Always Hope

I've just a finished a great book - This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson, his first and only novel, as he sadly died shortly after writing it. It's a fictional reconstruction of the famous voyage of the Beagle , and the relationship between Charles Darwin and the brilliant but flawed Captain of the Beagle , Robert FitzRoy. While Darwin has become a landmark in modern history, FitzRoy is hardly known, and is usually thought of as a footnote to Darwin. "Fictional" is hardly the word, though, as Thompson, drawing on meticulous research, sticks mostly to the facts of the account, proving once again that real life is often more gripping than anything an author can make up. This Thing of Darkness was well received when it was published, although not everybody liked it. Setting aside literary snobbery, the most telling criticism is that Thompson was a little ponderous in the moral messages he puts across. This is completely fair, but there is at least something refreshin...

Earlier this week, it was reported that new studies have conclusively proved what the fate of the Universe will be. This page summarises the report, although it demonstrates the limits of language when describing anything Universal. "It will eventually become a cold, dead wasteland" makes the end-time Universe sound like a bit of brownfield property waiting to have a new Tesco built on it. Still, you get the idea. I don't have the up to date knowledge to say whether this has really "proved" the case (how indeed could you prove something in the future?), but the majority of experts in the field have long been convinced that this is the most likely patten of the cosmic future. The Universe continues to expand indefinitely, in the process dissipating the available energy, until eventually it approaches the point where energy flow is no longer possible. This is where it gets a bit mind-bending, but although the Universe continues to exist, without energy flow the...