Bigwigs

When Electronics World published my papers in 2002-3, I got a pretty amazing attack from Sir Kevin Aylward (http://www.anasoft.co.uk/band/bio.htm), Warden of the King's Ale (a defunct title, according to Catt who actually tried to look it up: there is only a Queen in England at present anyhow!), an electronics engineer (http://www.anasoft.co.uk/) who worked on the fated SuperConducting SuperCollider and has a page on Relativity for Tellytubbies: http://www.anasoft.co.uk/physics/gr/index.html

I did not like the conventional treatment of general relativity, and pored over Kevin's collection, coming up with a heuristic approach that fits Penrose's and Feynman's description of it (volume reduction due to radial contraction around a mass), then I approached it from another angle, the LeSage mechanism of gravity. Plugging the Hubble expansion into one of the throwaway equations (the mass continuity equation, which I had seen years before in some textbook but had never used) on Kevin's page, I got an analytical proof for the density correction factor!

The problem to me was trying to see the tensors as differential geometry, in a physical way rather than an abstract mathematical tool. Reading Einstein's 1916 paper on the foundation of general relativity, together with several textbooks by lesser authors, helped fill in gaps.

I also enjoyed the evolution of women: http://www.anasoft.co.uk/replicators/malefemale.html

What is so amazing about Kevin is that he doesn't seem to see how funny it is to me. He writes a negative letter which is printed, gets rebuked by me and Catt, then writes a really violent letter to the Electronics World editor which allegedly dismisses me and Catt as fools, the editor blocks the letter to prevent legal action, then we discover Kevin is actually 'Warden of the King's Ale' and has a site full of his own scientific ideas, some very sensible too: http://www.anasoft.co.uk/quantummechanics/index.html

I love the bit where Kevin writes: 'Kevin is a firm Atheist. Gods do not exist. End of story.' (http://www.anasoft.co.uk/band/bio.htm)

You always find that atheist's believe in things. They start believing in equations or the future, or themselves, in place of God. Being Catholic (http://www.catholic-ew.org.uk/), I believe in Jesus as well as the scientific method. I don't really believe that Jesus was not a human being, because if he was superman he could have been acting when being crucified and not really have felt pain. I realised this when a kid, but was soon forbidden to ask annoying questions, like why Jesus didn't teach people how to do first aid or basic surgery, which would have saved millions over the last 2000 years. The answer is 'don't ask' or you will be crucified by your fellow Catholics. The whole thing is based on mystery, morality and justifiable social work.

The deep strength of religious mysticism is vagueness, like string theory. Start asking clear questions, and you meet a conspiracy of paranoia. Don't ask silly questions, or join another tribe; the choice is yours. The whole subject is a bit dangerous to discuss in public, because I don't want to annoy the Pope and be excommunicated from religion in the same way that I was excommunicated from physics. It isn't a good experience. The bottom line is, Jesus is a moral character to believe in, and 'God' is such a vague concept it can mean anything from Nature to Father Christmas for different people. If religion is to progress, it will get stronger by becoming weaker, i.e., less specific to particular groups (Muslins versus Christians, etc.). Science, to progress, needs to do the exact opposite and give up vague, untestable horses*** string theory!