THE DIMENSIONS OF SPACE

By GRET RACINE Space surrounds us. We can't see it, although we can see what's in it, because we are part of space, we inhabit it, yet we ourselves are not space. Space is invisible to the naked eye. The world we live in consists of invisible space stretched three ways. Invisible space, nevertheless, begins as a point. At this non-level of structure, the point remains without dimension. It could be said that it has zero dimensions. However, imagine drawing a line from this starting point in zero dimensions then attaching it to another point, also in zero dimensions. The structure of both space and the dimensions is altered. What we've created is a single line called ‘length'. Length is the first dimension and indeed, it is a single dimension. None of the other dimensions can be single by their very nature. Only length has that honour. A single line tells us very little about the spatial environment, or, indeed, what's in it. So the next step is to create something which has two dimensions. To achieve this, all that's needed is to draw another line. Not any line, but a line in a particular direction. Note that direction = dimension in our culture, and the direction of the next line must be very precise. So from the second point, we extend the line at 90 degrees to the first. We've now created an image in two dimensions, yet once again, by doing so, we've altered the character of invisible space. Perhaps some will believe that by creating an image in two dimensions, space can now be trapped into visibility, but that is simply not so. We could draw a hundred or even a thousand lines connecting any number of points, but still the space they surrounded could never be seen. Observing the various lines would not solve the problem either because the lines are not space. They contain or occupy the space inside, but they themselves are not space. The new line in our two dimensional image now becomes the ‘width', or ‘depth'. However, the aim is to create three dimensional space, the space we are used to and in which we live. So once again, another line will achieve this, but this time, we'll need to be extremely precise about the direction in which we draw it. If someone were to say "well, such a line must obviously be drawn at right angles agai", they'd be perfectly correct. Take a moment to stop and study the image we've created. Certainly, another line drawn at a 90 degree angle to the second is perfectly possible, but that doesn't necessarily make a three-dimensional figure. Even extending a fourth line from the third in the same manner would not necessarily turn it into a three-dimensional figure. The resultant drawning is, of course, a square, and a square, no matter how you turn it, is still only a two-dimensional figure. Stumped? So it was a trick. A three-dimensional figure cannot be rendered on a two-dimensional surface, no matter how hard we try. Certainly, the image of a three-dimensional figure on a two-dimensional surface can be created, using shading and lines angled away from 90º, but that still doesn't make the drawing three-dimensional. It remains, and will always remain, a two-dimensional object, because the angles are not necessarily all at 90 degrees. The two-dimensional surface causes the depth angles to become distorted. The figure must be created in ‘real' three-dimensional space to be truly three-dimensional. So instead of drawing, let's use a matchestick model instead. By gluing two matches together at right angles as previously described, we can create an object equivalent to the first image we drew. This gives us the ‘length' and ‘depth' of the object. A third match glued at right angles to both the other matches will produce the third dimension, or ‘height'. After that, it's easy enough to finish off the object by gluing together the other nine matches, all at the proper 90º angles to make a truly three-dimensional figure. Now comes the fun. Many people believe we live in a four-dimensional world—three spatial and one temporal. They are partially correct. The world is not static, but constantly moving. Everything in it is relative to everything else in it. However, for the purposes of this exercise, let's dispense with the fourth dimension as temporal and turn it instead into something spatial. After all, it's easy enough to create four dimensions by simply moving the matchstick cube from one place to another, and the cube has undoubtedly moved in time. It's moved in space as well, thus creating the temporal fourth dimension with which we are all familiar against the backdrop of the three spatial dimensions. However, having already decided not to recognise the fourth dimension as temporal but rather as spatial, it makes what we have to achieve next just marginally more challenging. It would be quite correct tosay that in order to create a four dimensional object in four dimensional space, the next match to be glued to the cube would need to be at right angles to all the others! Wait a moment, that can't be done! It's impossible! But with twelve matches already glued together to form a cube, are we then stuck with a three dimensional object in a three dimensional world? How can another match be placed at right angles to all twelve other matches? Don't despair. There's a way, but only because the fourth dimension has momentarily become spatial rather than temporal, and it's still only a partial solution. We do not live in a world with four spatial dimensions, so a four (spatial) dimensional object can never be seen given the parameters we are using. However, to see even the partial solution to the problem, a piece of cotton is attached to the cube, suspending it away from the surface. A sheet of white paper is placed underneath it—white works best with this experiment—and a light source, such as a torch or lamp globe, is trained from above the cube so that the shadow falls sharply on the paper. The height of the cube itself can be adjusted so that the image cast on the paper is large and sharp. And there you have it—a four dimensional image in ‘four' spatial dimensions! Once again, however, what's seen is only in two dimensions, in much the same way as when we look in a mirror. We know it's reflecting a three dimensional image, yet all we see is in two dimensions because that's all a mirror has. But looking at the shadow on the paper carefully, it is four dimensional. By reflecting it against a mirror instead, or by slightly crushing the sheet of paper into ‘three' dimensions, it becomes even clearer. What we've created is called a ‘tesseract', in the real world, although in reality, it's nothing more than a mathematical construct. All the foregoing was relatively easy, because we live in and know all about the three dimensional world. However, once the point of creating a tesseract is passed, things get a little sticky. We can see, or even visualise with closed eyes, the three dimensional world, simply because of our familiarity with it. Beyond that, everything that follows now is just going to be mathematical constructs, or at best, mathematical hypotheses. It will be much harder to visualise things. It's easy enough to visualise something familiar eve n with the eys shut because of its three spatial dimensions. However, with eyes still shut try imagining just—three dimensional space. For the most part, space is a very empty place in spite of all the stars and galaxies and other objects you can see every night just by looking up. Try, though, to ‘see' black, empty, three dimensional space. That's not so easy. Why? Because it's not as familiar as any scene that could be imagined here on this world. The brain doesn't hold any memory of black, empty, three dimensional space, so it's much harder to conjure up. Let's make this a little easier, but first, retain the idea of the mirror or crushed paper and how it's possible to see the reflection of a three dimensional image in/on it while knowing a mirror can only be two dimensional and the crushed paper three dimensional at best. Hold on to that idea. Over one hundred and twenty years ago, in the 1880s, a minister by the name of Edwin Abbott wrote a charming little book called Flatland: A Romance in Many Dimensions. To read it required an extremely agile mind, capable of imagining any number of things not usually part of everyday experience. It was probably the forerunner of the famous ‘thought experiments' of Einstein to explain his theories of special and general relativity, or even that of Schrödinger's poor cat. What we are about to do can be called a ‘thought experiment' in that tradition. Flatland is a world of only two dimensions. The people there, and the houses, the surroundings, everything has only a length and a depth. The principle character is Mr Square. Mr Square has the misfortune to meet and befriend Lord Sphere, who is from another world, a three dimensional place called Spaceworld, totally alien in every way to Mr Square's comfortable Flatland. As a Flatlander, Mr Square has only two dimensions, length and depth, just like the rest of his world. Lord Sphere, on the other hand, is a fully three dimensional Spaceworld being, having length, depth and height. Length and depth can be replicated very easily in Flatland, of course, since they are the same two dimensions in both worlds. But height? How can height manifest somewhere where it is not? Let's backtrack to tesseracts for a moment. By shining a light through Lord Sphere, he was projected into Flatland where Mr Square was able to observe him as a two dimensional circle. But Mr Square doesn't only want to observe his friend, he wants to shake hands as well. If Lord Sphere consents to rest upon the floor of Mr Square's two dimensional house, he does so as a point. Now a point, as previously explained, represents zero dimensions. Luckily, the floor of Mr Square's house is suddenly porous, so Lord Sphere delicately slips through it a few inches. He is no longer just a point, but has become a small circle instead, any two points on his perimeter allowing for a straight line to be drawn between them. This places him very firmly in Mr Square's two dimensional world. As Lord Sphere sinks lower and lower through the floor, Mr Square can only see the two points becoming more and more widely separated, until they reach Lord Sphere's middle, when they begin to diminish again back to a point. In this remarkable fashion, the two friends can both touch one another, albeit very briefly. We've dealt pretty extensively with the first three dimensions and the experiments in Flatland for a very good reason. To understand what's coming makes doing so extremely desirable, because now we really are about to enter the realm of pure mathematical speculation. It's not necessary to know any math to understand what we're going to talk about, but simply to only understand the underlying principle of spatiality and the three major dimensions in it. Theoretical physicists, and others, have proposed at varying times in the past that the number of the other dimensions could be as high as eighty-one. At the opposite end of the scale, ten and eleven have been suggested, and occasionally numbers somewhere between these two extremes. So are they spatial too? Well, probably not in reality, although yes, they most certainly would be as a mathematical construct. Why so many? Most physicists these days usually propose a hypothetical situation to the scientific community after a lot of ‘virtual' reconstruction involving computers. The scientific community then try to replicate this work, causing it to become a ‘theory' if any evidence produced survives such rigorous testing. It will only become ‘law' if further testing outside computers substantiates what has gone before. Hence the many differences in the number of the dimensions proposed. For instance, listing some of these ‘theories', we find we have to contend with such diverse ideas as string theory, galactic lensing, black holes, ‘white' holes and wormholes, the shape, speed and destiny of our universe, and perhaps the greatest of all, the dark matter problem and baryonic space. Let's take these apart one by one and explain them—no math, however—so they make a little more sense. Let's start with the last. The dark matter problem has been around for a long time. All it means is that the observed matter in the universe simply doesn't add up. What that means is that the universe and everything in it which can be seen does not add up to the correct amount of matter physicists have measured in other ways which tells them it ought to be such and such a result and yet isn't. The discrepancy, unfortunately, is quite large. It turns out that of all the matter which can be seen—and measured—in space, in the universe, is just a measly tiny 2%! All those stars seen at night, all those galaxies, planets, comets, meteors, gaseous dust and other objects only add up to 2% of the entire universe! How do physicists know this? Because if all we can measure in the universe really does add up to only 2%, then we would be living in a very different place to what we do now; indeed, it would be a very weird place, because it wouldn't be anything like the familiar universe we know now. This 2% of matter is known as baryonic space, to distinguish it from the other 98% which must be around somewhere, except physicists don't know exactly where yet. That's why so many ideas have been put forward about the number of dimensions; some think that because 98% of matter, a huge amount when we think about it, is missing, the number of dimensions required to hide all this dark matter must be very large. Others, as we said, think just the opposite, that all 98% of the missing matter is compressed so much that it requires only a few dimensions in which to hide it. What about the shape, speed and destiny of the universe? Let's say right away that the universe is, first and foremost, the weirdest place there ever was. Forget Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass. Forget Lilliput, the land at the top of the Beanstalk, the Faraway Tree, Atlantis, Lemuria and Utopia. All are cast in the shade by the universe itself for weirdness. The shape may be round; it could just as easily be saddle-shaped, or cylindrical, or something else no-one has yet though about. Don't forget that the shape, whatever it turns out to be, is an integral part of the spacetime fabric of the entire universe. That is, the contents of the universe are not really expanding or rushing away from one another; the universe as a whole is expanding as a unity, hence universe. Imagine a currant bun cooking in the oven. As it heats and cooks, it expands, or rises. The currants scattered throughout the bun do not rise of their own accord, but only because the dough of the bun is rising. Think of the currants as galaxies and the bun as the universe to see what we mean. Another, perhaps easier, analogy is to use a balloon. Let's say the balloon is spotted all over, or the spots can be drawn on with a thick texta. Then we blow the balloon up slowly. The balloon is the universe, the dots the galaxies. As the balloon expands, they all move away from one another, except they aren't really moving at all, only the balloon is. Which is exactly what the spacetime continuum of the universe is doing, and the galaxies along with it. Do we know how far it will go? The universe, like everything else, is constrained by one thing, the velocity of light. Einstein summed it all up in his famous equation, E=mc2, the famous theory of relativity. Einstein postulated that every-thing in the universe moves relative to everything else. Nothing can be stationary and measured relative to anything else because this would cause the entire universe to collapse in on itself in an instant, but that's edging on quantum mechanics now, and we're certainly not going down that road yet! So energy, the E of Einstein's equation, is equivalent to—or relative to—the entire mass of the universe, in whatever state it may present itself, that is, 100% of the equivalent matter/energy making up the universe. The m of the equation, likewise, is equivalent to the energy/matter, dark or light while the c2 of the rest of the equation is the velocity of light times itself—300,000 kilometres (168,000 miles) a second times 300,000 kilometres a second. We arrive at an extremely massive figure, which, as stated earlier, does not equate with the amount of matter that can be seen in the universe. Blame Einstein for this little conundrum if necessary, not me! That's why physicists have gone searching in the other dimensions for the missing or dark matter they know must be there somewhere. If the expansion of spacetime is constrained by the velocity of light, where does that leave the destiny of the universe? Again, this will be dependant on where the dark matter is hiding and how it's divided up. Astrophysicists and theoretical cosmologists developed the string theory; that space is made up of minute—as in nanometre length, or even smaller pieces, such as the Planck length (that's Max Planck) strings. Or the membrane theory, (M theory) where the fabric of spacetime is so thin—again down to Planck length sizes—that both space and time constantly pass through one another. Don't worry, it messes with my mind too! Now suppose that the missing matter, or ‘dark' matter is of the right type, the universe, say the experts, will go on expanding for several billion years yet. Once it's all been converted to energy, it will cause the universe to brake and slowly decrease through an identical time frame towards what scientists have called the Big Crunch. In this scenario, time does not reverse and go backwards so that we rise from the dead, pass through adulthood, back to childhood and babyhood and are finally ‘born' again, because the arrow of time cannot reverse. It still travels forward, but the universe will be shrinking instead of expanding. If the missing matter is found to be of a different kind, however, it could do one of two things. It could go on expanding forever, all the matter gradually becoming energy, until the universe was no more than a cold skeleton of what it had been, every star dead and burned out, all life gone, an empty, unexciting place silently expanding forever out of its dismal nothingness. On the other hand, the missing matter could prove to be of such a type that it isn't enough to pull the universe back towards a Big Crunch, so that it just remains the size it is now forever, the birth of stars becoming less and less frequent as the matter is converted, everything slowly changing to pure energy as in the previous scenario, obeying the second law of thermodynamics as part of its slow demise. The Big Crunch could produce yet another phenomenon. Having turned in on itself and reached that singularity once more, passing the entire universe through its own event horizon and beyond the Schwarzhild radius -- that place where time itself stands still for all eternity in the same way it does with black holes, so-called ‘white' holes and wormholes -- it could happen that the entire universe will stand still for no more than a nanosecond, turning itself completely inside out, suddenly no larger than a pinhead, and then in only another microsecond or two, begin again in the opposite direction with a Big Bang, thus creating what scientists have dubbed an oscillating universe. The experts are gradually coming to grips with all these possible scenarios. As computer imaging and other scientific equipment becomes ever more powerful, physicists are indeed beginning to ‘see' more. It's believed now that some of the missing matter has even been found in galactic lensing, where the light of a distant but extremely bright galaxy is bent around a larger obscuring object, thus refracting it four ways. It may be in exotic cosmological matter known as WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles at the quantum level, or MACHOs -- massive astronomical condensed halo objects akin to galactic lensing on the macro level. Scientists are getting there, slowly but certainly surely . At the moment, we are still expanding -- scientists can tell this by other measurements they've taken in the past -- with probably eighty or a hundred billion years still to elapse before we need to worry about what our destiny will be. But one day in the far distant future of a dawn difficult to imagine -- because our own planet will long have disappeared by then -- the Big Bang will cease to explode as it is still doing now because all the hidden matter will have been blown out by the other emerging dimensions and turned to energy. Poised in a timelessness equally hard to imagine, our futures, or at least those of our descendants, will be decided.

NEAR-SITEDNESS on a FARAWAY VIEW

By GRET RACINE It was in primary school that my interest in astro-nomy began, somewhere between the ages of six and eight. Fortunately for me, my uncle practised astro-nomy, had his own telescope and a shelf full of books and ephemerides on astronomy. And his way of teaching this ancient science was simply to put me at the eye-piece on any given clear night and point the telescope to the stars. I learnt very quickly. You can imagine my joy when, years later, my own two children showed a similar interest, and at an even younger age -- they were still in kindergarten! Well, I had a couple of telescopes, my late husband was a demon-strator at the Old Melbourne Observatory just outside the city, and between us, we had a pretty solid shelf of astronomy books and ephemerides ourselves by this time. I did exactly as my uncle had done for me and, as far as it went, it worked. The crunch came a few years later one February mor-ning in 1981. My kids were then nearly seven and six respectively, just learning to read and write like most other kids their age. On a morning when you'd expect it to be light from quite an early hour (daylight saving notwithstanding!) this particular summer's morning was dark, even overcast. The obvious question ‘why?' was easy enough to answer; the darkness was caused by a partial solar eclipse. But when I discovered that the only diagram I had of a solar eclipse was extremely compli-cated and full of mathematical jargon, too difficult for the kids to understand, it was only then I realised the lack of backup there was for children, especially very young ones, who become interested in astronomy but can find out nothing about it at their level. My first resolve to correct this lack began, naturally, with my own two children. They already had the backup of several years at the telescope, more than most other kids their age. So I began to write what I called ‘astro-nomical teaching poems', focusing on presenting fact with rhythm, something most children enjoy from an early age. As my son and daughter grew older, I kept pace with them, writing and illustrating articles for them and their friends to help them understand the wonderful story of astronomy, the phenomena of the skies as seen from their location, keeping it at their level. But I needed more backup. Learning about the planets and their satellites, about general astronomy and cosmology, even looking through the telescope, were all fine. But not enough. I wanted to buy my kids some books specifically on southern hemisphere-based astronomy, suitable for their age, and found none. I did find plenty aimed at adults, and the children's books I discovered were beautiful too, except they were written with the northern hemisphere in mind. Before continuing, let me make a small digression into what is meant by the difference between northern and southern hemisphere-based astronomy. Compared to the universe, the earth is nothing but a molecule. However, in its annual revolution around the sun -- which is elliptical, by the way, not circular -- it keeps to a particular orientation. So does the sun, the rest of the solar system and the galaxy. In good old Einsteinian physics, they are all relativistically orien-tated one to the other, and this orientation is maintained pretty well all the time. However, the earth is also slightly tipped over rela-tive to the plane of the sun. This tip of between 22 and 25 -- it's presently angled at 23½ , more of which in a moment -- causes our seasons. The earth also rotates on this tipped-over axis once in approximately twenty-four hours. All these movements together -- the seasonally tipped-over axis, the annual path around the sun and the daily rotation around the axis -- add up to a combined movement which keeps what we see in the sky fairly constant. The rotation of the earth on its axis is the fastest of these movements, twenty-four hours, causing the sky to move around once in this time from east to west as the earth moves west to east against it. The second motion, the annual revolution of three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter days of the earth around the sun, this time in a clockwise direction, pro-duces a longer and therefore slower change in the skies above us. The axis, while still pointing in the same direction, doesn't change, only the position of the earth does. These seasonal positions produce the identical seasonal changes in the constellations we see at night, i.e. their rising and setting positions as well as their pre-defined path across the sky. Finally, the longest movement is the one caused by the earth's axis itself. It actually doesn't really point in the same direction of the sky all the time, regardless of its seasonal position. Over a period of twenty-six thousand years, the axis makes one complete revolution of the sky, like a spinning top as it begins to slow down, but because it takes so long, we can never really observe this change. But if it were possible to do so, a sharp-eyed observer would see that the constant directional change varied between 22 and 25 as the axis traced a complete circle around the Pole. We only know about this vast movement through modern methods of measuring astronomical phenomena and the uncanny accuracy of the measurements left by early astronomers hundreds, even thousands of years ago. They differ quite markedly to those we have today. The combination of all these movements is what gives us northern and southern hemisphere-based astronomy. Different parts of the sky are always seen differently from different locations on the globe, depending on the day/night time, the seasonal position and the ‘wobbling axis', which is actually called ‘the precession of the equinoxes'. But most outstanding of all observations is undoub-tedly the sun, the largest object in our skies. From south-ern skies, its passage across the sky appears to be north-ward, while in northern skies, this is reversed; the sun's passage appears southward. Now, if all that sounded confusing, then imagine how much more kids would be confused between what they see and what they hear. Parts of the sky can never be seen from certain parts of the earth; for instance, the sky over the south pole can never be observed by someone standing at the north pole. Then again, there are parts of the sky which can only be seen at certain times of the year from a given location, depending on the earth's annual orbital position. For instance, you can see the Southern Cross all year from Melbourne, sometimes lower, sometimes higher, because it's a circumpolar constellation from this location, but I defy anyone to go out and try to locate Orion (the ‘Saucepan') in July or August! If you were in London or New York, there'd be no trouble at this particular time of year, summer for Britain and North America, but we have to wait until the middle of October before Orion begins to rise for us again. I lie. Orion is there during July and August, only it's in the middle of the day. There's too much sunlight to be able to see it. Let me conclude with a couple of verses from one of my astronomical teaching poems, entitled ‘Round the Year Down-Under Upside-down Overhead in Reverse' which endeavours to teach young children the annual movement of the stars and constellations across the sky at the same time as giving them a little history and some of the attributes of both stars and constellations. With Summer Time's December nights, The Cross dives plunging, out of sight Refracted large on south horizon Now hard to see and keep your eyes on. While ending the watery thoroughfare Of Heaven's great river, lies Achernar. It's overhead on solstice evening While to the south both Clouds lie gleaming. PISCES is up above in summer, Long tails tied to one another. Swimming just beyond the sphere Of CETUS' sharp-fanged jaw out there. But wonderful Mira marks him brightly Or dims out above us nightly. Ten long months it takes to blink out Sometimes seen before it winks out. It could be it's of January's Ram that Mira's scared? On t'other hand It just may be she's crying quietly Inside that Whale, unsettled nicely! Hamal proudly leads on ARIES, While in the east we see the Pleiades. But summer's long light often blanks The best stars out in ranks and ranks! Yet brightly shine the Seven Sisters, Jewel of all the heavenly clusters. Alcyone, the leading star, is chased by red Aldebaran in TAURUS! By March the brightest stars are shining, From south to north in order lying -- Canopus, Sirius and Procyon (the Helmsman, the Dog, and Little Dog) guide on The heavenly GEMINI, always together, Castor and Pollux who loved one another. But Sirius is the brightest of all While Canopus, a second to him, must fall. Now these two learn in Greek lettoris! -- say ‘Sirius: alpha Canis Majoris!' Then: ‘Alpha Carinæ's Canopus', The Keel of the Ship, VELORUM et PUPPIS!! You must also learn the system of stars, the way stargazer's list 'em! Each picture's numbered from the brightest; Read: ‘Alpha', the name, down to the lightest. The summer's left us long ago; May's end heralds the fireside's glow. ORION'S westerly plunging down To fall towards his winter home. But rising east into the sky The Southern Cross, from June, rides high. Now right way up, it still points south -- Bright Jewel Box kappa, black Coalsack's mouth! In Latin, CRUX is its real name, (Though Southern Cross makes for more fame!) Now say these off in quick succession -- (from south to north with set precision!) ‘Acrux, Beta, Gamma Delta, Dim Epsilon beneath finds shelter.' Now learn the Cross, know how it's made The symbol of our national flag! [The above article was part of a presentation talk given in 1997 at Holmesglen TAFE Institute where I was studying for my Diploma of Arts in Professional Writing and Editing. My major topic for the subject Writer and Research was Astro-nomy for Children in the Southern Hemisphere, and is based, in part, on a book I wrote for my children entitled ‘The Day The Sun Slept In', which sets out to teach general astronomy to children from a southern hemisphere perspective. I make no apologies for my bias, as I am also the Director of the Junior Astronomical Section, a position I hold for the Astronomical Society of Victoria to this day. The fiction project for my Major was a novella entitled ‘The Ionian Way', combining history, astronomy and science-fiction, while my interview was conducted with prominent cosmo-logist and theoretical astrophysicist, Ray Cassar.]

AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM

AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM ("Hear the other side") By GRET RACINE Galileo Galilei once wrote a book called "De Revolutioniem Pluribus Mundi" -- ["On the Plurality of the Revolutions of the Worlds."] It was his take on the then very new Copernican idea of a sun-centred solar system. Copernicus actually never advocated a totally sun-centred system, as has always been believed; he stated that while all the other planets revolved around the sun, the sun, with the planets in tow, all revolved around the earth, leaving the Ptolemaic earth-centred system pretty well intact. To achieve this, he was forced to introduce to his system the idea of '‘epicycles,' or small circles within the larger orbital circles to explain the retrograde motion of the outer planets and the totally inaccurate notion of the earth being anywhere near the centre of the solar system. In short, Copernicus made the system even more complicated than it had been with Ptolemy, whose system had been followed and adopted by the Church up to that time. It would take the great Johannes Kepler's Three Laws of Planetary Motion to iron out the mess some years later with the discovery that the planetary orbits were neither circular nor completely centred on a single spot -- the sun. At the time of Galileo, however, the Church was still all-powerful, and if it stated that the earth was flat and at the middle of the solar system, then flat and in the middle it was. These Church representatives spoke for God, who had created it all, and no-one contradicted God, and therefore God's agent, the Church. Too bad that God was such a lousy mathematician and the heavens simply were not doing what the Church said God had decreed! Too bad that God had got it all so wrong and Galileo, and Coper-nicus, to a degree, so right. Hence the caution with which Galileo published his book. If it was seen by the authorities that he supported both sides equally, he could perhaps get away with his real support of Copernicus's theory without incurring the wrath of the Church. That the characters he selected to espouse his arguments were, for the positive side, a tall, intelligent gentleman with and somewhat of a patrician cast, while on the negative side, the Church's side, the representative was opposingly short, dumpy, even a mentally challenged individual, was quite beside the point. Unfortunately for Galileo, the Church wasn't quite as mentally challenged as he'd believed, and it saw through his little ‘deception’ immediately. Life for the great astronomer was henceforward rather restricted. It could be argued that in this day and age, such restrictions on ideas would be laughable. After all, the Church no longer wields the power it once did, we know that the sun is the centre of the solar system and anyway, free speech is the norm in most western countries. Don't be fooled by such an argument. Replacing the Church have come not only the political and economic lobbies, but the scientific and technological ones too. And those who speak out can still be trodden on, heavily, by any one of these lobbies, even all of them at once. These people are called ‘whistle-blowers,’ and they are very brave people indeed. Then there's the other kind of ‘misfit', the kind who are trying to answer sometimes age-old questions yet who still find themselves ‘beyond the Pale' or at least unacceptable to the conservative inner circle of individuals whose questions they are trying to answer. Perhaps this isn't so surprising, in a way; remember, even Darwin's theory of evolution has never been fully tested, nor is there anywhere nearly enough evidence produced to fill the so-called ‘gaps' known in the trade as ‘the God of the gaps,' so the theory is still only that, a theory. It has not yet attained the respectability of a law. Yet an acceptable theory, which probably should, by rights, have long since become law and which has indeed often been treated as one, still languishes in the doldrums as a theory and has yet to be granted ‘officialdom' by being declared a law, or laws. And while a reasonably respectable theory, at least as far as it goes, waits to be granted this officialdom, we find that it's already been beaten to it by a purely fictional set of laws with no grounding in reality! I'm speaking here of the famous so-called Three Laws of Robotics, postulated by the late Isaac Asimov in his many Robbie the Robot stories. Yes, these laws have been fully recognised, and accepted, by the scientific community, and yet, how can they really parade themselves as laws when we have still to invent the positronic brain—whatever that really is! And so we come to those bravest of all individuals who commit themselves to the ridicule of a blinkered hierarchy and and often even blinder public by allowing their ideas to be published for posterity. Their theories and hypotheses are often so wayout that instinctively society turns against these loners, shunning them as if they were no more than something nasty accidentally trodden in. They are the von Dänikens of this world, or the Velikovskys, Gardners and Sitchins. We have been given the ability to think freely, unfettered by restrictive political or economic narrowness. So why negate this choice? Yes, some of these hypotheses may sound weird to our unknowingly brainwashed ears, but let's just wipe away the cobwebs for a moment. All ideas begin by being ‘weird'. It's only once we learn to accept them as ‘the norm' do they gain a semblance of respectability, even conservatism. In scientific circles, it's only when solid evidence has proven these ideas as at least theories, better still, laws, that the weird at last becomes acceptable, even conservative in its own turn. While I may not necessarily accept all the ideas of the above-mentioned examples, I can exercise my right of free choice in exactly the same way as anyone else. What I am advocating is that these writers deserve just as much of an opportunity to be heard as the more traditional or conservative thinkers in this world. What I am really saying, I suppose, is that until such time as solid evidence is presented that otherwise negates these ideas, we really have no right to dismiss them out of hand. So let's open up our minds for a change, really open them, clear out the cobwebs and think first before we feel inclined to dismiss these often ‘fanciful', ‘weird' and ‘wayout' notions but instead to think about them first. Weigh them in the balance of the mind. Subject them to the testing and experimentation any such ideas should be allowed. Don't reject them out of hand. Gather evidence pro or con. If sound, the idea will pass into the officialdom of acceptance; if not, it will fade gently away into the realms of the never-to-be-heard-of-again. Only remember this: think first, even think second, but before passing judgement too quickly, audi alteram partem -- hear the other side.