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.

Mass migration and nostalgia from a grass strip

Mass migration probably gives you images of thousands and thousands buffalos crossing the African savannah. The mass migration the Wall Street Journal pointed at is of a different animal. It's us humans and more specific our Chinese friends. Chinese officials estimate that 3,65 billion passenger trips will be made during this year’s 40-day Lunar New Year travel period. 3650000000 trips! That's a lot...
You can visualise the migration pattern live at baidu, here's a screen shot:

We're in the darkest period of the year for those on the Northern Hemisphere who like airshows. So all we got to bridge this gap with, is submerge ourselves in some nostalgia. In the early nineties there were still wonderful events where a very diverse air display was put up operating the show from a grass strip. What would you say of following line-up: a plethora of warbirds (B-17s, Spitfires, Bf109, Corsair, Fury, B-25, Mosquito, Blenheim), a T-33, dH166, some regular airshow visitors (F-27, F-16, C-130, Alpha Jet, ...) and the icing on the cake being Team 60 (Swedish airforce flying 6 Saab 105/Sk 60 Oë) and Team Striji with 6 MiG-29s! And all of that taking off from the grass strip just in front of you (except for the F-16 and Alpha Jet). So, in an attempt to brighten up your days as well, some (grainy) pictures from those good old times!

Fokker F-27 KLu

Team 60 Saab 105/Sk60 0ë

Team Striji MiG-29

Team Striji MiG-29

The winner takes it all, God 'Elp All Of Us

It's the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. For that occasion Oxfam issued a publication titled 'Working for the Few'. This is the picture that goes with it:

If that doesn't make you stop and think, how about this:

• Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population.

And

• Seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years.

You can read all about it here.
With growing inequality putting more and more stress on the social fabric that holds nations together, this does not bode well for our collective future.

One more statistic from Davos: Chinese investment in the UK in the past 18 months was equal to that of the previous 30 years.

For some reason this week there were some human interest articles about 100 years of commercial aviation. I say 'for some reason' because the first scheduled flight happened on January 1 1914, so our dear journo's are lagging about 20 days behind. That first flight was between  St Petersburg and Tampa in Florida and was operated by SPT Airboat Line. Airboat because the aircraft operating the route was a Benoist Type XIV. It made me think back to those exciting pioneering days of aviation and about the legendary flights of the Vickers Vimy. It was the first airplane that made a successful transatlantic crossing (June 15, 1919). John Alcock and Arthur-Written-Brown were the pilots. After having crossed the Atlantic John Alcock said "Yesterday I was in America... and I am the first man in Europe to say that." Statements like that make my world stop for a moment!

Later that same year the Vimy (registration G-EAO God 'Elp All Of Us) also flew from London to Adelaide. They left Hounslow Heath (now Heathrow) on November 12 1919 and reached Darwin on December 10, 1919. They continued on to Adelaide the home town of the Smith brother's (the pilots). If that ain't adventure, nothing is.

I saw a replica of the Vimy at Farnborough in 1996. The replica repeated the 1919 flight in 1994. Again quite an accomplishment! There is a magnificent book about the 1994 journey of which I have a copy signed by Peter McMillan one of the two pilots (the other one was Lang Kidby).

Vicker Vimy G-EAOU  Farnborough 1996

Vicker Vimy G-EAOU  Farnborough 1996

Vicker Vimy G-EAOU  Farnborough 1996

Do not repeat stupidity and centre of gravity

When you do something stupid and hurt yourself in the process, you tend to learn the lesson and not to repeat the stupidity any more. When we all dived into the 2008 financial crisis, the lesson learned (amongst others) was: too much derivatives on the banks balances and not enough capital to guarantee losses on their (derivative) investments. Basel III (the rules devised by the Basel Committee (composed of central banks and chaired by Mario Draghi)) was supposed to solve this. They adopted the international standard for the leverage ratio* on January 12. Without going into the technical details, here is what you should know about it (but only very few media have reported upon):

• it eases the requirements for products, such as derivatives, which make up large parts of the banks' balance sheets
• according to Financial Times sources, the effect of the adjustments could be a raise of big global banks’ average leverage ratio from about 3,8% to just over 4% -> This means that the Basel fiddling on how to count derivatives gives the banks a free 0,2% leverage ratio avoiding a capital increase of billions of $ or €.
• entry into force is only 2018, and the minimum required ratio is still not defined. Basel has proposed a minimum of 3%, but the US wants to strengthen this (higher %). Europe is lobbying to stay with the 3%. Go figure...

You want to have it crystal clear? Here's a quote from an analyst at BNP Paribas, who said the result was “more of a win for the industry than I was expecting”.

As a result of the Basel III agreement bank stocks went up 2-3% on Monday.

Lessons learned? None. At least we and our politicians have not learned any. The banks on the other hand have learned an important lesson: We (the banks) can gamble the global financial system, be bailed out with public money if it goes wrong, not be punished for it and even better, can start all over again playing the same game.


Often I get the impression that many of us who live in the Western world still haven't grasped that the centre of gravity on economic, political, hey on every level (except for earth's centre of gravity) has shifted to the East. This picture courtesy of the Worldbank should give those who believe they are (still) the centre of the world  something to reflect upon. More people live in the highlighted area than outside of it.

Worldbank - More people live inside this circle than outside of it.

* From the Basel website: The leverage ratio "promotes the short-term resilience of a bank's liquidity  risk profile. It does this by ensuring that a bank has an adequate stock of unencumbered high-quality liquid assets (HQLA) that can be converted into cash easily and immediately in private markets to meet its liquidity needs for a 30 calendar day liquidity stress scenario."

Homo sapiens are a strange lot, move a rat's tail and Venus blocks the Sun

We homo sapiens are a strange lot aren't we. No one blinks when ten thousands of civilians are slaughtered with guns, bombs and mortar attacks. A couple of hundred die in a gas attack and the world calls it monstrous and suddenly some countries happily switch to the punishing mode under the motto: 'let us stop the killing with gas by bombing them'. Did anyone, anyone, actually come up with a plan to stop the bloodshed? Or am I too naive and is that not the intent. And whatever happened to learning from history or from past mistakes? Those with their fingers at the button should realise by now that you can't bomb a country into democracy. At least the UK Parliament put a stop to it for now.
With many great thinkers and philosophers contemplating if the democratic system has passed its expiry date, let me remind you all that the UK's vote is the second time in a year that a national Parliament has stopped (at least for some time), what seemed to be an multi-national given. The first time was when the Cyprus parliament voted down the first full bail-in proposal that all Cypriots should pass on part of their savings to save the banks and the country. My respect to those Parliaments who vote using their common sense and not their political agendas.

Those who want to understand the Middle East, see attached summary by KN Al-Sabah published this week in the FT:

Now over to something completely different. This is a headline from Wednesday in the New York Times:
"Researcher Controls Another Person’s Brain Over the Internet".

Que????
Yes indeed. Researchers at the University of Washington have successfully connected two human brains over the internet. One researcher moved the hand of the other researcher by just thinking about it whilst their brains were, via EEG's, connected to each other through the internet. It's the first time they experimented from human to human, but it worked before between rats and it worked from a human to a rat (a human moved the rat's tail just by thinking about it, the article doesn't say what the rat's retaliation was...). Read the full article here: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/researcher-controls-another-persons-brain-over-the-internet/?smid=tw-share&_r=0
I'm sure this can lead to wonderful applications that can dramatically improve the life of paralysed patients but would I want my brain to be connected, let alone controlled, by someone else's brain? No thank you. My thoughts are purely my own. This world is getting crazy.

Whilst listening to the news this week I couldn't help thinking about a song from The Machines back in the eighties. The Machines were a Belgian band (don't worry they sing in English). The song that I've been humming all week is: 'I See the Lies in Your Eyes' (only the title is relevant as it is actually a love song).

And now we need something beautiful to offset these dark thoughts. How about a picture of a Venus eclipse of the Sun? Courtesy of NASA we have this amazing photo with the Sun imaged in three colours of ultraviolet light by the Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, with the black circle being Venus. Enjoy it as the next Venusian solar eclipse will occur in 2117.