evil. In the opening pages, it is explained that the Martians launched their attack as part of the Darwinian struggle for existence. We learn that Mars is decaying, and it is asserted that the colonisation of another planet is their "only escape from the destruction that generation after generation creeps upon them." The Martians' strategy is interpreted as one of survival rather than aggrandisement.

The narrator warns that "before we judge of them [the Martians] too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals...but upon its own inferior races." This attitude pervades the novel, the narrator repeatedly describing the relationship between Martians and humans as akin to the relationship between humans and animals. On various occasions, humanity is compared to lemurs, sheep, ants, bees, wasps, infusoria, and dodos. The implication is that if the Martians are morally evil, then so is humanity.

The narrator actually condemns humanity more strongly than he condemns the Martians. Mankind is described as "blinded by his vanity," complacently trusting in the security of human civilisation. The Martian invasion rids mankind of this attitude, and in this respect, is considered by the narrator to constitute a learning experience for mankind. An illustration of this is the protagonist's comment at the start of Chapter 7, (Book Two): "Surely, if we have learnt nothing else, this war has taught us to pity - pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion."

Written at a time of strong, British colonial rule, it is significant that the novel depicts the population of England subjected to Imperialism. The implication is that, if the Martians are immoral, then so too are the British.

Stars, radiation, DNA, and cancer

There are in the order of 100 billion (10¹¹) stars in a typical spiral galaxy, such as our own Milky Way. Only about a thousand of these are visible to the naked eye at any one time, in the absence of light pollution. In contrast, there are in the order of 100 trillion cells (10¹⁴) cells in the human body. That's a thousand cells for every star in the Milky Way.

Within almost all of those 100 trillion cells is a nucleus which contains DNA. The DNA suffers various types of damage on a routine basis, and in fact, an estimated 2,000,000,000,000,000,000 DNA lesions occur per person, per day! Whilst there are copious DNA repair mechanisms within each cell to deal with this damage, they aren't 100% effective.

The most serious types of lesion are double-strand breaks. DNA is, famously, a double-helix, and when both helical strands are ripped asunder, this is referred to as a double-strand break. Double-strand breaks are capable of causing DNA mutation, and certain types of DNA mutation lead to the formation of cancer.

Whilst some of the DNA damage is caused by chemicals, radiation is also capable of causing DNA damage. Everyone on the Earth is subject to a background level of radiation, which averages about 2.4 milliSievert per annum. About 1 milliSievert of that is external radiation from X-rays and gamma rays. At 1 milliSievert of whole-body exposure, every cell nucleus in the human body is crossed by, on average, one X-ray/gamma-ray per year. This will cause, on average, 4 double-strand breaks per hundred cells, 15 DNA crosslink breaks per hundred cells, 100 single-strand breaks per hundred cells, and 250 damaged DNA base-molecules per hundred cells.

The most damaging type of radiation to biological material is ionising radiation. This is radiation which possesses sufficient energy to liberate the electrons from the host atoms or molecules in biological tissue. X-rays and gamma rays are ionising radiation, which deposit their energy indirectly in biological material. That is, they create secondary charged particles, typically electrons, which deposit their energy by means of the direct ionisation and excitation of the atoms and molecules in the biological medium.

An X-ray or gamma ray photon can liberate an electron by means of either:

(i) the photoelectric effect, in which a tightly bound inner electron is freed from its atom, and the photon is absorbed;

(ii) Compton scattering, in which the photon transfers some of its energy to free a loosely-held outer electron;

(iii) pair production, in which the photon interacts with the electrostatic field of an atomic nucleus, and is converted into an electron and a positron.

Once a secondary particle is created by this means, it can typically undergo millions of Coulomb force interactions with other atoms and molecules before it loses all its kinetic energy, exciting and ionising those atoms and molecules en route. A high-energy electron can sometimes also lose energy by bremsstrahlung X-ray production, if accelerated by a nearby atomic nucleus. This X-ray may, in turn, ionise other atoms, or may simply exit the biological medium. Within the trail of ionised atoms created by an electron, those atoms which have lost an electron from an inner shell may themselves emit fluorescent radiation, or may emit a cascade of low-energy Auger electrons.

There's a lot going on, then.

In addition to the complexity of the particle interactions, it is necessary to consider the complex levels of DNA structure within a cell nucleus. The DNA double helix is wound around spools of protein called histones. The spools are themselves linked together, and the DNA winds one and a half-times around each histone to form what's called a nucleosome. The nucleosomes are then wound into a spiral structure themselves, and this spiral forms loops attached to so-called protein scaffolding.

Whilst there is obviously an enormous amount of complexity here, I don't see much evidence of ambitious theoretical and mathematical programmes within the field of oncology. Too much research time and money is expended on trial-and-error experimentation. What we need is a decent theoretical model of all the structures and processes involved in the formation of cancer, and then we need a supercomputer simulation, or distributed computing simulation of these structures and processes. Without wishing to trivialise the difficulty involved, the field of oncology needs something comparable to the Millennium simulation in cosmology.

Lauren

Alabaster animate, Lauren's flaxen beauty liquifies my heart, and pours it as a superfluid fruit-smoothie into a pit of longing.

"Abandon false-prophet Kermode!" say I. "The quiff maketh not the man!" I wail.

Yet Lauren heeds not, and now my despair is perfect as a Platonic polyhedron.

Tea-bagging

The wonderfully urbane and erudite Dr Karl continues to facilitate the uncovering of some delightful scientific miscellany on his Radio 5 phone-in. A listener called last week to ask why it is that, when you pour boiling water onto a tea-bag already placed in the cup, the tea-bag will inflate, and rise buoyantly with the water, to the top of the cup, whilst if you fill the cup with boiling water first, and then place the tea-bag into the cup, the tea-bag will generally sink beneath the surface of the water. (Try it!)

Whilst Dr Karl was bereft of an answer on this occasion, another listener reported this week that if you re-boil a kettle of water, and repeat the experiment with the tea-bag already in the cup, then the tea-bag will not inflate under these conditions. The explanation inferred from this is that the tea-bag is inflated on the first occasion by oxygen dissolved in the water; when the experiment is repeated, there is no longer a sufficient amount of dissolved oxygen in the water.

So, I exhort you all to re-fill your kettles to avoid the disappointment of a non-inflating tea-bag. Also, as ever, please refrain from drinking coffee at all times.

The Dark Ages

The Dark Ages is the period of cosmic history in which there was no visible light in the universe. When the universe was about 380,000 years old, the temperature dropped to about 3,000K, electrons combined with protons to form neutral hydrogen atoms, and the radiation which had previously been scattered by the free electrons, was able to travel freely through space. The universe therefore became transparent to the passage of radiation, and this radiation was distributed over visible and infrared wavelengths. However, as the universe expanded, the radiation was rapidly redshifted to longer wavelengths beyond the visible range, (to ultimately become the cosmic microwave background radiation we detect today), and the universe became completely dark for many millions of years. These are the cosmic Dark Ages.

The Dark Ages lasted until the first stars, galaxies and quasars were created. Until recently, it was estimated that this didn't occur until the universe was 1 billion years old. Recent data from the WMAP satellite in 2003, however, suggests that the Dark Ages ended when the universe was somewhere between 100 million and 400 million years old.
The Dark Ages, or Early Middle Ages, is the period of human history between approximately AD 600 and 1000, when the classical pagan culture of Greek, Hellenistic and Roman civilisation was succeeded in Western Europe by a period of economic and intellectual stagnation.

After the Roman Empire was converted to Christianity, it fell into decline, and the Western Roman Empire was overcome by the pagan barbarians.

In 'Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud', Peter Watson writes that "in early antiquity religious toleration had been the rule rather than the exception, but that changed with the animosity with which the pagans and Christians regarded one another. We should not overlook the change that had come about in men's attitudes with the arrival of Christianity as a state religion. There was an overwhelming desire to 'surrender to the new divine powers which bound men inwardly' and 'a need for' suprahuman revelation. As a result, the thinkers of the period were not much interested in (or were discouraged from) unravelling the secrets of the physical world: 'The supreme task of Christian scholarship was to apprehend and deepen the truths of revelation.' Whereas paganism had imposed few restrictions on the intellectuals of Rome, Christianity actively rejected scientific enquiry. The scientific study of the heavens could be neglected, said Ambrose, bishop of Milan...'for wherein does it assist our salvation?'"

Between Boethius (AD c.480-524) and Anselm in the 11th century, there was only one significant thinker, Erigena in Ireland. Books and learning fell into an almost terminal decline in Western Europe, and it was the Islamic world which preserved much of the classical culture. In particular, the works of Aristotle, most of which were totally lost in Europe, were preserved by the Arabs, and only re-introduced to Europe in the 13th century.

A British Grand Prix at Donington?

"I offered the BRDC the opportunity to renew their contract, but they felt they were not in a position to do so," said Bernie Ecclestone. "The British Grand Prix has been saved. If we had not done the deal...these people would not have agreed, and the British Grand Prix would have gone."

This, you might think, was Bernie speaking on Friday, as he announced that a new deal had been signed with Donington to host the British Grand Prix from 2010. If so, then you would be wrong, because this was Bernie speaking in the Spring of 1999, after announcing that a new deal had been signed with Brands Hatch to host the British Grand Prix from 2002.

The owners of Brands Hatch gave assurances that they had the finance and planning permission to complete the extensive construction work necessary to bring Brands Hatch up to Formula 1 standards. "There is no problem there," said Nicola Foulston, then CEO of Brands Hatch Leisure. "We have planning permission as a motor racing circuit and all we would be doing is precisely that. There is no change of use involved."

As it transpired, Brands Hatch didn't obtain the necessary planning permission. In possession of a contract which entitled them to host a Grand Prix, Brands Hatch Leisure were sold to a subsidiary of the US Interpublic Group in January of 2000, and Nicola Foulston departed, having pocketed $40 million. The US Interpublic Group then slowly discovered what is a well-known fact about the modern sport:

Hosting a Grand Prix is not a profit-making activity.

Bernie takes the revenue from the television rights and corporate hospitality, and charges each circuit a so-called 'sanctioning fee' for the right to host a Grand Prix. Back in 1999, the cost of hosting the British Grand Prix from 2002 onwards was £8 million a year initially, with 10% compound interest. One trusts it is no cheaper today. Making a profit from gate receipts alone is therefore a task which challenges most Grand Prix promoters. In fact, most Grands Prix around the world make a loss, and the races are generally subsidised by local and national governments. A Grand Prix is, in effect, an extremely effective advert for countries such as Malaysia, Bahrain, China and Abu Dhabi; a place in the Formula 1 World Championship calendar says 'We're a modern, commercial economy: invest and trade with us.'

Back in 2001, the Interpublic Group found that, not only did they have to pay Bernie's sanctioning fee, but because Brands Hatch was incapable of hosting the race, they also had to pay Silverstone $12 million a year to actually host the race on their behalf.

Donington, however, claim that they will invest £100 million over five years. They would certainly need to, because the Donington track does not meet current Formula 1 safety criteria, and the pits, paddock, media and corporate facilities also do not meet current Formula 1 standards. Given the difficulty of making a profit from hosting a Grand Prix, it is difficult to see where the money for this would come from. According to the statement issued by Donington on Friday, "funding for the massive redevelopment would be led by a private investor who is also a large shareholder in the company." According to a televised interview with joint Donington CEO Simon Gillett today, the money will be 'venture capital'.

If they can raise this money from gullible investors who fail to do due diligence, then good luck to them. But at the moment, all Donington have demonstrated is that they possess a contract to hold the British Grand Prix. That contract has a value, and it may be necessary for some other party to buy the contract from Donington (and Bernie), at a future date. The only thing which is guaranteed, is that Bernie will come out of it a winner.

A solution to the world's energy problems

A couple of weeks ago, 'British engineers' proposed that underfloor generators, installed in shopping centres and transport hubs, could provide a significant source of power. The idea is that the footfall of pedestrians can be used to compress pads, which force fluid through mini-turbines, thereby generating electricity.

A fantastic idea. But that's still thinking on a small scale. I propose that we carpet millions of square miles of workplaces, shopping centres, airports, railway stations, and pavements across the world. Specifically, we need nylon carpets. As people walk on these carpets, they will build up a huge static electric charge. They can then discharge this energy into supercapacitors installed in their personal automobiles, and use that electrical power to drive home in the evening.

Problem solved.

Radiotherapy and Monte Carlo simulation

Britain's lack of investment in particle physics may ultimately entail that the chances of surviving cancer under the National Health Service are significantly less than in Europe or the US.

Conventional radiotherapy attempts to kill cancerous tumours with a dose of X-rays. Unfortunately, a significant dose is also delivered to surrounding tissues and organs. In contrast, particles with a non-zero mass, such as protons and heavy ions, deliver a dose of radiation according to something called a Bragg peak. As a consequence, proton therapy and heavy ion radiotherapy offer a more precise tool for the treatment of cancer.

The link with particle physics is that proton and heavy-ion therapy requires particle accelerators, such as the synchrocyclotrons used in pure physics research. And, whilst Europe, the US, and Japan are forging ahead in this medical technology, here in the UK we have next to nothing. In fact, at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Centre in Texas, children suffering from a particular type of cancer are each given: (i) an individual CAT scan, to precisely identify the tumour location, shape and size; (ii) an individual MCNP (Monte-Carlo N-Particle) simulation, to ascertain the required proton dose distribution.

In this context, it is worth noting that in the US, 66.3 per cent of men and 62.9 per cent of women have a five-year cancer survival rate, whilst in Europe the survival rate is 47.3 per cent for men and 55.8 per cent for women (Eurocare statistics).

As a technical aside, MCNP is an interesting type of simulation because it represents particle interactions as a type of probabilistic billiards. Rather than evolving a quantum mechanical wave-function, particles are given determinate particle tracks between collisions, but the interactions are probabilistic. The distance between collisions is probabilistically selected, the nature of the interaction is probabilistically selected, and the outcome of a collision, (the direction and energy of an outgoing particle, for example) is selected according to the quantum mechanical cross-sections. (In quantum theory, the probability of an interaction is specified by something called a cross-section; the greater the cross-section, the greater the probability).

For an introduction to these issues, my own paper on the subject, Dosimetry, Scattering theory, and Monte Carlo simulation, might be of some assistance.

The Tegmark interview

In dread of the 10-hour Virgin Atlantic flight back from the US last weekend, I tried to purchase as much reading matter as I could at Albuquerque airport. In doing so, I came across this excellent interview in Discover magazine with Mr Multiverse, Max Tegmark. Max's big idea is that physical existence coincides with mathematical existence.

In particular, I reverberated to the wisdom of Max's career strategy:

"I learned pretty early that if I focused exclusively on these big questions I’d end up working at McDonald's," Tegmark explains. "So I developed this Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde strategy where officially, whenever I applied for jobs, I put forth my mainstream work. And then quietly, on the side, I pursued more philosophical interests."

Artifactitude

There is, reputedly, a greater density of art galleries and museums in Sante Fe than in New York City. Moreover, entry to all of the galleries in the centre of Sante Fe is completely free on a Friday night. It was for this reason, then, that I paid full admission to gain entry to the New Mexico Museum of Art last Sunday.

The museum itself is a stunning mock-adobe construction, and currently houses several interesting exhibitions, including Flux, a collection of glass sculptures. This really appealed to me, because in such sculpture, the art is so clearly built upon the craft, and one cannot imagine being able to produce such works oneself without a degree of learning and dedication.

As ever, I was amused by some of expository captions which accompanied the exhibits. One such explained that whilst many glass sculptures attempt to mimic other artifacts, there is an alternative trend in which the sculpture adopts the attitude of being an artifact in itself, an attitude which it dubbed 'artifactitude'. A further caption spoke of a nascent tendency for glass sculptors to produce works which are not vessels, but, rather, anti-vessels. Sadly, no definition was furnished of what an anti-vessel is, but perhaps the answer lies with this paper by Hans Halvorson and David Baker on the concept of antimatter.

Los Alamos

Los Alamos is distributed across the top of several canyon-separated mesas, at an altitude of 8,000ft. Thankfully, it's quite cool here, at only 89 degrees Fahrenheit. In contrast, Albuquerque, through which we passed on Saturday, is 98 degrees today.

The journey across New Mexico on Interstate 40 was truly eye-boggling. The road often stretches for miles, in a straight line, across a Road-Runner landscape, towards the horizon. And what is truly remarkable here is the speed-discipline of American drivers. The speed limit is only 75mph at most, and yet the vast majority of drivers rarely exceed the limit by more than 5mph. Most drivers in the UK, confronted with an open road stretching literally miles into the distance, would hit 100mph within minutes.