2012 Olympic torch falls on Brockley



The 2012 Olympic torch has been unveiled by that creative London design team Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby. But was the inspiration for the 'flame' really an upside-down building? TheBigRetort remarkable expose...

It may come as a shock to the eventual Olympic torchbearer, but as he or she pounds through the streets of London, a rather tall building may cast a shadow over the 2012 event… the Shard.

Shock! Horror! Oh no! What can they mean?

We mean that the flame of the original idea may have kindled out of the minds of Barber and Osgerby as they stared out of their back window - and upside down - in Brockley.

Libellous speculation we grant, but we are neighbours and have also hung out of our back window - and seen it upside down. (Admittedly though this was after a heavy party.)

Whatever... we feel certain that this dynamic and innovative duo is going to light up the whole of London - from 2012, and beyond.

Obama steps up the drones: Breaking news

Pakistani leaders have protested that the country's sovereignty has been violated by the US following a series of drone strikes that have left 17 militants killed in the country's northwest tribal region.


All of Monday's strikes were in South Waziristan, near the Afghan border.
The attacks display to militants and the Pakistani government that President Barak Obama will not hold back when it comes to tracking down the enemy in a capture or kill policy that is more about the killing.

'Wanted dead, that's the policy at the Whitehouse now,' a Washington insider informed TheBigRetort.

Strauss-Kahn CASE: Breaking news

The former head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Khan, is due to appear in a New York court for his arraignment, and has insisted he is innocent of the charges

Defence team member claims evidence undermines procecution.

William W Taylor, on behalf of Mr Straus-Kahn, has written that there is evidence to "gravely undermine the credibility of the complainant in this case".


Mr Strauss-Kahn faces charges of sexual assault and attempting to rape a hotel maid last month.


It will be his first appearance in court since he was released on bail set at $6m (£3.65m).

Al-Qaida, antimatter weapons and the positron bomb

An international team at the CERN institute in Switzerland has managed to create 300 atoms of "anti-hydrogen" and stop them from collapsing into oblivion for a grand total of almost 17 minutes. Five thousand times longer than they had previously achieved. The research, published in the journal Nature Physics, represents a landmark in one of the most potentially profound areas of science. However, it also awakens  the spectre of an antimatter weapon so destructive that it may herald the end of every living creature on the planet. Be that as it may… TheBigRetort

Is an antimatter weapon a giant leap closer for humanity? Antimatter was created in the laboratory for the first time last November. Long the preserve of science fiction writers, in Dan Brown’s bestseller Angels & Demons a tiny device with the destructive power of a nuclear warhead hinges on a plot to blow up the Vatican, it has often been dismissed as alarmist by the scientific community.  That was until we happened to take a look at the 'What Ifs' out there.

The antimatter bomb of science fiction brings with it hysterical concerns that the long-term potentials of such a weapon are being downplayed in order to preserve a devastating and deadly secret: that scientists can now build a positron bomb.

CERN scientists claimed today that it is feasible to maintain the atoms for as long as a couple of hours in suspension. The atoms are the opposite of normal atoms, consisting of negatively-charged protons and positively-charged electrons. If they come into contact with normal atoms they are mutually annihilated.

Howver, the technology needed to contain antimatter in sufficient quantities for it to be a useful weapon has always stood in the way of a such a device being used as a powerful weapon and is deemed unlikely in the lifetime of our soalr system. However, in theory, the advantage of such a weapon is that antimatter and matter collisions would convert a larger fraction of the weapon's mass into explosive energy than that of a fusion reaction in a hydrogen bomb say.

I am become death the destroyer.

“A positron weapon would leave behind no nuclear residue, and would be devastating if it fell into the hands of terrorists,“ one particle physicist informed us. He asked not to be named. “The problem has always been the ability to store positrons for long periods of time, a significant technical and scientific difficulty."

But that was then... What now?”

Apparently, with the recent news that CERN has managed to contain antimatter for 16 minutes, having previously claimed that there was ‘no possibility’ to manufacture antimatter bombs due to not being able to accumulate enough of it at high enough density, concerns are being raised.

Should science continue further? 

It is believed by some that scientists, not just at CERN, are secretly working to find a more efficient means of storing the antimatter and releasing its energy - thereby creating an antimatter weapon of devastating force.

Or so it is claimed in conspiracy circles...

Scientists at CERN scoff at such allegations. All the antimatter made at CERN, if annihilated with matter, would only have enough energy to light a single electric light bulb for a few minutes they claim.

But what if scientists at CERN, like those scientists who worked on the atomic bomb, wanted to keep a devestating secret? 

What we think we know…

The only ‘known’ technologies for producing antimatter currently is the particle accelerator which are considered to be highly inefficient and expensive. In fact, it is publicly claimed that it will take two billions of years to make an equivalent of the current typical hydrogen bomb at the current production rate of antimatter. But now that CERN scientists have upped the ‘anti’ what then?

Unfortunately the additional problem is the containment of antimatter. Antimatter annihilates with regular matter on contact, so it would be necessary to prevent contact, for example by producing antimatter in the form of solid charged or magnetized particles, and suspending them in a near perfect vacuum. Enter CERN and its super collider where particles are regularly smashed together at enormous speeds. The process is very slow and enormously time-consuming making the production of a weapon that could tear the earth apart - could it?- as extremely unlikely.

But what of space ‘out there’ our 'deepthroat' physicist asks. “Outer space is a gigantic super-conducting super-collider, a near-perfect- vacuum, that has been working for billions of years with all sorts of exotic materials.” 

Perhaps though al-Qaida may not have to wait such a very long to time or go so far before it gets its hands on such a weapon. TheBigRetort can reveal that a recent Patent that we uncovered suggests that the clock is ticking on the creation of  antimatter bomb. It follows research into the production of thermal antineutrons and antiprotons.

Because we believe it should be classified, and has slipped through the security net, we have removed the author' details. The patent is for a method for obtaining free thermal antineutrons by ‘trapping the neutrons' and producing 'antiprotons‘. The background of the invention claims priority to previous applications dating back to 2004, and to which we have also declined to publish further detail. The invention disclosure relates to ‘a new method for the direct production of thermal antineutrons and thermal antiprotons from thermal neutrons‘.

In terrorists' hands?

The theory predicts that a neutron that is cold enough to be contained by the interior walls of a suitable vessel may oscillate into an antineutron ‘without violating any quantum conservation laws‘. The applicants demonstrate that the art in this disclosure represents the first reduction of neutron-antineutron oscillation theory into practice. And if it fell into terrorists' hands it would spell the end for us all.

In the previous disclosure, the applicants referenced neutron-antineutron oscillation only as ‘a theoretical possibility‘.  In other words, once the a population of neutrinos is trapped, approximately 50% exists in the antineutron state at any subsequent time.

But what if the theory became fact?

The patent goes on to state... The resultant beta decay radiation has a characteristic half-life of 10.25 minutes as the previous patent disclosure demonstrates. The trapped antineutrons decay by positron decay. Positrons are electrons with a positive electrical charge; in other words anti-electrons.

Positrons are distinguishable from beta particles because they will annihilate with electrons. In fact, the applicants' research demonstrates that these annihilation energy emissions exhibit a 10.25-minute decay half-life. This is the same half-life as the trapped neutrons demonstrated in the previous disclosure. The accepted half-life of a free neutron is 10.25 minutes. Antineutrons, presumably, also have a 10.25-minute half-life. In words put simple… one manifestation of this invention is a process that easily and economically converts free thermal neutrons into free thermal antineutrons. These antineutrons may decay to positrons, antiprotons, and neutrinos. The antiprotons thus produced have low thermal energy. A method that is described as ’new art‘ by the inventors. They add, “The ability of neutrons to undergo this conversion is a heretofore-undemonstrated prediction of theoretical physics. “

If the trapping of the antineutrons is ‘new art‘ then the ‘current art‘ permits collection and storage of thermal neutrons but not the trapping and storage of antineutrons. Now this has suddenlly changed...

Another manifestation of the invention is what the scientists describe as ‘fullerene containing a trapped antiproton‘. The possibility that neutrons may oscillate into antineutrons is a prediction of grand unification models in gauge field theories. As long as the electrostatic charge of a neutron is identically zero, this oscillation violates no quantum conservation law. It does violate one experimental "law," the conservation of baryon number. However there is no theoretical basis for this "law." And no published peer-reviewed observations violate it.

The deep energy well

The scientific paper goes on to reveal that a ‘deep energy well’ exists at the centre of this  fullerene molecule. Following a complicated process, to our thinking at least, the patent applicants' believe this same mechanism traps simple hydrogen, and tritium in the centre of fullerene molecules. Like neutrons, they are all electro-statically neutral and they all have magnetic fields. “The applicants are unaware of any other art that can produce a uniform beam of high-energy neutrons and antineutrons.”

A ’deep energy well‘… what can this mean?

Is it actually now possible to form a beam of fullerene molecules containing trapped neutrons and antineutrons in a particle accelerator, such as that used at CERN? Once the accelerator forms the beam, it can ‘direct the beam ‘- into a cataclysmic power.

Antiprotons provide a variety of propulsion options for vehicles as diverse as submarines, aircraft, and spacecraft and so have positive contributions to make beyond weaponry. The potential power or thrust per pound is literally many orders of magnitude greater than current art chemical propellants and even current art nuclear propulsion technology can deliver. But, and this should not be understated, a uniform beam of neutrons and antineutrons at energies above those available in natural nuclear reactions can now be turned into a weapon of true ‘mass’ destruction.

TheBigRetort, having uncovered this shocking paper, hopes that the patent is removed - immediately.

[Editor nore. Due to the sensitive nature of this information we have not provided full details in this article.]

Germany Sprouts Ecoli: Nein not Sicks

German diners may be both relieved and concerned that the recent E.coli outbreak may have been narrowed down to a single suspect - sprouts. TheBigRetort asks, were the warning bells ringing a decade prior to the recent outbreak?

If German sprouts do turn out to be the culprit responsible for 22 deaths (and climbing) German health watchdogs, may find it prudent to further examine a scientific paper that presaged such an event - over a decade ago.

The paper, which was published in January 1998 and was researched by a number of Japanese scientists, the National Institute of Infectious Diseases amongst them.

The group, using cultivation, immunofluorescence microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy, demonstrated the presence of viable enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli O157:H7 not only on the outer surfaces but also in the inner tissues and stomata of cotyledons of radish sprouts grown from seeds experimentally and contaminated with the bacterium.

HgCl2 treatment of the outer surface of the hypocotyl did not kill the contaminating bacteria. Recommendation emphasized the importance of either using seeds free from E. coli O157:H7 in the production of radish sprouts 'or heating the sprouts before they are eaten'.

In other words... cook it hot.  Or, in the German vernacular, 'nein' not 'sicks'.

Cheryl Cole: American X Factor

Have we been subjected to the S-factor? With reports in the Daily Mail that Cheryl Cole has been invited back on board X-Factor USA one wonders if the whole thingy was a complete set-up - masterminded by non other than that Svengali of the Tabs Lord Cowall of Hollywood.

One can but wonder how the sheeple out there fall for Simon Cowell's shenanigins.

But my how that angst-ridden look that Cheryl Cole seems to have perfected this week really hacks us off.

Is this the same woman who subjected wannabe hopefuls in Britain to her ‘professional’ judgement on that dreadful show that deserves no further mention?  We mean... the X Factor. (Break that one down like this, X-F-Actor, and add the seven missing  letters accordingly to the "F".)

There is nothing worse than a young woman, now a multimillionaire, beautiful yes, and spoon-fed success too, collapsing at the first signs of personal failure.

Don’t have her back Simon!

TheBigRetort: Failure is good. Success sucks.

Gaddafi welcomed UN Terror Council Intervention... in 2009

My how the sands of time 'flies' for dictators. It was after all only two years ago that Muammar Gaddafi, marking the 40th anniversary of the revolution which brought him to power, three weeks later addressed the 64th United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York. TheBigRetort...

Since the world body was founded in 1945, the Libyan dictator opined, it had ‘failed’ to prevent or intervene in dozens of wars around the world. "It should not be called the Security Council, it should be called the "terror council," he said.

He claimed that sixty-five ‘aggressive wars’ had taken place without any collective action by the United Nations to prevent them...

Now, with the writing on the walls of his Bedouin tent, and intervention in his own internecine war growing daily, he must rue those words.

Failure this time around the UN terror council tells him, is not an option.

Strauss-Kahn: Who he really?

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is he?

It has been claimed that Dominique Strauss-Kahn (note the hyphenated surname) is the well-to-do son of Gilbert and Jacqueline Strauss-Kahn...?

Be that as it may, TheBigRetort can reveal in a recent genealogical trawl of birth records... no such named individuals can be found. It is almost as Mr Strauss-Kahn is sans verifiable famille. 

No reports appear in a Google press search with regards to this nobodies' boy prior to 1991. Could there be a glitch in the Google time machinery? Is it because his real name is actually Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt?

TheBigRetort can reveal that he may be neither a Strauss-Kahn nor a Casonova, just simply a "Kahn" - or some other? - in which case the American authorities should be equally interested.

An inconsistency in the defendant's  pedigree may prove embarrassing to his defence team, and to the French electorate.

Watch this space....  

Union Leader's Phone Hacked: Transcript

A transcript of a message left on the mobile phone of Bob Crow reveals for the first time that the Union leader has been hacked... by the News of the World.

Forwarded to us by the Metropolitan Police, it reads:

CROW: "Nobby here. Leave a message." [Beep.]

THE BIG RETORT: "Hello, Mr Crow. Is it true that you are England's number one striker?"

Christopher Jefferies? Vincent Tabak? YES, IT COULD BE YOU!

Will there, one wonders, be any quarry stone left unturned with the public‘s right to know - in a dwindling band of countries abbreviated to the first letter - the surname of a person suspected of a crime?

‘Landlord, Dutchman, presumed innocent - until such time as a jury has fully deliberated - we hereby sentence you…err, with just one sentence.’

If there were ever any ethical rules in journalism then the Joanna Yeates murder suspects’ show trial suggests they may need a little spit and polish.

The recent grotesque phenomenon of national newspapers falling over themselves to name names does not have its beginnings in the McCarthy era, no sir. It is a new brand of ‘netfluenced’ journalism, the kind where the guilt or innocence of a suspect - or even the near bystander for that matter - are now so often deliberated on internet crime forums that democracies the world over no longer have control over what was once fondly termed a fair trial by peers. And national newspapers are tripping over dead bodies to beat them too, M‘lud!

In many of these armchair crime sites (where one’s peers’ sit in judgement of the privacy and rights of the citizen reduced to suspect) ‘presumed‘ innocent in the eyes of the law is one legal sentence that caves under the weight of a very common gossip.

Now, in the 21st Century, it is ‘online‘ inside unseen walls that the rights of the individual are hung, drawn and quartered in the stocks of cyberspace for all just men (and women) to mock, and they do so salaciously and with impunity.

One of the more bookish of such sites is websleuths.com. Here, internet detectives - some may call them ghouls - ponder over the likely guilt of an array of citizenry; whose only crime - in many instances it must be said - is to be unfortunate enough to be in close proximity to an equally unfortunate cadaver. Dirty fingernails? Blue rinse? Sinister smile? Yer guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

In fact these web-based anonymous finger pointers, whose postings are usually over the verge of libellous, indicate a need for a new breed of lawyer, one employed solely to defend the accused who stands in a cyber courtroom of innuendo: Rumpole of the old global computing network be upstanding in court!

In fact, if this does not happen soon the job will be left to web-based sleuths whose ‘brief’ seems to be to argue, not the beyond a shadow of a doubt guilt, but the hunch. And so anyone found guilty may be executed. But only in cyberspace, Your Honour!

We have all entered a digital age when a suspect will forever be held in penury in the gossipy walls of prison internet. We must all beware. We may all be upstanding in court.

The statin fad: F-forget A-anger and D-depression

When TheBigRetort conducted an investigation into the increased use of statins in its office diet, it came up with a forgetful medical profession, and one possibly - how shall we put this? - in denial.

Having heard that the use of statins may bring possible side effects in some users we asked a number of doctors if the drug was all it was cracked out to be.  Here, for the first time, is our explosive retort. And it is not for the faint hearted.

Me: Doctor, I keep forgetting things. I wonder... could it have anything to do with... these statins you've had me on?

Doctor: (smirking): I've never heard that before. What utter nonsense!

Me: Really?

Doctor: (laughing) Complete!

Me: (Pause) How about these bloody aches and pains I've been getting!!

Doctor: No need to be so aggressive.

Me: Sorry, it's the Statins.

Doctor: (smirking): Never heard such a silly suggestion since I started medicine last week. Statins making you aggressive - won't wash with the judge.

Me: I am a bit depressed of late too. I wonder, could it be...?

Doctor: Surely you're not blaming the Statins for your glass being half full, man! (Rolling about laughing.) I've never heard such rubbish! Stop being miserable, pull yourself together, and keep taking the stats! You'll live forever. Methuselah took 'em!

Me: What's the use of living forever if you don't remember who you are?

Doctor:  Surely you're not blaming the Statins for your memory loss too! Next you'll be telling me that the Statin advice leaflet actually says that between 1 in 10 and 1 in 100 patients  may get the following possible side effects: headache, stomach pain, constipation, feeling sick, muscle pain,  feeling weak, and or dizziness?

Me: Err... it does.

Doctor: Rubbish! Neither is there an additional 'rare' side effect that may affect between 1 in 1000 and 1 in 10,0000 patients!  Muscle damage! Severe allergic reaction! Inflamed Pancreas! Increase in liver enzymes in the blood! All tosh!. Next you'll be claiming that Statins also have very rare - possible - side effects in one in 10,000 patients.

(There's a thought... He has ten thousand patients which is probably why I have to book an appointment three years in advance.)

Me: But it says so in the, err, leaflet?

Doctor: What leaflet?

Me: The leaflet you have to read before taking the drug...?

Doctor: I haven't read the leaflet. Too busy. But others come here complaining of jaundice, hepatitis, numbness - tosh I say to that! I've no time for reading leaflets. I'm too busy being invited to seminars, in hot countries, with lovely sandy beaches, and five star hotels, drinks on tap, all paid for by the Statin manufacturers.

Me: Err, doctor..?

Doctor: Yes?

Me: Why am I here?

Jo Yeates: Dutch suspect's new life in England

VINCENT TABAK

The new suspect arrested following the murder of Joanna Yeates wrote of starting a new life in England.

Thirty-two year-old Vincent Tabak was born to the son of Gerald and Sonja Tabak in 1978 in Veghel in the neighborhood of Eindhoven.

In 1996 he studied at the faculty of Architecture, Building, and Planning at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

He graduated in 2003 from the group Design Systems obtaining the degree of Master of Science.

He worked as a people flow analyst for Buro Happold, a multi-disciplinary engineering consultancy in Bath.

The five-year thesis he completed in 2008 was dedicated to his friends, his extended family (via his sisters), girlfriend, and his father who died following an 'ongoing struggle with illness'. His son wrote in acknowledgement of his passing: ‘I miss you and regret that you are not able to see the end result of my PhD.’

After completing his PhD, in 2008, Vincent started what he termed his 'new life in England'.

Jo Yeates: About time?

Carrying on from my last posting into the abduction and murder of Joanna Yeates, isn't it about time? TheBigRetort...

The murder of Joanna Yeates in what was the spring of her life is we are told quite complex. Due to this complexity, and the mysteries growing out of it, time as dragged on and still no one person (or persons) has (or have?) been brought to book.

Only one person has been arrested, vilified by press and public alike, and subsequently not yet moved on towards a charge of any offence, and still police have yet to come up with, well... not a truncheon.

But, drawing back on the crimes 'complexity', what is one single fact in this whole sorry, awful, and desperate matter?

"Jo" is alleged to have sent a text message to a friend she hardly met at 8.20pm on that fateful 17th December. A night she did not want to spend alone.

The recipient claims that he did not receive it until 9.20pm of that date, at which point he responded that he was 'busy'. An open and shut case for an alibi then.

Well, not quite...

Not to wish to place an obstacle in the path of justice, but the belief that text messages -and even phone calls - should act as some form of alibi is shaky. Innocence is far from easy to establish based on text 'evidence' alone.

What do I mean? (And I did toss and turn thinking this one around as there is a veritable array of suspects.)

I sent my wife a text yesterday asking if she had received it. 'Yes,' came her response.

The time was 8.31.pm on the 18th January. Nothing unusual there then.

She was naturally puzzled about this too - and other texts that I sent during the experiment - but was accustomed to my forensic probing on several past crimes; one of which I had actually correctly identified the killer. (Police eventually told me that they were just about to nick him... on my third call?)

Joanna's murder, perhaps motivated by the Christmas Day discovery of her body, was another probe into the mind of a killer, and the suspects that flanked the deceased.

And there were many.

When my wife got home I asked to see her mobile...

"See," I said.

She looked puzzled...

But the text I had sent - on that same day - was recorded on my mobile as having been sent at 18.02 - the day before.

Only it wasn't... I simply changed the time on my own mobile phone before I sent the text. And it fooled her. (Which is was it was designed to do.)

In a later experiment, I sent a further text showing 8.20pm and dated 17th December 2010 - the night Jo disappeared.

This 'false' time-date that I supposedly sent the text was also recorded on my mobile phone too. (Naturally my wife's phone still recorded the correct time and date... but there was too a way around that particular obstacle.)

This experiment can be easily reproduced especially when one has control over both phones.

Indeed, due to this it is entirely feasible that Jo my not have been the author of the text. The timing on Joanna's 8.20pm, and the friend's 9.20pm, suggested a synchronicity too coincidental to ignore to me.

Two phones? Two timings? Two dates? All of which can be manipulated - after events that have already taken place -and by one crafty author. (Two authors, if we have a killer intelligent enough to be wary of police triangulation methods and so calling on an assistant.)

In one instance, actually working back in time, I was able to repopulate a text message that appeared chronologically in my records before the text messages I later sent. In other words... I had fooled the phone's memory and dropped my alibis back in time.

This text-in-time experiment was merely to seek reassurance that the A&S Police Service has seized all phone evidence, and compared the data on them to the actual itemised bills. Indeed I would ask, if not why not?

However, I feel certain that the police, hugely skilled in such matters, would have considered such nefarious behaviour and conducted all the necessary tests to eliminate one or more of the suspects. Because a missing sock and pizza and DNA and triangulation cannot halt a ticking clock.

But then neither can killers... can they?

Jo Yeates: Reflections of guilt

Eerily, at the Tesco checkout Jo is illuminated in the screen of a man who is also shopping nearby.

A reflection of guilt?

Was the man in the woolly hat next to Jo ever traced and eliminated from the investigation? He brushes past Jo, after previously taking a glance in her direction. If he has been traced and eliminated then these are the questions that I would have asked:

Isn't it likely that the person who killed Jo was

i. known to her.
ii. liked cider.
iii. liked vegetarian pizza
iv. was meeting her nearby, after pre-arrangement.
v. had a flat or vehicle in the vicinity (in which she was killed).
vi. was acquainted with the quarry.
vii. staged her abduction, after the murder, and 'dressed' her flat after dumping her body.
viii. lived in an area where a phone signal could not be obtained, or was distorted.
ix. was an old (secret) flame. Or....
x. secretely desired her over time at a 'close' distance .

The Wow Signal explored

Somewhere in the cosmos a tiny blue planet receives an alien signal. A researcher writes "Wow!" Nearly forty years lapse. It quickly passes into legend and UFO lore. TheBigRetort investigates a mix of signals.

(Picture. The View at Hilly Fields. Copyright (c) TheBigRetort.)

In August 1977, a researcher with SETI - Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence - claims to have noted an unusual signal that is said (by some) to have emanated from a far-flung civilisation somewhere in the cosmos. The "Wow Signal" has entered the global lexicon but it was never authenticated and there is still to this day much debate about its alien credentials. Be that as it may...

TheBigRetort notes an infinite number of details that have expunged the down-to-earth facts in the telling and retelling of this interstellar tale, which makes it all really - rather - curiously... human.

'Curious' in that the computer printout contains a handwritten date; 'rather' in that it may have been inserted at a later date; and, 'human' in so many down-to-earth ways that the gravity of it all weighed so heavily that it caused us to pause and turn our telescope into a microscope. Why we wondered is there a lack of contemporaneous reporting of the discovery.

At that time, August 1977, the national press in the United States and the worldwide press appear to have been kept in the dark about the Wow Signal. Press recordings following the alleged discovery are absent, or even dismissive, too. Ohio State University publicly stated (twenty-nine days later?): “So far, several years of detection, have recorded no such listening, have detected no such identifiable signal, according to Dr Dixon’s latest report on his results.” (The Morning Record and Journal, Sep, 13, 1977.)

It appeared that 'Dr Dixon', the head of SETI, didn’t know what the ears were hearing. (Yes, technically it was the eyes that were doing the hearing.)

But why did Jerry Ehman, the researcher who wrote "Wow" on the computer printout, or SETI head Dixon, and other ‘listeners‘, consider the discovery not then worthy of any public notification?

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence SETI [http://history.nasa.gov/SP-419/sp419.htm.] edited by Philip Morrison, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, John Billingham and John Wolfe, NASA Ames Research Center, is worth scrutiny. Under the heading “NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Scientific and Technical Information Office, (1977), it states: [Para 8] “The first authentic signals will attract intense headline attention.”

Clearly, as the signal as curiously grown in strength anyway - we use 'in strength' as a metaphor - we ask why this would be so if it has not been authenticated - ever.

Perhaps because it has been stylishly promoted by SETI as a 'possible' signal from outer space.

Which of course leads one to ask a number of questions: at which date was the Wow Signal publicly reported? in which publication? and by whom?

One would have thought, following this statement and publication (presumably before Ehman’s Wow Signal discovery of August of that same year?) that the report would have been updated to include the Wow Signal. Why was it not included in an update?

Could the answer be that the Wow ‘discovery’ was never accepted in the first instance as authentic by anyone at SETI?

If so, why has it been apparently inserted into the history books at a much later date than the discovery was made?

[The report also goes on to state: “In addition to on-going radioastronomical observations, there have been several deliberate attempts to detect signals of extraterrestrial intelligent origin, all with negative results." [185] COMPLEMENTARY DOCUMENT 8 RADIO FREQUENCY INTERFERENCE. SP-419 SETI: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence [229] COMPLEMENTARY DOCUMENT 12 SEARCHES TO DATE. [231]. ]

America likes to dream. It is the dream that led it into a nation of can-do-ers. It is that dream that moved it towards a United states and on towards building the mightiest nation on the planet. It is the same dream that put American boots on a planet we call the moon, a seemingly impossible task, then and now. It was also that dream that moved Americans to attempt what President Kennedy termed ‘all the other things’.

Did SETI foster belief in an alien dream in order that it could do the 'all the other things'? To do these other things did it need a signal from outer space? Did it attempt this by passing off the possibility of first contact? Did it know that the signal was of the earth, or near it?

The Saratogo Herald Tribune (23 Oct 1977) confirms the following: “ALTHOUGH their requirements for the initial program [a]re modest, the SETI scientists do have one priority - protection for the band of frequencies at which they want to observe. There is beginning to be completion for this band by planners of advanced navigation satellites, above others. Such satellites would broadcast so much noise they would ruin any search for extra-terrestrial signals, the SETI report warns. The band runs from 1400 to 1727 mega hertz.” The newspaper report also noted that it would ‘take international agreement to protect this band‘. An agreement that could not be sought until 1979 - at the earliest. [http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=tC0eAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Sb4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=1249,1022864&dq=seti&hl=en]

Perhaps the reports authors’ realised that the search up to that point and slightly beyond had been compromised. Therefore, SETI was, despite what its proponents now say - prior to any international agreement being in place - severely compromised by infringements into its bandwidth; certainly at the date of the Wow‘ Signal’s recording and (later?) discovery. Presumably the reason why its scientists were desperate to protect the galactic watering hole - apparently 1400 to 1727 mega hertz - around which all technological interstellar civilisations are said to gather (but have so far failed to do so). It should be further noted that the newspaper was published over two months after the alleged discovery of the Wow Signal - which itself remained unreported.

Unreported until much later… Not many SETI disciples realise it but there have been two Wow signals. It all began when, in 1956, a 26-year-old scientist named Frank Drake pointed a 25ft radio telescope at the Pleiades star cluster, 440 light years from Earth. He saw two spikes on the read-out that shouldn’t have been there. “It was a wow moment,” Drake, now a large, grandfatherly, pleasantly ironic individual, tells me. “I remember feeling a very strange emotion… it was the feeling, ‘Wow, this looks like an intelligent signal, there’s the evidence.’ The whole world is going to change.” [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7050554.ece]

In fact, whilst the date the Wow was reported is a bit of a mystery - do you know? - did the Times reporter name the wrong discoverer, and date? Did he mean Jerry Ehman, and 1977? Why were two potential alien signals - decades apart - coincidentally carrying the preface “Wow!”? (Why not Gosh or Golly?) Coincidence, or what?

Lack of ‘same time’ verification and coincidences apart, and news of the greatest discovery of all time to one side, even if the Wow Signal had been reported at that time in some obscure publication somewhere on planet-E, SETI itself was severely compromised by the lack of an international (or national for that matter) agreement to protect its bandwidth.

Additionally, if we accept Jerry Ehman’s August 1977 discovery date at face value we still cannot possibly accept it being contemporaneous - it isn‘t. In fact, recorded on the 15th August 1977, noticed (at some point later) by Ehman, handwritten date (?) from the computer of the unmanned telescope written on it, ignored by the press (or kept from the press?), how extra special, extra terrestrial, extra whatever, did that make the SETI Wow?

Coming soon in TheBigRetort… The Wow Signal: Not that extra?

New planet discovered

A science paper predicts that a nearby red-star system known as Gliese 581 is the likely candidate for an extrasolar habitable world. Two years on, the alien world is indeed discovered. TheBigRetort

The recent discovery of another pale-blue spot in space, which is currently circling a 'nearby' star system known as Gliese 581, has created a bit of a stir on planet Earth. But the real value is in how it was actually 'encountered'.

In fact as far back as two years ago physicists Rhett Zollinger and John Armstrong addressed the ‘possible’ existence of an undetected lower mass planet inside the Gliese 581 star’s Habitable Zone; due to what the two termed ‘the dynamical stability evolution of the system‘.

The pair compared studies of the three known planets in the Gliese 581 system.

Of these two of the three known planets 'C 'and 'D’ were located at the edges of what is euphemistically called the Goldilocks Zone. That's the zone where water is likely to be found - and therefore a habitable 'Goldilocks' - zone.

However, and what is even more interesting, Zollinger and Armstrong penned their paper two years before the planet was discovered - and in that same Goldilocks Zone. “Thus, Gliese 581 remains a good candidate for future detection of habitable Earth-mass planets," they wrote.

So, possible names? Zollarm. Zollstron.

The Apprentice: Sir Alan knuckles under

Sir Alan Sugar may feel even he has gone a bit too far if he hires former Marine Christopher Farrell. TheBigRetort lifts the lid on the Knuckleduster Sniper.

Styling himself as ‘a former marine’, Christopher Farrell pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing an offensive weapon when he appeared at Plymouth Crown Court some years back.

When arrested Farrell was found to possess an extendable baton and a knuckleduster in his car - and was later branded a liar by the Judge.

Prosecutor Paul Frost said that around 6.30pm on February 3, police acting on a phone call visited Farrell's home and waited for him to arrive. His wife claimed he had hit her with the knuckleduster, drawing blood.

They searched Farrell's blue Mercedes for weapons. They found an extendable baton and a knucklesduster.

Farrell, then 28, told police they were there "trinkets" from his days in the force.

The former Marine had bought the baton in the USA and the knuckleduster in 2001 in Afghanistan, but claimed he had never used either. (Come on, in Afghanistan!)

Judge Francis Gilbert QC made it clear that he did not accept Farrell's explanation.

The beating of his wife with a knuckleduster brought no official complaint, and Farrell was not prosecuted.

In mitigation the court heard he was an ex-Royal Marine who had been bought out of his partnership as a financial services adviser and was about to start a new job. (Probably on the telly!)

Judge Gilbert said: "I don't believe your explanation that this was a convenient place to store trinkets, or that you never used them. Your wife complained that you hit her when you lost your temper." He ordered him to pay full prosecution costs and conditionally discharged Farrell for two years, warning him that he risked jail in future.

Sir Allan: You son are a muppit! You're---
Director: --Watch out, Srallan, what's that in his hand!--
Sir Allan: --Err, you're...hired...?