From onions to the White House
QUESTION Was Melania Trump’s grandfather an onion farmer?
MELANIA Trump’s maternal grandfather, Anton Ulenik, was indeed an onion farmer.
He was born in 1910 in the small village of Raka in eastern Slovenia. Its most prominent feature is the Church of St Lawrence, a 19th-century double-steepled yellow church.
Anton married Amalija Gliha and had four children, including Amalija Jr, the US first lady’s mother, who was born in 1945.
Amalija was working as a pattern-maker at a children’s clothing factory in Sevnica, on the Sava River, when she met Viktor Knavs, a chauffeur.
The pair married in 1967 and had two daughters, Ines in 1969 and Melania in 1970.
Anton Ulenik was a cobbler but, like many rural Slovenians, he also kept livestock and grew carrots, turnips, beets, corn and onions on a small family farm.
From the Forties, he began to grow onions for sale to distributors and other farmers.
He specialised in a variety known as the Raka Red, which is larger than a shallot and slightly smaller than a brown onion. It has a pink/ red skin and pinkish segments. It’s mild enough to eat raw, which locals typically do with wine and sausages. It is also used in stews, sauces and to top pizzas.
By the Seventies, Ulenik was the largest grower of Raka onions, harvesting up to 50 tons per year.
Before his death in 1992, he had scaled down his commercial operation. The economy of Slovenia also underwent radical change, experiencing development and industrialisation in the wake of the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. Smallholding was no longer an attractive occupation to many people. Burpee, a Pennsylvania seed merchant, is producing the Raka Red commercially. It hopes to see some planted in the White House kitchen garden. Ian Mickleson, London N13.
QUESTION
Is the E8 lattice the solution for the Theory Of Everything? THE Theory Of Everything is the hypothetical framework of physics that links all physical aspects of the universe – the four forces of nature (strong force, weak force, electromagnetic force, gravitational force), quantum physics and Einstein’s general relativity.
Complex concepts such as string theory, loop quantum gravity and quantum Einstein gravity have attempted to do this.
Solving the problem might allow us to explain and potentially manipulate the forces creating matter, gravity, magnetism, electricity, weak interaction, strong interaction and particle physics.
Small wonder that Stephen Hawking said such a theory would be ‘the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God’.
In 2007, physicist Garrett Lisi published an online paper entitled An Exceptionally Simple Theory Of Everything.
His theory is based on an enigmatic mathematical structure called the E8 group. The concept of a ‘group’ was invented by mathematicians to capture the essence of symmetry.
Many geometric shapes have rotational symmetries. For example, the square can be rotated around its centre point, clockwise or anti-clockwise, and through multiples of 90 degrees without changing its appearance.
E8 is a much more complicated group: it is the symmetries of a 57dimensional object, and E8 itself is 248-dimensional.
E8 is even more special: it is a Lie group (named after mathematician Marius Sophus Lie), which means that it has a continuous geometric structure. Lisi believed he could find a way to place the elementary particles (quarks, leptons, muons and bosons) and forces on the 248 points of E8.
Within his theory, he found 20 gaps, which he filled with notional particles, such as those some physicists predict to be associated with gravity.
Physicists have puzzled over why elementary particles appear to belong to families and how they interact. Lisi suggested this arises from the geometry of E8. He is calculating the masses of the 20 new particles in the hope they may be discovered by the Large Hadron Collider.
While elegant, Lisi’s work is in its infancy; it has not been peer reviewed and is viewed with some scepticism within the scientific community.
Dr Ken Bristow, Glasgow.
QUESTION
My father told me the Mk 22 Spitfire’s engine was so powerful it couldn’t be run at full power as it would have shaken the plane to bits. Is this true? THE Spitfire couldn’t be run up to full power on the ground for risk of nosing over as there was nothing to absorb the power. The Griffon engine was rated at just over 2,000hp and, for flight, full throttle would be no problem.
Supermarine would not have designed an aeroplane, especially a fighter, that could not run at full power in flight.
Today, Americans get 3,000hp out of Merlins for air racing, and Mustangs handle the extra power without coming apart. Rod Banks got 2,000hp out of a Merlin on a special fuel cocktail in a Mk 1 Spitfire for a pre-war speed attempt. That Spitfire held together well. Clive Davies, Hereford. THIS may be linked to the problem of landing lightweight, pistonengined aircraft with powerful engines. When committed to land, with the engine set to idle, it was not possible to open the throttle to full power, in the case of an aborted landing.
The sudden increase in torque could invert the aircraft, causing it to crash. This was also prevalent with twin-engined fighters, landing on one engine. M French, Downham Market, Norfolk. QUESTION What is the origin of the phrase: ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’? THIS is often attributed to the 18th-century literary giant Samuel Johnson, and he did say something similar.
His biographer, James Boswell, records him as saying: ‘Sir, hell is paved with good intentions.’ However, the key part of the phrase, ‘the road to hell’, is missing.
The inference of the phrase is that there is no use just having good intentions; they must be acted upon to achieve good. The origin of the phrase can be traced to the Bible. Ecclesiasticus 21:10 says: ‘The way of sinners is made plain with stones, but at the end thereof is the pit of hell.’ The earliest version that approximates to our modern usage is by 12th-century French abbot St Bernard of Clairvaux. He said: ‘L’enfer est plein de bonnes volontes ou desirs’, translating as: ‘Hell is full of good intentions and wishes.’ Bob Dillon, Edinburgh.
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