A Night With The Stars, aka Baffled Babba

(Written 19/12/2011)

Did anyone else see this programme tonight? And if so, can they explain it to me, because I got lost just after Professor Brian Cox dropped the apple - which hit the floor because it was trying to achieve a lower energy state, rather than due to the effect of gravity. Now I know that Newton has been supplanted by others in the Physics Hit Parade, and even dear old Einstein is no longer the chart-topper he used to be, but surely the law of gravity hasn't been repealed, has it? I mean, it would be in the papers, surely?

By the time he brought in Planck's Constant (without previous reference or any kind of explanation) to prove that a lump of diamond could jump out of a closed box, but it would take six times ten to the power of 27 seconds to do so, I was completely awash and going down by the stern. Mathematics has never been my strong point, so I was interested to learn that six times ten to the power of 27 seconds is a span greater than the age of the Universe - by quite a lot of time, except that time didn't exist before the Big Bang, so we're pretty much groping in the... er, whatever was pre-Big Bang.

Anyhow, that nugget has been stored away against a conversation where I can drop it in, to much solemn nodding. Mind, now that I'm no longer on speaking terms with Stephen Hawking after the incident with the horse and the balloon, I daresay that conversation will never happen.

But I digress... after watching "A Night With The Stars", all I know is that most of everything is composed of empty space. And by "most", I mean 99.9999999999999%, and that goes for all of us humans and everything that surrounds us. Honestly, we ought to be able to walk through walls, and the only reason why we don't slip through the Earth to burn horribly at its molten core is due to the repeal of the law of gravity, probably. Oh, and that every single molecule in the Universe is in communication with every other one, which makes TNT's parcel delivery charges a farce, as proved by rubbing a diamond, I think.

Oh, and that "quantum" means "Everything you know is wrong. Also, it's a licence to set James May on fire."