4 April, 2005

Black Holes “Almost Certainly Don’t Exist”

A brave physicist claims that black holes don’t exist at all, but what we are interpreting as the existence of black holes – where stars have collapsed into tiny, superdense masses with an event horizon within which matter/energy escape is almost impossible – are actually… dark energy! (yes, yet another dark-matter/dark-energy claim)

It’s a good one, though, and helps explain a lot of things. His theory is that these dark holes, as they’re undoubtedly going to be called by the mass media, attract matter over spacetime on the “outside” of the event horizon, but repel it from the inside, transforming electrons into positrons as they leave, thereby causing radiation (as we see from suspected black holes, but wouldn’t expect) as they collide with matter in the dimensions we’re used to.

In any case, it’s a brave little theory which is also probably wrong. But you can read it on nature.com anyway.

English Usage, And Colourblind Humour

I did the Commonly Confused Words Test (hey; shouldn’t that be the Frequently Confused Words Test): here’s my score –

English Genius
You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 93% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I can’t find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don’t. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you’re not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!

For the complete Answer Key, visit http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/.

Which I’m at least slightly pleased with. Not least because I beat Claire (barely).

However, it does turn out that I was wrong about something, earlier – over the weekend, she and I had debated use of “I” and “me” (subject/object). Now, as you would expect, we both know how to correctly place them, but I claimed that it was also incorrect, when writing in the subjective sense, to fail to put the other objects in front of you (i.e. “…my friends and I” was better than “…I and my friends”). It turns out, according to AskOxford, that either are equally correct, merely that the former is considered more polite. So, a point to you, there, Claire.

On the other hand – if you get your point across, who gives a shit? Just the pedanticists, that’s who.

Matt, a co-worker, just looked over to my desk, where I was eating a jacket potato covered with bolognaise sauce. “Ooh! Is that spinach?” he asked, and it took me some while to work out why he’s said that… before I remembered that he’s profoundly deuteranope-colourblind (red/green). “Umm, no… it’s bolognaise,” I responded. But of course, to him – and to almost 10% of white male humans worldwide – the dark green of spinach and the dark red of a rich bolognaise have always been pretty much identical. Fascinating, isn’t it?

A Social Weekend; Script Improvements, Too

Things are making progress re: the film – JTA‘s made a few script changes that actually make a couple of the relationships in the story make sense, to which Paul said “These changes make the story work… I don’t like them…”

In other news, my parents have each agreed to lend us their respective video cameras, which gives us enough to film scenes sensibley. Couple this with Rach’s offer of a second tripod, and we’re laughing. I’ll be putting up the placeholder web site for the film… tonight, hopefully.

It’s been a fun, sunny weekend. Claire and I met up with Rach, Kathleen, etc. (finally got to meet Issac, Rach’s baby). Geek Night was fab, if quiet. Troma Night was okay, but it’s a great pity that we weren’t able to get Electric Dreams working (although Paul and I have since managed to download a fresh copy).

And last night, Claire and I were joined by Paul, Bryn, and Hayley for food, which was nice. So it’s been a jolly, social little time we’ve had. There’s always been somebody who wanted to touch bases with me, even if it’s just people sending hate mail about me auctioning the late Pope’s dead body on eBay in an auction that lasted just give hours before it was pulled. Heh.