Afterimages

A handhold of rope threaded the iron eyelets, winding upwards with the narrow stairs.

Sheila climbed ahead, remarking on the ability of stone to retain cold, even now in the

heat of the day. At the neat, Norman archway, she produced a comically large key, its

appearance not unlike a wire coat hanger twisted round on itself a number of times, its

weight a bottle of beer.

The room, three paces by four, was walled with documents, parish records dating from

the mid thirteenth century right up to the service last Sunday. In the wall opposite, a

small, leaded pane was painted with the trees and blue sky of Norfolk summer.

Sheila opened a large floor chest, which she thought was late eighteenth century; each

hinge was the length of my forearm. She handed me a book, its creamy cover holed

partly, as if burnt. “Sheepskin,” Sheila offered, “or maybe goat.” I thumbed through the

register – soldiers, farmhands, widows – everyone’s life set out in neat copperplate, a

record of the parish, one November day, 1716. It was raining that day; on one page, rain

stains clearly dappled the ink. Whoever was in charge must have been out and about the

town.

Sheila made a cup of tea.

A dehumidifier chugged quietly in the corner. Sheila peered into the drip well. “That’s

odd,” she mused, without any further explanation.

She waved casually in the direction of a small glass cabinet, and a Latin document

recording the permissions for the ‘new’ tower, c 1450, a dull red wax seal revealing the

impress of the Abbott of St Albans. Beneath the cabinet, more books and loosely bound

folios.

“This is one of my favourites, but not so very old, really,” she said, drawing me over to

another cabinet in the corner, and a poster there printed mainly in bright red, advertising

Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. The call to teas and cricket was in perfect

condition.

I left Sheila sitting at a small table, making notes, wishing me goodbye without looking

up, and made my way back down the twisting stairs.

At the end of the North aisle, four tourists stood, looking up at a massive brass

chandelier. It looked dangerous to stand beneath, suspended daintily ten metres from the

hammer-beam ceiling. Imagine a long piece of string, and hanging from it a Fiat

Quattrocento, but in brass, sprigged with candles, with ‘1712’ stamped on the boot.

As the tourists opened the oak door to leave, the June sun met the deep, cool dark and

disappeared.

Turtle Soup

Reading a recent New Scientist, I was intrigued by the recent findings of scientists at the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole They've detected primordial gravitational waves in Deep Space, and this appears to support the theory of Inflation, that is, cosmic expansion, the instant where at the speed of light the early universe expanded from the size of a subatomic pissant to, well, everywhere. Scientists are also working on data from the Plank Space Telescope, which, if it corroborates the BICEP2 findings, may confirm the theory- or not.

An issue that arises from the mathematical models of Inflation is that there are several versions of the event. All apparently meet the mathematical requirement, but which flavour do we like best? Chaotic? Natural? Higgs-like?

To further complicate things, the waves recently detected appear more pronounced than the mathematical models predict. Gravitational waves could exist, entangled, with differences in density, but paradoxically this may in fact help rule out the theory altogether. Instead, the supporters of String Theory may have their day.

The String Theory example given is that of a rolled-up piece of paper, representing a nine-dimensional universe. Around it are rubber bands. The bands are in fact vibrating strings, and if any of these strings meet or cross, a twisted loop can be formed (so states the model), which would release three dimensions of space and one of time. Arguments against String Theory are based on the fact that it comes without data. If the BICEP2/Plank data disallows the theory of Inflation, we may find ourselves in the even wilder reaches of ST.

It occurred to me that when the Big Bang is depicted through a video graphic, even on programmes where Science is the main focus, we are shown the event as though viewing an explosion from a safe distance. How can this be? If we are viewing a representation of BB, there is nothing else, so from what platform are we observing the phenomenon? Big black space, then in the middle of it, Big Bang. Go figure.

There are cultures, from the Hindu to the Delaware Indians, that believe the world rests on the back of a giant turtle, termed by the Chinese as Black Warrior and elsewhere simply as the Great Turtle. While it may seem absurd, it should give us pause for thought. Where space-time can be proved to exist as the result of the crossing of vibrating strings around a nine-dimensional universe rolled up like an evening paper, the turtle thing doesn't sound so far-fetched; I think we should add it into the theoretical mix. 

After all, watching Big Bang going off like a firecracker in the distance, we're probably standing on something.