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Features -
Brian Clegg
MUYBRIDGE - The Man who stopped time
"Muybridge travelled from the Victorian suburban gentility of
Kingston-upon-Thames to the wild California of the 1870s. And he murdered his
wife's lover."
Brian's new book, published in Spring 2007, is the startling biography of
one of the famous unknowns in science and technology - Eadweard Muybridge.
Read more...
"Here, in the
entranceway to the home of the man who all but invented photography, squarely in
the middle of the route to the room where the first known photographic negative
was produced, stood a notice, embellished with an explicit pictogram for the
hard of reading. NO PHOTOGRAPHY."
When researching
Light Years, Brian visited the picturesque
Wiltshire village of Lacock - here is his light-hearted tour of the village.
Read more...
"In my book The God
Effect I describe quantum entanglement, the remarkable physical phenomenon that
seems to allow to particles to be separated to opposite sides of the universe,
yet a change to one is instantly reflected in the other. The strange
capabilities of entanglement make it ideal for generating unbreakable
encryption, making quantum computers work, even powering quantum teleportation.
As it is a field where new breakthroughs are happening all the time there's an
need for regular updates." The latest news
from the weird world of quantum entanglement.
Read more...
Moment of discovery - the Muybridge incident
"I had asked the Royal Society if
there was any record of their reaction to his paper that had cast shame on his
name in the UK. It was with a tingle of excitement that I received an e-mail
saying that in a sort out of old records they had just discovered something
remarkable." The original review by the now
infamous Francis Galton, damning Muybridge's work, had come to light.
Read more...
Inside the imagination of Aristotle
"Aristotle was to do a fix
on infinity that, with the exception of Galileo, would last pretty well
unchallenged all the way up to the nineteenth century. Aristotle tends to get a
lot of bad press these days. I have lost count of the popular science books I
have read that lay into him for being an armchair natural philosopher."
Infinity has been fascinating people since the ancient Greeks - take a look
at Aristotle's ingenious way of thinking about it.
Read more...
"Now I have to confess I’m
very nervous at this point. It’s one thing to go into a shop or even knock on
the door of a business and ask if you can take a look, but it’s another to walk
up to the front door of a private house and ask them, as I hope to, if there’s
anything left of Muybridge’s time there. "
Looking into the life of Eadweard Muybridge involved frequent visits to the
London suburb of Kingston-upon-Thames, where the houses Muybridge was born in
and died in both still stand. Read more...
"Galileo
had considerable trouble getting this published - the Inquisition made it clear
that no work by this heretic would be published in any country where it held
sway. When the book was eventually taken up by the great Dutch publisher
Elsevier, Galileo expressed his great surprise that it had been published at
all."
Read Brian's article on Galileo and infinity (covered in greater depth in A
Brief History of Infinity) on the FirstScience website.
Read more...
"It could even be the
answer to why we've never spotted alien transmissions out there in the universe,
as they could send a signal by radio or other light wave not by modulating the
frequency or amplitude as we do, but by modulating the twist."
There's always something new to learn about light. Since Light Years
was published I have come across a strange phenomenon. Read more...
"The same probability game
that a few years ago baffled readers of the London Times so much that indignant
letters were written by professors, denying the truth of the outcome.."
Probability is one of the most useful and everyday applicable aspects of
maths, yet the human mind is particularly bad at assessing probabilities. In
this short article we look at a little game with a surprising outcome. Read more...
Keeping the number line dry - a paradox of infinity
"Imagine
we wanted to protect the whole number line from getting wet. What we are going
to do is issue each rational fraction along the line an umbrella. The umbrella
will be a simple T shape. The first umbrella we give out is 1/2 a unit of the
number line across the T. The second umbrella is 1/4 of a unit of the number
line across and so on."
One of the great delights of infinity is its ability to throw up
mind-bending paradoxes. This is about the best I've ever come across. Read more...
"Richard Feynman was one of the greatest
scientists of all time, but even his genius had its weak points.
Particularly in his view of early scientist, Roger Bacon."
Being a scientific genius doesn't mean you can interpret history. Read more...
"His brother
crept through a secret passage from a nearby hall, ready to do away with the
distraught father, when one of the children's voice was heard calling out
"Father beware!" The father
awoke, sending his evil brother running terrified to plunge to his death.."
It might have no link to science, but the story of Clegg Hall is one that
has always fascinated me, and more than any other has acted as the spur that
started me writing. Read more...
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