vivweb01blog

  A debate on this subject between scientists in the SETI field has been simmering in the background ever since the first attempt was made to send a ‘letter to the cosmos’ via the Arrecibo message in 1974. The debate recently resurfaced in response to NASA’s proposal to rejuvenate the project by setting up a ' Beacon in the Galaxy '. At first sight, there might appear to be good reasons to be wary of advertising our presence and credentials as intelligent life forms – however friendly we might think a visiting alien species might be. The key factors which tend to undermine the argument against the proposal, however, are – space and time.  A detailed look at the implications of the sheer vastness of   both of these dimensions has certainly convinced me that the likelihood of our own species ever encountering or even receiving communications from an alien species is very low. You can see why in my recent blog entitled ‘ Are we Alone in the Universe ’. Even if any of them

 W e in the UK are currently experiencing an attack on our personal financial resources, the like of which we have not seen since the financial meltdown of 2008-9.  The 'UK cost of living crisis' as it has been called has been a long time in the making. What has caused it ? The answer is complex, but amounts to a 'perfect storm' of coincident events. The combined effects of 10 years of artificially-induced low interest rates and excessive quantitative easing by central banks conspired to prevent 'normal' levels of inflation throughout the 2010s. This unprecedented (and in retrospect somewhat foolhardy) interference with the financial system effectively stored up inflationary pressure, and this was exacerbated by the economic effects of the Covid pandemic.  The worldwide economic 'recovery' resulting from the lifting of Covid restrictions  a nd the recent Ukraine conflict have  triggered a rapid increase in demand resulting in a surge in the world price o

  C hina seems to have got itself into a ‘spot of bother’ with Covid  recently, to put it mildly… Unlike the USA and most of Europe, where deaths and hospitalisations in most countries are now on the wane, China is currently in the thick of it, and has experienced a major resurgence of SARS-CoV-2 which has spread from an initial ‘hot spot' in Hong Kong to the Chinese mainland. The epidemic appears to be spreading rapidly across China, despite herculean efforts by the authorities there; early control measures included full lockdowns of large areas and even big industrial hubs such as Shenzen. Shanghai itself has been under full lockdown for the last 2 months, and is only now beginning to see a significant fall in case numbers - this is the major industrial hub of south China and its loss of productivity is likely already to have had serious consequences for China's economy. Why has this happened ? We need to look in detail at the history of SARS-CoV-2 to provide an explanati

S ince we are now well past the 2nd anniversary of the first UK Covid lockdown (March 23rd), I thought it might be useful to review what we've learnt from the pandemic over the last two years, and make some suggestions as to how to apply some of this to help us all prevent respiratory infections in future.   M ost of us generally suffer from 2-3 bouts of common cold symptoms each year. If we assume that each bout involves symptomatic discomfort for 8-10 days before the infection subsides, this equates to between 16 and 40 days of (albeit mild) illness per year. A ‘cure’ for the common cold would thus be a major prize for humanity – as indeed it would be for the Pharmaceutical Industry.  Unfortunately, despite much scientific effort, no one has yet come up with one, and for very good reason. The origin of most of these infections is viral, and as we have seen with SARS-CoV-2, viruses are resourceful adversaries and are positively legion in their type and properties.  To give you a

T here has been much talk recently in the media of possible military escalation in Europe  involving limited nuclear exchanges, much of it frankly quite terrifying for many of us. Having lived through the first  cold war of the 1970s and 80s myself, I’m acutely aware that once the nuclear ‘genie’ was out of the bottle, it would be virtually impossible to stop escalation to a strategic level and prevent the resulting armageddon. There is really no prospect of a limited  nuclear exchange - it's literally all or nothing. Having managed to survive the nuclear age this far, we cannot, and must not, allow the miscalculations of a single deranged individual to plunge a world of 8 billion inhabitants into a nuclear holocaust. As you'll see from a recent blog I posted, the likelihood of us finding anywhere else habitable in the solar system or beyond is basically zilch, so we have but one chance for survival - planet Earth. The West has already applied sweeping sanctions to Russia as