Twice Baked Science

Surely you’ve heard by now that the CERN scientists have produced particles traveling at faster than the speed of light, or so the experiments seem to indicate. The experiments were replicated more than 16,000 times (depending on which news report you read).

Surely the particles couldn’t get to Geneva faster than light, especially with the traffic in Geneva. But they appear to have done so, and rather than declare Einstein wrong (his math is elegant and all) they are requesting others to replicate their findings. And that is exactly the right thing to do.

There will be no grand proclamations of ideology made. This new phenomenon will be studied until it is understood completely, no matter how long that takes. And when it is understood it will either confirm Einstein’s hypothesis, or it will show the need for a better hypothesis in order to accommodate the newly discovered reality. Either way, this will be a demonstration of intellectual honesty in the physics community, one with high public visibility and the opportunity to be an example of science done right.

On an altogether different note, the declaration of a death by spontaneous combustion in Ireland shows a different side of science. When Michael Faherty died in December or 2010, the coroner, Dr. Ciaran McLoughlin, found an odd set of circumstances. Only the body had burnt, with secondary scorching on the floor and ceiling. Said the doctor,

”The fire had been confined to the sitting room. The only damage was to the body, which was totally burnt, the ceiling above him and the floor underneath him.

The conclusion that the combustion was spontaneous was predicated on the lack of obvious sources of ignition, other than the fire in the fireplace, which was ruled out.

This case apparently was investigated by only one person, who did his research and came to his conclusion, a declaration which has official finality. For purposes of science, however, one might have called in detectives, the fire officials, university investigators, until some semblance of cause was determined. The declaration of “spontaneous” combustion is merely a mystery category, an unexplained occurrence with no evidence to support its name, other than the circumstances of its flame pattern. There is no evidence surrounding either the source of ignition, spontaneous or not, or the potential flammability of Mr Faherty in his last moments.