ON CHANCE

Sorry bloggers, but I have had to take some time off getting my left knee replaced,

Colin

Rachael and Melvyn
on CHANCE

R. Uncle Melvyn?

M. Mm?

R. My teacher says that if you toss a penny thirty times and it comes up heads every time, it's just as likely to come up heads the next time.

M. So?

R. But it's incredibly unlikely to come up heads thirty time in a row, so it must be much more likely to come up tails on the thirty first time.

M. You mean a penny knows how many times it's been tossed heads?

R. S'pose not, but somebody must. Whoever heard of a penny coming up thirty one times in a row? Unless someone has fixed the penny.

M. I can only think of three people who might know how many times: God, the Devil and you!

R. But you don't believe in them.

M. I believe in you.

R. I'm not sure if I believe in you!

M. I'm not sure that I do, either. The chances against me existing are trillions to one, and the particles of which I am made operate at random. This applies to you too.

R. WHAT?

M. We are so unlikely that.....

R. How can randomness make anything?

M. Given enough time, randomness appears to be able to make anything. I'm talking about trillions of years, mind.

R. Where does evolution come in, then?

M. Evolution is a retrospective hypothesis. Patterns discerned after they have occurred.

R. But things have got more complicated and better as time has gone by. Sounds like somebody has planned it.

M. Things have got more complicated, but I'm not so sure about better. People seem to be dead set on destroying their own world. And we think we are the most perfect of creatures. Ha!

R. I read in a book that the chances of having thirteen boy children in a row are 8,000 to one, and eight daughters in a row 500 to one.

M. That proves it then.

R. Proves what?

M. That boys are thicker than girls. I always suspected it.

R. But you still insist that the chances of having another child of the same sex are 50:50?M. I do.

R. I don't really understand it.

M. Neither do I. I was never any good at maths.

R. So it's a mystery then?M. Seems like it. I think we need a marmalade toastie, don't you?

R. And a mug of tea.
　

RACHAEL AND MELVYN
On ENERGY

R. Uncle Melvyn…
M. Mm?
R. What’s energy?
M. Energy! I’m not much good at physics. Why do you want to know?
R. Well, I’m told it created the cosmos at the Big Bang, it lights my torch bulb; it sits in food and petrol….it’s everywhere and is potentially infinitely powerful; and I want to know what it is!
M. Sounds a bit like God…
R. But it’s mindless…
M. Unless someone is directing it.
R. Yes, yes. But WHAT IS IT! And where does it come from?
M. Don’t know.
R. That’s not much help.
M. I think it’s just an idea. A hypothesis. An abstraction. Like gravity.
R. Gravity? That’s real enough isn’t it? Isaac Newton saw an apple fall and discovered it.
M. But he didn’t know what it was. Gravity is just heaviness, whatever that means. Before he came along people thought it was a kind of love.
R. Love? That’s crazy! You have to be a person to do love.
M. They saw love as a mysterious force that draws things together. An apple desires the ground; a flame desires heaven. Love of the earth stops the planets spinning away.
R. You said it was crystal spheres.
M. I think I may be getting my metaphors mixed.
R. The trouble is that if you look things up in the dictionary, they say energy is a kind of power, power is a kind of force and so on. It just goes round and round.
M. That’s dictionaries for you. But you can talk about the effects of something, even if you don’t know what it is.
R. Newton said you can’t get rid of energy. It just pops up somewhere else. And then Einstein said E=mc 2
M. So now mass can turn into energy!
R. And the sun is just a continuous hydrogen bomb.
M. You’ve been looking things up!
R. But we still don’t know what energy IS, do we?
M. Nope. Let’s have a marmalade toastie.
R. And a mug of tea?

Rachael and Melvyn

CONVERSATIONS WITH UNCLE MELVYN
CRYSTAL SHERES
R. Uncle Melvyn?
M. Mm?
R. Why do stars twinkle and planets don’t?
M. Because you have to see the stars through the crystal spheres that the planets run on.
R. Come on, Uncle Melvyn! Nobody believes in crystal spheres.
M. Pythagoras did. How else would the heavenly bodies hang in the sky as they travelled round our earth?.
R. Our teacher told us that the planets are really trying to get away, but they are held onto us by invisible strings called gravity.
M. And you believe that?
R. Of course I do!
M. I suppose it makes a kind of sense.
R. And you have a better idea?
M. I’ll tell you something else the ancients thought. Since (unlike the planets) the stars never move or change, God must live up there, because He is the same for ever. They thought that nothing beyond the moon ever changed.
R. But some stars do change. Meteors move slowly across the sky, and meteorites whiz down.
M. That’s why they thought meteors were a different kinds of star, and they must be between us and the moon, where things change and move.
R. But they aren’t; they are miles away!
M. You know that and I know that, but the ancients didn’t. Not ‘till Galileo got hold of a telescope. But it’s true that things on earth are changing all the time. We are born and die. Churches and mountains crumble. But there’s something else that’s always changing between us and the moon….. The weather.
R. But the weather is meteorology!
M. Funny that we still call it that, isn’t it? Anyway everything went wrong when Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter, and some new stars called novas appeared.
R. Why?
M. Because new stars are a change and the spheres couldn’t be crystal as Jupiter’s moons would break his sphere.
R. What a pity. The spheres were beautiful. But you still haven’t told me why planets don’t twinkle.
M. I suppose it’s because their light doesn’t have to travel anything like so far.
R. So you don’t really know!
M. I think it’s time for a marmalade toastie…..

On Stars

Rachael and Melvyn
3. ON STARS
R. Uncle Melvyn?

M. Mm?

R. Do you ever read your stars in the paper?

M. Sometimes, but only if it’s good news.

R. Don’t you believe in it, then?

M. I don’t believe the movement of the planets, sun and moon against the zodiac of the fixed stars influences things on earth.

R. How about if people react according to the planets? Then they are having some effect.

M. Interesting point. But the planets can’t predict anything.

R. What about the birth of Jesus, when the star stood still over Bethlehem?

M. the things that you’re li’ble to read in the Bible; they ain’t necessarily so.

R. So it’s just a pretty story then?

M. No. I think it relates to a real event.

R. But if the star stood still, the earth must have stopped going round and everyone would fall over.

M. It depends on what you mean by ‘stopped’. The Magi were Zoroastrian astrologers, who had seen an unusually bright heavenly body and were looking for a precise spot on earth to which it related. Bright stars are so rare that they thought it must mean something tremendous.

R. Seems fair enough. But how did they do it?

M. All heavenly bodies appear to move from East to West.

R. OK….

M. Each one reaches its zenith, that’s it highest point, as it crosses the North/South meridian.

R. Hang on …….Yes. Got that.

M. Kepler reckoned there was a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the house of Pisces at that time; that would have been doubly bright.

R. So when these bright planets crossed the meridian, they would have been over a particular point on earth, for an instant!

M. What’s more, any star stands still for a moment, between rising and falling again, so you wouldn’t need to know the time, or the direction of south.

R. You could just sit on your camel and look?

M. You might get a crick in your neck, because when you had found the spot, the ‘star’ would be directly overhead.

R. So they just had to ride on until they were right underneath this bright star as it reached it’s highest point in the night sky?

M. You’ve got it.

R. Wow! That deserves a marmalade toastie.

M. And a mug of tea.

Rachael and Melvyn...
2 On THE BIG BANG
R. Hi, Uncle Melvyn. Dropped in for another chat. About the Big Bang.
M. Oh yes! You believe in the Big Bang. Credo in explosionem magnam!
R. What’s wrong with the Big Bang then?
M. Not my field. You tell me about it.
R. Well…..First there was nothing…. then a load of energy tore nothing apart…. And turned it into matter and anti-matter…. and here we are.
M. Really? ….So where did this energy come from?
R. Out of nowhere I suppose.
M. Nowhere? An infinitely energetic nowhere?
R. Can you think of a better idea?
M. My job is to question everything. It’s called philosophy. So who thought up this Big Bang myth then?
R. Astronomers. They said that if the universe was whizzing apart all the time, that if you work backwards it must shrink back to nothing. That’s logic.
M. And darkness was on the face of the deep. And God said, “Let there be light!”
R. We sang that at school!…. Haydn’s Creation!
M. What did you say came before nothing?
R. Easy! Even more nothing.
M. H’m. Makes you wonder about which way time goes.
R. One thing still comes after another, doesn’t it?
M. God is said to be able to scan time from the beginning to the end of time in a moment. In the twinkling of an eye.
R. That doesn’t make sense.
M. Neither does subatomic physics, with its particles disappearing and reappearing at random, and being able to influence each other, however far apart.
R. So I should be able to communicate with my best friend, however far away?
M. Something like that. I think we need a marmalade toastie.
R. And a mug of tea.

Who are Rachael and Melvyn?

Rachael is a secondary schoolgirl, who has few friends except for Barney her black Labrador and her eccentric Uncle Melvyn. Her head is buzzing with questions, and only Uncle Melvyn seems to be able to fully understand them and make some sort of helpful reply, so she often calls round. They both have a weakness for Marmalade toasties.

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This blog is intended for the public at large to see my Rachael & Melvyn creations. I will let you know when it is fully operational.