THE time has come for Feedback to humbly offer Stephen Hawking some advice. In July, the physicist told 91av that he didn’t know what to work on now that he has sorted out the black hole information paradox. So we turned to the collective brain of our readers and asked for problems profound enough to merit the great man’s attention, expressed as a question in a single sentence of plain English.
Well, what a troubled bunch you are. Why do we exist? What is time? Where is God? Many of you wanted Hawking to provide answers to these weighty questions. But we think he needs something more entertaining to ponder after spending so many years peering into the properties of black holes. So, to ease the transition, we suggest he starts with the first of the five winning entries to our mid-year competition.
Peter Hicks from Harrogate, UK, was not the only one to ask about lost socks, but he makes the problem sound reassuringly similar to the one that Hawking has just solved:
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“Why, when two socks pass the washday event horizon, do they so often become singularities?”
And if Hawking wants to continue with his studies of black holes, Beatles fan T. L. Turner suggests this problem:
“How many black holes does it take to fill the Albert Hall?”
Next, a galactic mystery. Astronomers claim that 96 per cent of the universe is made of dark matter and dark energy, but they have no idea what either is. Thanks to Malcolm Bacchus in London for asking Hawking to do better:
“Explain the universe we see around us without the need to use dark matter, dark energy, dark forces or dark chocolate.”
Some physicists believe that string theory will explain everything. So the learned professor may want to tackle this question, from Peter Szatmary in Cambridge, UK:
“How much string does one need to tie together quantum mechanics and general relativity?”
Finally Feedback poses a question that Hawking, who proved that information can escape black holes, is in a unique position to answer:
“In contrast to black holes, why has information failed to escape from many copies of A Brief History of Time?”
We invite Guy Matthews from Oxford, UK, whose entry this is, to let us know whether he manages to extract any information from Hawking’s second book, The Universe in a Nutshell. Each of our five winners will, thanks to the generosity of Random House, receive a copy.
To the hundreds of others who sent in questions, our sincere thanks. We hope you find your answers. And to those few who wondered “what is it that women want?” our female judges recommend, quite simply, that you ask.
OUCH! It’s not often that Feedback is made to blush, but we certainly reddened when the 28 August issue of 91av came out.
In one item that week we complained about people who badger us with email enquiries that they could easily answer for themselves by using an internet search engine. We even mentioned a website, , that will nag them, then do the search for them.
In another item in the same issue we reported on the PIN number syndrome, aka redundant acronym, or RAS, syndrome and wondered which reader would be the first to spot the fully redundant “personal identification PIN number”.
And, of course, as soon as this issue hit the streets we were deluged with emails suggesting, with the utmost tact and delicacy, that we take our own advice and Google it.
So, blushing scarlet, we did just that. And got 155 hits, including instances of our first full-blown example of RAS syndrome, which unravels as “personal identification personal identification number number”.
OUR reports on engineers’ euphemisms (10 July) seem to have stirred an unplanned rapid disassembly event of interest and lit uncontrolled thermal events of passion. (For readers whose first language is English, that’ll be an explosion and fires.)
Reader Chris Mars counters with a list purporting to translate research paper euphemisms. It begins with the introduction: “It has long been known”, meaning “I didn’t bother to look up the reference”. Then there’s the methodology section: “three of the sample were chosen for detailed study” meaning “the other results didn’t make sense”. “It is believed that” means “I think”, while “a careful analysis of obtainable data” definitely suggests “three pages of notes were obliterated when I knocked over a beer glass”.
FINALLY, the BBC has created yet another unusual unit of measurement as part of its Olympic coverage.
In an article about weightlifting spotted by Andy Neill in its online sports news, the world record is described thus: “263 kilograms is equivalent to 4.9 Paula Radcliffes”.
From the department of the blindingly obvious. The large mug received by Christine Eberhart as a birthday gift bore a label warning: “May get hot in microwave”
