Science fixation: Professor Brian Cox, telescope totty. Pic: BBC
Oh for goodness sake. Apparently everything we thought we knew about the Universe is wrong. The boffins have looked at it again. Now we’ve got something ominous called Dark Flow marauding through the Universe. Don’t ask me what it is. I don’t know. I just know it’s an unsettling discovery apparently, and it’s pulling everything towards a single point.
Oi! Boffins! Stop looking for trouble! Go and make some nice gentle programmes instead. Like the one that nice young Professor Brian Cox has made to brighten up my Sunday nights. I haven’t a clue what he’s talking about, but he says it in such a nice way, I could listen to him for hours while I coquettishly twiddle my hair and ask him cute questions about space and stuff and he smiles fondly at me and thinks I’m all cute and pats my head and says I don’t need to worry about anything like that because I make such lovely scones and am so darned cute (imagine wavy vertical lines here to indicate dream-like state). Oh sorry, where was I? I seem to have drifted off there.
Ah yes. That’s where I was. Cosmology. Dark Flow. Confusing stuff. Take the Big Bang theory. One minute, there was nothing. Like absolutely nothing - no space, time, Marks and Spencer, McDonalds; nothing. Then something inside that…errr… nothing… exploded under the stress of all the… errr… nothing and it all ended up with an… errr… something. A Universe! The end. Ta-da! I know what you’re thinking. I should’ve been a science teacher; that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?
Apparently if we had powerful enough telescopes we could look so far into the Universe with them that we could see the Big Bang actually happen. Don’t ask me any questions about that. My understanding of it all is very sketchy. I just know that it’s all to do with the speed of light and that nice Professor Cox probably. Sigh.
I have an enquiring mind. I’ve always wondered about stuff. I remember going on holiday once (we almost always went to Southerness, which was only a few miles away, but it felt like I would never get there in time to invade the gift shop with all its tacky treasures and seasidey gewgaws). They had a display cabinet which rotated. I discovered the button which, when pressed, rotated the cabinet and the glittering prizes therein. That cabinet was like crack. With its come-hither sexy button, just asking to be pressed.
I actually ran away during that holiday if I remember correctly (highly unlikely, since I can’t even remember what I had for my tea last night) because the fridge in our chalet (caravan actually) had several mysterious buttons and knobs inside. And if there’s a button, I’m afraid I have to press it. Enquiring mind see? So I pressed it and the fridge defrosted, including the wee drawer at the top which contained the frozen stuff. Uh-oh. I knew an awfy row was on the cards. So I ran away. Probably to the gift shop to press the rotating cabinet button until the owner told me off.
Some things just make my brain hurt. Except Prof Cox obviously. But things like Big Bang Theory, String theory etc. I’d like to apply for funding to investigate why, the minute you make an appointment to get your hair done, your hair suddenly decides to look amazing, despite weeks of acting like it’s had several nights out on the bevvy and is too hung-over to do anything except lie atop your head in a limp, lifeless manner. (In hindsight, maybe if I poured a glass of Irn Bru and a tin of tomato soup over it, it would’ve jumped to attention. Instant hangover cure right there.)
Or why, the minute you phone the doctor, whatever ails you suddenly improves. Is there a name for this? Apart from “bloody annoying”? Or, when you rummage in your handbag for “something” you always pull out “everything else” first? It’s as if some really annoying law of physics makes everything in your bag assume the shape of the thing you’re looking for so that you eventually pull a tampon out of your bag triumphantly saying “Ah! Here’s my car key!” 79 per cent of the stress in my life is handbag-related, as in locating objects in its murky depths. The other 21 per cent is stress induced by looking for my handbag in the first place.
I suspect I could win the Nobel Prize for something or other by investigating these strange phenomena, no? Prof Cox would be so impressed.
Oh! Mince and tatties. That’s what I had for my tea last night. It just came to me. I knew you’d want to know.
