Happy New Year!

I would like to take a moment to wish a very happy New Year to everyone, on behalf of the scientific community and indeed Science itself.

Another year has passed us by. Is it just me, or was this year shorter than the previous ones? (This is of course impossible. If the rotational period of the Earth had shortened, we would have burned to death by now. It is merely a New Year's jest that I was making. I apologise if I have misled you.)

No, the year is no shorter, it is still 365.2425 solar days long. Time, however, has slipped away from us. Or rather it has been stolen. Not by the ever-increasingly demanding technological devices, nor social commitments or working habits. No, it is the Time Bandits that have robbed us - an initiative spearheaded by Terry Gilliam wherein he would kidnap and indoctrinate small children and even smaller dwarves into a band of thieves that would attempt to steal temporal energy through a large pneumatic device known as a time-sink.

The use of this temporal energy was unknown for quite some time (as the Time Bandits themselves utilised the device to slow us down in our discovery of what exactly they were doing. Pretty crafty, if I may say so.) It is now known that the dwarves, a vain group to say the least, used the stolen time to rejuvenate their ravaged faces, making them youthful and almost childlike. The children, as it always is, were tired of being so young and never allowed to make their own decisions, such as when to go to bed, or how many prostitutes were 'excessive' in a temporal orgy. As such, the children used the temporal energy to age themselves to adulthood. Sadly, the unaccounted-for side effect was that their bodies did not grow, only age. As you can see, this became something of a problem, as the children would become dwarves, and the dwarves children. A never-ending cycle began, in which more and more time would need to be stolen in order to feed the ever-growing vanity of the Time Bandits.

Eventually, the Time Bandits would run into their future (or past - it was impossible to tell, as they eventually all looked the same) selves, often the child version meeting its dwarven parallel and being both disgusted and slightly aroused at the same time (as is stipulated in the Kevorkian paradox - that is, a person will always be both repulsed and sexually attracted to a version of themselves, whether temporal, clone, evil twin or robotic.)

In an ultimate act of both vanity and desire, the Time Bandits - both past and future - merged together to create a single entity. This did not turn out so well for either party, and the result was an incredibly wrinkled and giant baby who grew younger with age, until he disappeared into nothingness (or technically, a fetus, and then nothing.) The backward-but-also-forward aging baby did (or will do, depending on which point in time you live) a great many things for the universe, including the creation of the Earth itself. This may seem like a paradox, considering that the Time Bandits who became the baby would first have to feed off the Earth's temporal energy, but really, you're just not thinking hard enough about time travel.

The time-baby would eventually merge with the universe itself, which accounts for why the Milky Way is so heavily favoured by the universe. To this day, speaking in baby-talk will provide good fortune in your life, which is why some people insist upon babbling in made-up words at all times. Those people, however, are batshit crazy.

There have been many stages of the universal time-baby. The earliest known period was the gaseous one. Through an explosive force of excessive magnitude, this gas was released and the galaxies and planets began to form. The time-baby grew cranky, however, and there was much destruction. Comets rained down, stars became supernova and cosmic radiation was sent in all directions. Scientists have concluded that this is probably why the dinosaurs became extinct. The time-baby never liked dinosaurs. They tasted funny.

This is not the last of the time-baby's impact, however. One day, the time-baby will grow hungry, and will feed upon the Milky Way. This will be the end of our planet, and perhaps our race. To this end, scientists have worked on two different projects. The first is a ship, designed to send our species to other habitable planets, in order to prolong our existence. The second is a weapon of immense destruction, using ambient energy found on the outskirts of wormholes and temporal rifts to start a chain reaction and generate such an enormous explosion that would send the time-baby into a deep, deep slumber. This weapon is, of course, known only as The Pacifier.

As is tradition, we send twelve of our oldest living males into the cosmos beyond, via space capsule, as a sacrifice to the time-baby, also known as Baby New Year. It is thought that the residual time energy inside of the geriatrics will postpone our destruction by another year.

Also, old people do not smell so good, and they are whiners.

So, until next time, Happy New Year! I hope that you have enjoyed another one of my ADVENTURES IN SCIENCE!

Acceleration Xmas = Force

Sorry, that was a typographical error made by my new research assistant Ruddiger, who is transcribing this new web log. The heading SHOULD read Acceleration x Mass = Force. That's Newton's second law. What ended up being the heading is almost a Christmas joke. And we all know there is no room for jokes in science. Apart from the laughboratory, but that's more of a facility than a room.

Getting back to science, however, I thought I should set the record straight about something. Science gets a lot of flack, especially around Christmas time, from organised religion. I feel this is unfair, and so I will attempt to straighten things out regarding this Jesus fellow.

Some people make him out to be some kind of miracle worker. He was not the messiah, nor was he a very naughty boy. He was an ordinary man - sure, he had some nice ideas about peace and love and that sort of thing, which people took a bit too far, but really he was just an average guy.

The biggest 'miracle' he's supposedly responsible for is being resurrected after his crucifixion. It sounds impressive, sure, but it's nothing we couldn't do with some stem cells and a few years to iron out the kinks. Honestly, though, Jesus didn't actually die from his crucifixion. 'What doesn't kill you,' goes the old adage, 'only makes you stronger'. Jesus was the son of a carpenter, Joseph. He helped his father out around the shop, and was somewhat accident prone (if historical evidence is to be believed). Statistically speaking, young Jesus was bound to nail a few planks of wood to himself by accident. In fact, it most likely happened quite often. Perhaps several times a week. As a result, he built up an immunity to it, and so when his crucifixion came, it was no problem for Jesus.

Now, some may point out that the legend states that his side was pierced with a spear. First, the spear actually missed all of his vital organs, so it wasn't such an impressive wound anyway. Secondly, the 'spear' referred to is actually the mythical 'Spear of Destiny', whose existence is debatable. So therefore, he may not have actually been stabbed with this spear at all. Hardly impressive to be 'stabbed' by a spear that may not even exist.

Jesus was then taken to a tomb, dressed in fresh robes, and left for three days. Any survivalist will tell you that fresh robes are an invaluable source of improvised bandaging (although whether questionably-existent spear wounds need to be bandaged is debatable itself). Plus, he had three days bed rest, which should have been more than enough time for him to be feeling like his old self again. As the tomb was sealed, it created a dark environment, perfect for resting, and due to the nature of Jerusalemic stone, it created a hyperbaric oxygen chamber which would have sped up his healing rate even more.

Once he had been released from his 'tomb', however, he was found to be quite alive indeed. He spoke with his disciples, who insisted upon poking his wound (inadvisable, as any medical doctor will tell you) and subsequently 'ascended to heaven'. This is an inaccurate report, however. Jesus merely disappeared, due to a paradox. As the Spear of Destiny may or may not exist, Jesus may or may not have died. This created a "Schrodinger's Jesus" paradox that eventually resolved itself by removing all traces of Jesus from existence.

So, as you can see, both science AND religion are right, in a certain sense. Jesus certainly did exist, but at the same time he never existed at all and it is a positively ludicrous suggestion that he did.

Some time ago, however, a rogue Christian from another time line tried to cheat things by travelling back in time and artificially inseminating Jesus' mother Mary, thus creating Jesus after all. The universe will eventually catch up with this transgression by immaculately conceiving the anti-Christ, which will bring about the end of existence through an apocalyptic battle on an enormous scale, creating so many paradoxes that the universe collapses in on itself and all life ceases to be.

That probably won't happen for a while, though.

So, until next time, happy holidays and a merry Christmas. Stay tuned in the new year for more ADVENTURES IN SCIENCE!