Future shock

Bill Bain strikes gold in a galaxy far, far away

GOLDEN WONDER

WHETHER it’s moulding wheels for penny farthings or weaving wigs for Bruce Forsyth, time’s onward march renders even the most righteous of endeavours redundant sooner or later. It was alchemists who were blown away by the winds of change this week after a rare astronomical phenomenon inadvertently revealed how gold is created. One would assume this seismic discovery also poses a threat to the Earth’s entire capitalist financial structure and, of course, the Argos catalogue’s Elizabeth Duke pages.

But the panicking wealthy elite can breathe easy. The masses won’t be brewing their own bullion in bathtubs anytime soon. This most treasured of precious metals, it can now be confirmed, is forged within the debris of ancient star collisions – not circumstances easily recreated at home.

This week, however, such a rare event was observed by astrophysicists from the USbased Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), and the news deservedly dominated headlines worldwide. Dave Reitze, executive director of LIGO, enthused about his team’s discovery of a seismic plume of the purest 24-carat bling floating in deep space.

This sparkling memorial marks the aftermath of a collision which took place a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. About 130 million years ago in NGC 4993, to be precise. LIGO’s astral detective work told a tale of two ancient, burned-out and shrivelled stars – let’s call them Hamill and Ford – who found themselves in very close contact during their last days. Each attracted by a colossal gravitational pull, Hamill and Ford suddenly began spinning around each other 2,000 times a second … then collided.

This celestial face-off took place just as flowers were beginning to evolve on Earth’s surface. In August this year, the aftershock finally reached us. It’s a ripple that will continue to crease the fabric of space until it passes through every single atom in the universe. Perhaps this fluctuation will also be detected by countless extra-terrestrial scientists scattered across the cosmos. Whatever Professor Zog from Xenu calls these ripples may never be known, but on Earth we refer to them as gravitational waves.

Hamill and Ford’s suicide pact was only the fifth gravitational wave to be detected by humans – incidentally using technology developed at the University of Glasgow and University of Strathclyde. However, this “great disturbance in the force” was very different to the rest. In the other four cases, these mysterious space ripples had been birthed by the force of black holes colliding. Hamill and Ford were neutron stars – the corpses of truly massive suns that have burned out after coming to the end of their natural lifespan.

These once unimaginably huge astral bodies become tiny in death, with deeply odd nuclear and gravitational forces compressing them to a ball just a few miles in diameter. The astonishing density of neutron stars such as Hamill and Ford means if you dipped a teaspoon into one of them, the contents would weigh countless tonnes – not even Uri Geller can bend spoons like that. And when these wee things collide, their potent, coiled contents gush across the canvas of the cosmos.

“What is amazing about this discovery is it’s the first time we have had a full picture of one of the most violent, cataclysmic events in the universe,” said Reitze. “This is the most intense observational campaign there has ever been.” And indeed it was. When Hamill and Ford’s rendezvous was first detected, the telescope equivalents of The Expendables were called into action from all over the world. Even old legends such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Very Large Telescope were coaxed out of retirement for one last job, with more than 70 observatories analysing the emissions of many differing types of light: X-ray, ultraviolet, optical and infrared. It was within this onslaught of information that an extraordinary abundance of gold was detected, along with confirmation of an eternal universal truth – that in the aftermath of destruction, there is always renewal.

THE force of Hamill and Ford’s collision will have wiped out all matter in that galaxy’s immediate vicinity – perhaps countless extraterrestrial civilisations were snuffed out that fateful hour 130 million years ago – but what happened next is truly wondrous. A magical chemical cocktail showered the battlefield, pollinating a cosmic graveyard with all the essential minerals, chemicals and compounds to make up new planets, stars and galaxies. Hamill and Ford were just massive galactic dandelions, spreading their seed on a truly unfathomable scale. It is humbling to think the aforementioned Professor Zog from Xenu could be wearing a gold watch forged in the same cosmic explosion that birthed your wedding ring. Perhaps his telescopes are also made entirely from gold, an abundant waste material on his planet. Zog might be stargazing at this very moment, left, focusing his sparkling lenses on one wee blue dot in particular – entirely unaware it hosts fellow observers of the cosmos who didn’t have to adorn themselves in rare metals in order to shine brightly.

A STRANGE AFFAIR

AH, the smart home dream. Kicking back in work as you switch on the washing machine and fire up the central heating from a wee app on your phone. The fridge sends you a picture of its contents and just as you’re about to order a top-up of quinoa and kale (you are reading the Sunday Herald, after all) you notice something – one of your craft beers is missing.

There were four in the pack and you emptied two last night during Autopsy: The Last Hours of Maurice Gibb. Yet, just a single solitary bottle stares back from your Samsung Ice Maker 5000’s text. Only one explanation suffices – your missus is having an affair and she’s just handed a cold Arran Blonde to her sweaty, exhausted and thirsty new beau.

Now, as I believe an old saying goes, don’t let one missing beer give you a bum steer. There’s not a jury in the land that would convict with such scant evidence. So before adopting the traditional approach of rushing home to spend the night in a cell for breach of the peace, you should be aware there’s another helpful “smart” device made just for these circumstances – named, cleverly, the Smarttress. Created by a deeply cynical Spanish company which should, perhaps, experiment with a different strain of skunk, this is a paranoid delusion-friendly, cheatercatching smart mattress that uses vibration sensors and “contact zone detectors” to find out whether any unusual action is taking place on your bed.

Arriving with the confusing official tagline “If you lover isn’t faithful, your Smartress will be” (unless you’re into that type of thing, of course) the device doesn’t come cheap at £1,200. But it does possess tech capable of making humans vomit blood in fits of rage and envy, thanks to a built-in speedometer which cruelly analyses duration, impact and intensity.

Sending all this information straight to your phone in real time, the app also informs you exactly what area of the mattress is being used with pinpoint precision. It’s just like you’re in the room watching. That’s mibbie a better advertising tagline too.