Stephen Hawking's time machine

Cosmologist outlines three concepts for time travel

The fourth dimensionFirst, though, you have to get your head around the notion that time is a dimension, just like width, height and length.

Hawking uses the example of driving in your car: You go forward. That's one direction. You turn left or right, that's a second. You journey up a mountain road, that's a third. The fourth dimension is time.

"Time travel movies often feature a vast, energy-hungry machine. The machine creates a path through the fourth dimension, a tunnel through time. A time traveler, a brave, perhaps foolhardy individual, prepared for who knows what, steps into the time tunnel and emerges who knows when. The concept may be far-fetched, and the reality may be very different from this, but the idea itself is not so crazy," Hawking writes.

The laws of physics actually accommodate the notion of time travel, through portals known as wormholes.

"The truth is wormholes are all around us, only they're too small to see. They occur in nooks and crannies in space and time," Hawking writes. "Nothing is flat or solid. If you look closely enough at anything you'll find holes and wrinkles in it. It's a basic physical principle, and it even applies to time. Even something as smooth as a pool ball has tiny crevices, wrinkles and voids.

Quantum foam and tiny wormholes"Down at the smallest of scales, smaller even than molecules, smaller than atoms, we get to a place called the quantum foam. This is where wormholes exist. Tiny tunnels or shortcuts through space and time constantly form, disappear, and reform within this quantum world. And they actually link two separate places and two different times."

The tunnels, unfortunately, are far too small for people to pass through — just a billion-trillion-trillionths of a centimeter -- but physicists believe it may be possible to catch a wormhole and make it big enough for people, or spaceships, to enter, Hawking writes.

"Theoretically, a time tunnel or wormhole could do even more than take us to other planets. If both ends were in the same place, and separated by time instead of distance, a ship could fly in and come out still near Earth, but in the distant past. Maybe dinosaurs would witness the ship coming in for a landing," Hawking writes.

Ultimately, scientists may find that only travel into the future is possible, as the laws of nature may make travel to the past impossible so the relationship between cause and effect is maintained. For example, if you could travel in the past and do something that prevents yourself from being born, how could you exist in the future to travel back in time?

Time as a flowing riverHawking suspects radiation feedback would collapse any wormholes scientists managed to expand to useable sizes, rendering them useless for actual travel. But there's another way — navigating the variable rivers of time.

"Time flows like a river and it seems as if each of us is carried relentlessly along by time's current. But time is like a river in another way. It flows at different speeds in different places, and that is the key to traveling into the future," Hawking writes.

Albert Einstein first proposed this idea 100 years ago that there should be places where time slows down, and others where time speeds up, notes Hawking. "He was absolutely right."

The proof, says Hawking, lies in the Global Positioning System satellite network, which in addition to helping us navigate on Earth, reveals that time runs faster in space.

"Inside each spacecraft is a very precise clock. But despite being so accurate, they all gain around a third of a billionth of a second every day. The system has to correct for the drift, otherwise that tiny difference would upset the whole system, causing every GPS device on Earth to go out by about six miles a day," Hawking writes.

The clocks aren't faulty — it's the pull of Earth that's to blame.

"Einstein realized that matter drags on time and slows it down like the slow part of a river. The heavier the object, the more it drags on time," Hawking writes. "And this startling reality is what opens the door to the possibility of time travel to the future."

 

Mom-daughter duos go under knife

Plastic surgery pairs nip shared body traits together

When Pam Fry, a 57-year-old teacher from Owasso, Okla., had a tummy tuck and breast lift to tighten up her sagging skin after losing 127 pounds, the procedures had a huge impact on her life.

But they also had an impact on her daughter.

“I’d talked about getting a breast lift for years,” says Tami Fry, a 31-year-old single mother who also lives and teaches in Owasso. “[After giving birth], my chest just went flat and down. When I saw how beautiful my mom looked, I said, ‘That’s it. I’m doing it.’” 

Mother-daughter “cosmetic duets” — such as the respective face lift and rhinoplasty Christie Brinkley and daughter Alexa Ray Joel reportedly had last month — are becoming more popular, according to plastic surgeons across the country.

Neither the American Society of Plastic Surgeons nor the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery collect statistics on “family” procedures, but Manhattan facial plastic surgeon Dr. Sam Rizk says the practice is “very common.” He sees at least one mom-daughter pair in for simultaneous surgery each month.

“I see it when there’s a wedding,” says Rizk. “The mother wants to have a little face lift and the daughter is getting a nose job. Or they both come in for Botox or fillers. I’ve even seen a daughter-mother-grandmother combo.”

Dr. James Koehler, the Tulsa surgeon who operated on Pam and Tami Fry, says he sees about 10 mother-daughter pairs a year. There are so many, in fact, he’s thinking about offering a family discount.

“It’s usually the mother that goes first,” he says. “And the daughter will be like, ‘Mom, you’re fine how you are.’”

 

‘Babies’ beautifully captures family bond

Documentary follows four infants from very different countries

A clear line will be drawn in the sand — or the sandbox, if you will — when it comes to the way people respond to "Babies."

If you've never had one or you're not into them — if the sound of cooing sends chills down your spine and the idea of changing a diaper turns your stomach — then you're unlikely to be moved by this documentary that follows four babies from around the world, starting with birth and ending with their first steps. Be warned, the cute factor is high.

But if you're already a mom or dad — or better yet, a new mom, like yours truly — you'll be moved nearly to tears by the beauty of the film's universality, by moments that are so artful and intimate, they'll make you wonder how it's possible that any family would let a filmmaker in so close to shoot them.

French director Thomas Balmes brings us the daily ins and outs, from mundane moments to milestones, of four infants living disparate lives: Ponijao, a girl from Namibia; Mari, a baby girl in Tokyo; Hattie from San Francisco, and Bayarjargal, the only boy (and the biggest scene-stealer) in Mongolia. Balmes does this without narration, without marking the passage of time or even subtitles to clarify what's being said; then again, there are very few words. Instead, he roams from one baby to the next as they cry, eat, sleep, play and — eventually — crawl, stand up and walk.

It's a bold storytelling approach: Balmes runs the risk of alienating his audience members, the vast majority of whom won't be able to understand what's being said. "Babies" frequently lacks momentum because there's no strong narrative drive, just an easy, casual stroll from baby to baby, moment to moment. Then again, the familiarity of infancy emerges in time. When a mother assuages her child on an African plane or in a Japanese high-rise, it's clear what she's saying.

At the same time, the differences are striking. Helicopter parenting doesn't seem to exist in Mongolia, for example, where adorable Bayarjargal crawls out by himself into a scruffy field in the sunshine wearing nothing but a T-shirt and a diaper. Soon he's surrounded by cattle, all of whom seem to know instinctively to step carefully around this delicate creature, to protect him. When Ponijao bends down to sip water from a stream in the desert, you can almost hear the moms in the audience cringing because it's not sanitary.

But parents in the United States will also get a kick out of Hattie's reaction when her mom drags her to a crunchy-granola, mommy-and-me song circle. Her instinct is to run screaming for the door. (Smart cookie. Learning early.) Similarly, Mari has a prolonged and hilarious tantrum when she can't figure out how to stack a series of blocks in her bedroom. These are little people with big personalities, and Balmes lucked out in finding them; after all, he arranged to film these families while the babies were still in the womb.

Balmes shot nearly all this footage himself, 400 hours of it, all on a tripod, and the stillness of the lengthy moments that result can be mesmerizing. In crisp high definition and accompanied by Bruno Coulais' gorgeous score, he shows us everything from grand vistas of the Mongolian planes to nighttime quiet of a Namibian family's hut.

At a time when there are so many conflicting parenting theories — and so much militant mommyism about the "right way" to raise a child — one of the greatest strengths of "Babies" is that it refrains from judging any of these parents or pushing any agenda, and just lets us admire the sweetness and strength of the family bond for a little while.

 

Rats top invasive mammals table

Brown rats are among the most invasive mammals in Europe, according to a wide-ranging assessment. 

Swiss researchers found that the creatures, along with sika deer and muskrats, were having the greatest ecological and economic impact.

The team considered a range of measurements, including the threats to native species and how widely the alien species had become established.

The findings have been published in the journal Conservation Biology.

The scientists said they had developed a scoring system that compared the impact of non-native species across the taxonomic group of mammals.

"This scoring can be used to identify the most harmful alien species, so that conservation measures to ameliorate their negative effects can be prioritised," they wrote.

"Alien invasive species are a large threat to biodiversity and the economic damage that they cause exceeds 5% of the global gross product."

Scoring impacts

To develop the "scorecard", the researchers looked at impact reports for all of the known invasive mammals found in Europe, before classifying the recorded impacts as either environmental or economic.

A better understanding of the relationship between impact scores and species traits may provide a novel method with which to predict the potential impact of a new alien mammal species

Research team writing in Conservation Biology

Within the two classifications, there were a number of sub-divisions of impacts, including predation, hybridisation, transmission of diseases, and the species' impact on agriculture.

For each criterion, the researchers awarded "impact scores", which ranged from zero (no known impact) to five (maximum possible impact) to reach a "potential impact" score.

This was then multiplied by the percentage of area within Europe that was occupied by the invasive species to give the researchers an "actual impact" score.

The team applied the scoring system to 34 "true alien" mammal species, all of which had a native range outside of Europe. Brown rats, sika deer and muskrats had the highest overall scores.

The brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) is found across Europe in all habitats except high mountain ranges. It was believed to have been introduced in the 18th Century as maritime traffic increased.

Once introduced into an area, there is a recorded fall in other small rodent species, as well as marine and land bird species. The main economic impact is the result of damaged crops and food stores, and damage to people's homes.

According to the EU 's database of alien species, sika deer are described "a serious forest pest, causing significant damage to broadleaved and conifer plantations".

The deer "ring" trees, in which they strip bark around the base of trees, causing them to die. There have also been recorded cases of the animals carrying bovine and avian TB.

Muskrats are stocky aquatic rodents, weighing up to 1.8kg. Once imported for fur farming, they are found throughout continental Europe and cause extensive damage to aquatic vegetation habitats, crops, irrigation systems and dams.

The researchers said they decided to develop the scorecard because it had been proving difficult to get an overall view of what species were causing the most harm to native habitats.

"It is obviously challenging to compare the damage caused by different species, such as the carnivorous American mink and the herbivorous sika deer," they observed.

"To overcome these obstacles, a general system of impact categories was needed, which allowed scoring and comparison of all potentially relevant types of environmental and economic impacts caused by alien species.

"A better understanding of the relationship between impact scores and species traits may provide a novel method with which to predict the potential impact of a new alien mammal species."

The team added that the system could be applied to other taxonomic classes of species, such as birds or fish, and allow resources to be targeted towards the species that cause the most damage.

Meningitis C vaccine 'wears off in early teens'

Three-quarters of children vaccinated against meningitis C lose their protection against the disease by their early teens, research suggests.

The Oxford team which did the work says its findings fuel calls for a booster jab to be offered to adolescents.

The study of 250 children aged six to 12, presented to a European conference, looked at immunity seven years after the jab was given.

UK experts agreed a booster may be needed in the future.

The research was carried out by the Oxford Vaccine Group at Oxford University.

The group tested the children, who had all been vaccinated against meningitis C, for levels of antibodies against the bacteria in their bloodstream.

It was found that just 25% of the children had sufficiently high levels of the antibodies to give them protection against the disease.

The researchers say that British children are still protected against the potentially fatal bacteria at the moment, through the existence of herd immunity.

That means that vaccination has significantly reduced the level of meningitis in the population, and so even people who are not vaccinated are also protected.

But the researchers, led by Professor Andrew Pollard, told the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases (ESPID) meeting in Nice, France, that if herd immunity starts to decline many children will be vulnerable.

'All time low'

Professor Pollard said: "This study is just the latest to show that the personal protection given by meningitis C vaccines in early childhood doesn't last forever and several countries have now responded to these findings by introducing teenage boosters, before protection fails in the population."

Falling immunity levels against meningitis C vaccination have been reported in Greece, the Netherlands and Spain.

Austria, Canada and Switzerland have already introduced booster jabs.

Dr Jamie Findlow, deputy head of the Health Protection Agency's Vaccine Evaluation Unit in Manchester, said: "By giving each teenager a booster dose of meningococcal vaccine as they are entering adolescence, we can ensure that they are protected when they most need it."

Professor Ray Borrow, head of the unit, said: "Parents should not be worried - at the moment cases of meningitis C are at an all time low.

"In 2008-2009 in England and Wales there were just 13 cases - and nine of these were in adults over 25 who may not have been vaccinated.

"We and other researchers are looking at how and when a booster could be introduced, but it doesn't have to come tomorrow."

He said herd immunity should last until around 2015.

Sue Davie, chief executive of the Meningitis Trust said the Oxford team's research raised "significant concerns".

"Vaccination is the only way to prevent meningitis and save lives. We support the use of safe and effective vaccines and encourage people to receive the vaccines that are currently available.

"If, as a result of this research, a booster programme is introduced, we would actively encourage the introduction of this."

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "The number of cases of meningococcal C disease is currently very low.

Twenty minutes with Courtney Love

At the back of your mind, when you set off to interview Courtney Love, you're secretly hoping she'll do something weird - like taking off her trousers, apropos of nothing, in the middle of the interview.

But it's still a surprise when she actually does it.

The moment comes towards the end of our 20-minute chat, as the rock star describes how she sold her house to Paul McCartney ("I cleared my CD room of anything Beatle-esque," she notes).

The story reminds her that there's a new pair of Stella McCartney sequinned black hipster trousers hanging up in her dressing room - and she immediately decides to try them on.

"You're going to see my ass," she announces, stripping off in front of a full-length mirror - but the trousers do not meet with her approval.

"Too much ass-crack," she sighs.

Bad reviews

We are backstage at the Brixton Academy, where Love's band Hole are about to play the second date of a brief UK tour, in support of their new album, Nobody's Daughter. 

It's the band's first record since 1998's million-selling Celebrity Skin (although, with Love the only founding member of group left, the name is purely a brand at this point).

Mellower than previous Hole records, it has a Fleetwood Mac, soft-rock sheen to the production. But the lyrics, and Love's raw vocals, give it much sharper teeth than that description suggests.

"You stabbed your heel on broken glass," she spits with seething vengeance on the single, Skinny Little Bitch, "so I could kick your scrawny ass."

The tour started in Glasgow two days ago, and Love is still fired up by the response.

"It was awesome," she rasps delightedly. "I played three-and-a-half hours! I had all the house lights on!"

The album was recorded with Billy Corgan, Linda Perry and British guitarist Micko Larrikin

"The band didn't know [the song] Boys On The Radio from Celebrity Skin, so the whole audience was singing it a capella.

"And then, I don't tend to look at reviews unless it's the New York Times or the London Times but I had to Google something and I saw that some small Glaswegian newspaper had slated us.

"There were something like three, maybe four-hundred responses and every one of them was like, 'were you even at the same show?'

"It was so funny, I was laughing so hard. It was like this guy didn't even stay to the end.

"You could not fault that show," she rounds off, barely having paused for breath. "It was amazing."These are the edited highlights, by the way. Love's description of the gig lasts an entire ten minutes.

In passing, she describes the flights she took to Glasgow, blames Fred Durst for "ushering in the worst era of rock and roll in history", and vividly describes her "mojo".

It is a pure stream of consciousness. No thought, however trifling, remains unspoken. But there is something beguiling about her filthy humour and scattershot enthusiasm.

At one point she disappears into a side-room to fetch a Versace couture dress. "I had this made for the 1996 Oscars," she says. "I always thought I'd get married in it one day but, well..."

Although the singer has talked, in frank detail, about her love life in the past, claiming liasions with rock legends like Trent Reznor, Billy Corgan and... er, Bush's Gavin Rossdale, she isn't so forthcoming today.

All she will reveal, mysteriously, is that she is "waiting for a text from a boy".

'Good dames'

She is more effusive when I ask about the cover of her new album. Love grabs my copy of the CD and begins a whistle-stop tour of the artwork.

"I had Disney make me these shoes, these broken glass slippers," she says, pointing at the inside cover, "and this is a ship at sea that's sinking - which is how I felt making the record.

"This picture is when I was very skinny - I'm almost six feet tall and at this point I'm about 101lbs. No drugs, just total neuroses making this record."

Nobody's Daughter was originally slated to be a solo record

And what about the pictures of Marie Antoinette, Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey?

"The art is pretty-self evident," she replies. "We always seem to get rid of the good dames."

Love is keen to align herself to these historical figures. Strong, misunderstood women, all of whom met a grisly end.

She has had her fair share of tough times - from the suicide of her husband Kurt Cobain in 1994, to losing custody of her daughter Frances Bean last year - but she is not ready to give up the fight just yet.

The 45-year-old says she has been sober for "seven years" and currently only takes prescription medications.

On stage two hours later, she has her old hunger back, opening the show with a low-down and dirty cover of The Rolling Stones' Sympathy For The Devil, before snarling her way through classics like Boys On The Radio, Violet and Doll Parts.

As in Glasgow, she demands the house lights be turned up so she can see the whites of the fans' eyes.

"Oh that's amazing," she beams. "This is a date now."