Monday 26 September 2011

Full steam ahead: is there a future in revisiting obsolete science and technology?

Several weeks ago I was looking towards Greenwich in south-east London when I spotted an airship. A small one to be sure, but nevertheless a reminder of the time when Britain not only had a large manufacturing industry but in some sectors was even in the vanguard of technological development. The blimp in question was probably the 39 metre-long Goodyear Spirit of Safety II, which although nominally an American craft was assembled at RAF Cardington in Bedfordshire. I visited this site about 20 years ago and managed to go inside one of its' two enormous air sheds, once home to such giants of the skies as the 237 metre-long R101. Sadly, these days the hangers are mostly used for filming and rock band rehearsals, and recently a housing estate was built inside the base perimeter. However, it's not all a case of rust and nostalgia, as Hybrid Air Vehicles Ltd are making use of Cardington in a joint project with the aeronautical heavyweight Northrop Grumman to build three unmanned hybrid airships. The 76 metre-long Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle or LEMV - a classic boffin-flavoured acronym, hurrah - is being developed for a US military surveillance role. The company's future plans include eco-tourist airships, so are we seeing the glimmer of an airship renaissance?

On the whole this seems rather unlikely. In the 1980s Cardington was home to Hybrid Air Vehicles' predecessor Airship Industries, one of who's Skyship 500s appeared in the James Bond film A View to a Kill (the same design as seen in my circa 1984 photograph below). Unfortunately the innovations in materials and engines weren't enough to save the company from liquidation.

An air display at RAF Henlow, Bedfordshire - late 1970s
Although Hybrid Air Vehicles has grandiose plans for vehicles up to twice the LEMV's length, it's doubtful there will be a near-future resurgence in long-haul civilian airships. After all, even during their interwar heyday a transatlantic ticket on the likes of the Hindenburg cost more than double that of an ocean liner. Therefore, military usage and cargo delivery to aircraft-unfriendly terrain are a far safer bet from an economic viewpoint, despite the obvious advantages of aerial craft less reliant on fossil fuels. Indeed, there are even schemes afoot in several countries to develop solar-powered cargo airships.

Another UK-based proposal that seeks to put new life into old technology sadly appears to have rather less chance of success. The Class 5AT (Advanced Technology) Steam Locomotive Project plans to develop a steam engine capable of matching current main line high-speed stock. After ten years' effort, the team have put together a very detailed study for a 180 km/h locomotive, but as you might expect there hasn't exactly been a rush of investors. The typical short-term mentality of contemporary politicians and shareholder-responsive industry means few appear willing to support the initial start up costs, especially when Britain's current rail network operates so wonderfully (hint: that's called irony). If you think any of this sounds familiar, check out the post on boffins and their pipe dreams, where the science and technology were frequently superlative and the economics frankly embarrassing.

Then again, a resurgence in motive steam might appear to have little relevance outside of alternative history novels, but a point to remember is that it was only when James Watt started to repair a working model of Thomas Newcomen's atmospheric pumping engine in 1763 - a design by then half a century old - that the development of true steam engines began.

The steam car has even less chance of a reawakening, although there appear to be good engineering reasons behind this, namely difficulty coping with the constantly-changing speeds required in urban driving. As it is, steam on the road seems to have mostly novelty value these days. A good example is the British Steam Car, winner in 2009 of the Guinness World Land Speed Record for a steam powered car. It may have a dull name, but with a Batmobile aesthetic and top speed of 225km/h, the world's fastest kettle has certainly proved a point that steam needn't be associated with slow.

Somewhat less romantic and rather more pragmatic, NASA has returned to tried and tested capsule technology for their space shuttle replacement, Orion. The "Apollo on steroids" design is now accompanied by the Space Launch System or SLS (another uninspired moniker), which refers to a rocket slightly taller than the Saturn V that will have second stage engines developed from those used on this famous forebear - which incidentally last flew in 1973.

But reappraising old science isn't restricted to high technology, as can be seen by the resurgence of biotherapeutic methods in the past few decades. Most people have heard of the fish pedicure fad but the rather more important use of disinfected maggots to clean flesh wounds has received NHS support following some years of trials in the USA. A 2007 preliminary assessment even showed success using maggot therapy to treat wounds infected with the 'superbug' MRSA. Yet the technique is known from Renaissance Europe, Mesoamerican and Australian Aboriginal cultures: sometimes low-tech really could be the way forward.

Possibly that's the key as to whether these revitalisations are likely to succeed; if the start-up costs are relatively cheap then there's a good chance of adoption. Otherwise, the Western obsession with the now makes it all too easy to dismiss these projects as idealistic dreams by out-of-touch eccentrics. Not that new technologies have always followed the rational approach when initially developed anyway, since historical backstories have probably been as much a driving force as objective analysis. I guess we're back again to disproving that old Victorian notion of continuous upward progression, but then as the philosophically-minded would say, we do live in postmodern times.

Thursday 25 August 2011

Something sinister: the left handedness of creation

I'm embarrassed to admit it but the first home-grown science experiment I remember undertaking was to explore the validity of astrology. Inspired by the Carl Sagan book and television Cosmos I decided to see for myself if, after centuries of practice by millions of adherents, the whole thing really was a load of bunk. So for three months I checked the predictions for my star sign every week day and was amazed at the result: I found them so vague and generalised that I could easily find something in my life each day to fit the prediction. A sort of positive result that negates the hypothesis, as it were. As a young adult I encountered people with a rather less sceptical frame of mind, and if anything their astrological information only reinforced my earlier results. As my birthday is on the 'cusp' between two star signs, I found that about half the astrologically-inclined viewed me as a typical sign A whilst the other half dubbed me a typical sign B. At this point, I think I can rest my case...

Of course, astrology is a very old discipline so it's no wonder it's pretty easy to see the cracks. Over the past forty or so years there have been several generations of authors with a slightly more sophisticated approach, paying superficial lip service to the scientific method. Although their methodology fails due to the discarding or shoehorning of data, this hasn’t stopped the likes of L. Ron Hubbard from making mints. To this end, I decided to generate a hypothesis of my own and test it to a similar level of scrutiny as their material. Thus may I present my own idea for consideration: evidence suggests that our universe was created by an entity with a penchant for a particular direction, namely left-handed / anti-clockwise. Here are three selected cases to support the hypothesis, although I cannot claim them to have been chosen at random, for reasons that will soon become obvious.

The first argument: in the 1950s and 60s physicists found that the weak nuclear force or interaction, responsible for radioactivity, does not function symmetrically. Parity violation, to be technical about it, means that for example massless particles called neutrinos spin in a counter clockwise direction if they are created by beta decay. Like many other fundamental parameters to our universe, no-one has an explanation of why this is so: it just is.

The second argument: amino acids are usually described as the building blocks of proteins, but in addition to those used to make life on Earth, additional types are found in meteorites. It has been theorised that life was made possible by meteorites and comets delivering these chemicals to the primordial Earth, but radiation encountered on their journey may have affected them. Whereas amino acids synthesised in laboratories contain approximately equal amounts of mirror image (i.e. left- and right-handed) forms, nearly all life is constructed from the left-handed, or L-amino acids.

The third argument: a new catalogue of observations using the latest generation of telescopes indicate that from our viewpoint most galaxies rotate counter clockwise about their cores. Of course it's been a long time since humans believed the Earth to be the centre of the Universe, but even so, this is a disturbing observation. We now consider our planet just an insignificant component of the second-largest galaxy within a small group at one end of a super cluster. In which case, why is galactic rotation so far removed from random?

So how do these arguments stand up to scrutiny, both by themselves and collectively? Not very well, I'm afraid. Working backwards, the third argument shows the dangers of false pattern recognition: our innate ability to find patterns where none exist or to distort variations into a more aesthetic whole. In this particular case, it appears that the enthusiasts who classified the galaxies' direction of rotation were mistaken. Put it down to another instance of the less than perfect powers of perception we humans are stuck with (thanks, natural selection!)

The second argument initially bears up somewhat better, except that I deliberately ignored all of the biological elements against the argument. The best known of these is probably DNA itself, which is primarily helical in a clockwise direction. This seems to be a fairly common problem in the history of science, with well-known cases involving famous scientists such as Alfred Wegener, whose continental drift hypothesis was a precursor of plate tectonics but who deliberately ignored unsupportive data.

The first argument stands by itself and as such cannot constitute a pattern (obviously). Therefore it is essentially worthless: you might as well support the left-handed notion by stating that the planets in our solar system orbit the sun in a counter clockwise direction - which they do, unless you happen to live in the Southern Hemisphere!

Full moon viewed via a Skywatcher 130PM telescope
Once again, our ability to find patterns where none exist, or as with the rotation of galaxies, to misconstrue data, leaves little doubt that our brains are naturally geared more towards the likes of astrology than astronomy. Pareidolia, the phenomenon of perceiving a pattern in a random context, is familiar to many via the man in the moon. However, there are varying degrees to this sort of perception; I confess I find it hard to see the figure myself (try it with the image above, incidentally taken through my 130mm reflector telescope earlier this year – see Cosmic Fugues for further information on genuine space-orientated pattern-making).

Of course, these skills have at times combined with innate aesthetics to aid the scientific enterprise, from the recognition and assembly of Hominin fossil fragments from the Great Rift Valley to Mendeleev's element swapping within the periodic table. However, most of the time we need to be extremely wary if a pattern seems to appear just a little bit too easily. Having said that, there still seem to be plenty of authors who cobble together a modicum of research, combine it with a catchy hook and wangle some extremely lucrative book and television documentary deals. Now, where’s a gullible publisher when you need one?