Being a contrarian helps, don't take your aircraft for a spin and nice-sounding jargon

Obama made a blitz-visit to Brussels (less then 24h) and the whole country became victim of Obamania.
Police had warned car drivers not to drive to Brussels during the Obama visit as the complete city would be in gridlock. I chose to ignore the advise figuring everyone else would listen to the police and I would have a pleasant drive to work. So I did and had the swiftest most relaxing morning drive into Brussels ever. Sometimes it really helps being contrarian!

In our airspace it was less pleasant. EBBR shut down for Air Force One to get in and out. Obama flew with Marine One a return between EBBR and EBKT which basically shut down the main part of Belgium. This is the chart that went with the NOTAM...

So unless you wanted to test the interception alertness of the Belgian airforce, taking your aircraft for a spin was not a good idea.

And I can't help but also post this table which crossed my internet travels this week:

Do you think there is a problem in the eurozone with non-performing loans? Non-performing loans is nice-sounding jargon for loans that are not being paid back. Nothing to see here, please move on.

The possibilities are infinite, I am not that important

They found proof! They had to build a giant telescope on the South Pole to do it but if validation comes out

Image: Steffen Richter (Harvard University)

positive there is proof that the big bang inflation theory is no longer a theory.
We all heard about the big bang but very little does public know that some observations were contradicting the big bang. If our universe is 13,8 billion years old, why are some galaxies more than 13,8 billion light years apart? That is impossible if the speed of light is indeed the top speed in this universe. And why are temperature differences almost non existent at opposite sides of the universe? That's not something one would expect in a big explosion like the big bang either. So they came  up with a tweak to the theory in the eighties that the big bang actually should not be seen as an explosion but as an enormous inflation within the first fractions of the second when the big bang occurred. They are talking about 10^-34 second. And to give you a bit of an image, compare it with someone flicking a light switch. First there is nothing, and then - click - the whole universe is there! The technical proof that confirms this theory can be found here. By the way it also provides evidence for gravitational waves which were theorised upon by Einstein 98 years ago.

But let's look at what it all means. There are many conclusions to make but two are particularly interesting.

Our universe might indeed be infinite! It may, and does probably, stretch beyond our horizon (we can't look further than 13,8 billion light years, ie the distance light travelled since the big bang, As the universe came into being in an inflation there may, and probably are, galaxies way beyond our horizon. Secondly, there are multiple, possibly infinite, universes! They may have different properties than ours (physical parameters may be different), but there are an infinite amount of universes. If you want to understand more about multiple universes and alternative histories I can recommend 'The Grand Design' by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow.

I let your imagination run wild on what this means for us humans. In the history of the Earth we have only been around for a fraction of time, there are now more than 7 billion people on this planet, our solar system is just a dust particle in our galaxy, our galaxy is just a blimp in the universe that we can see, our universe is infinite and there are an infinite number of universes. So let's face it, we are not that important are we.

I don't know, turkeys and complacency

"I don't know", that's the answer I have given since the Malaysian 777 disappeared and people asked me what happened.
"I don't know", is what aviation experts should have answered as well when media asked them.
"I don't know", is what media should have stated daily instead of hypothesising and spreading rumours.

But they don't. No, apparently we live in a society that expects answers right now. No time to wait, we need to know immediately and preferably with all gross details attached and at least some self made youtube movies posted on the internet. That's the least we can expect. So if an airplane goes missing, media and society don't seem to grasp the concept that it may take years before answers are clear on what happened. If an airplane crashes at an airport it still takes years, and rescue workers and accident investigators are on site within minutes. When the SA-227 Metro crashed at Cork airport in February 2011 killing 6 people, it took almost 3 years before the final accident report was published (January 2014) identifying what happened, why it happened and the lessons to learn. Why does it take so long? Because aviation is complex, distilling what happened exactly is very complex and there is no room for error.

What worries me as well is that since the Malaysian crash we have seen in every newspaper and media report wonderful graphics (like the one below) showing how safe flying is. And it is, no doubt about it. But I don't like these graphs. They risk turning us, aviation professionals, decision makers and authorities into turkeys.

I don't make sense? Let me explain with the example that Taleb (yes yes I know) thought me: every day the risk management department and the economic department of the turkey sees the human coming into its pad with food. So every day the turkey learns from his risk management and economic assessment that the human brings food which makes the turkey happy. As days go by, the confidence of the turkey in the human grows and grows. And then after hundreds of days where the signal has been confirmed over and over again, the human walks into the turkey's pad with an ax. It's the day before Christmas (or Thanksgiving for the American turkey).

When I see graphs like the one below saying aviation has never been safer, I don't want to be a turkey. Yes it is safer than ever. But that should not make us complacent. Complacency is the biggest enemy for aviation safety.

Higgs is too light, Gazprom and poppies

There's a bit of a buzz in the scientific community about the Higgs particle. Apparently the particle discovered last year, but first theorised upon by Peter Higgs and François Englert, is not weighing enough! This is big news because everyone thought that the Higgs particle would be the answer to the big issue where mass actually comes from. And now the thing weighs not enough. You can imagine how brain cells are mulling over possible answers. Some believe there is not much to it and that calculations are not final yet. Others believe the explanation is very simple: there are not 3 neutrinos but 4. The missing mass of the Higgs particle would be equal to the mass of a 4th neutrino. Problem: in the accepted theory only 3 neutrinos exist: electron,, muon and tau. As all of this is so far only theoretical (until calculations give solid evidence one way or another), there are some other indications for the existence of a 4th neutrino. The 4th neutrino has been the subject of various workshops over the past years and now another potential proof may bring us closer to a reworked theory. What is mind boggling is that universities from Leiden and Harvard have found indications for the existence of this neutrino in the x-rays of galaxies. How they can find indications of something that may not exit, but if it does exist is about 10 ^-33 cm² "big", and comes from galaxies that are 73,6 Mpc (73,6 Mega parsec = 240 million light years) away from us, is beyond me. Isn't science fascinating?


I guess we all follow who is saying what about the Ukraine/Krim situation. And I guess we all wonder from time to time why politicians make the statements they make. In order to guide you a bit, and without taking any position, see below graph (courtesy of Gazprom and Morgan Stanley) that may help you along your way through the political forest.

Hundred years ago WWI started and this year is full of commemoration of those dreadful days. Everyday life in West Flanders is still influenced by what happened between 1914 and 1918. Just this week a farmer ploughing his field dug up a big pile of bombs and ammunition, many of whom containing chemicals. That is no exceptional event. Bombs are dug up almost on a daily basis in West Flanders. There is a special section of the Belgian army that drives around the area to collect what has surfaced.

So with all this unrest in Libya, Syria, Egypt, Thailand, Venezuela, Ukraine, Central African Republic and many more places, I thought it was appropriate to post the poem written by John McRae in May 1915.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If you break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders Fields