This is the personal blog of alisonraymond

This is a funny old universe!
Not, you understand, that I am able to make a comparison to some other place.
Which, were it possible, would require that I adjust my nomenclature and observe that this were the funnier of two biverses...
... or perhaps the most risible of some indeterminate number of polyverses.
No, my comment is simply my best shot at an objective observation from the most subjective of viewpoints,
i.e. that of an insignificant component part of an infinite whole.
Take antimatter for example, but if you do take care!
You see this exotic stuff so beloved of science fiction writers is, like gold or diamonds, only special because of its rarity in these parts. Let's take a closer look at some antimatter...Theoretical physicists like to use numbers to explain why things are as they are and the numbers which they use for explaining things smaller than atoms are called quantum numbers.
Four quantum numbers will tell a physicist that this is a nucleus from an atom of Hydrogen or that is a single particle of electricity called an electron and they will describe the conditions in which it is operating.
Think of quantum numbers as being like the name, address telephone number and email address for the tiny building blocks from which everything is made.
You and I are constructed from matter particles and the only thing which differentiates this stuff from the rare and mysterious antimatter is that one of the quantum numbers by which each particle is defined has a value of 1. In antimatter it has a value of -1.
A small change, but one which so radically alters the physics of an antimatter particle that a close encounter with a particle of matter causes both particles to annihilate converting their mass to energy. You may have seen the equation e=mc2, what this tells us is that mass is actually superconcentrated energy and that if even a little bit of mass is converted to say...heat, then things get very hot indeed. Every annihilation releases the mass energy of two particles...so stand well back!

‘But!’
I hear you exclaim,
‘What has all of this got to do with me? Matter like me is all over the place and I’ve never heard of stuff just disappearing in a puff of smoke because a bit of antimatter turned up!’
True, but that in itself is funny!
You see, If the universe started in the big bang, a massive explosion, then the creative processes could not have selected the values of quantum numbers. All viable values should appear in equal proportion, but if that had happened the early universe would have been 50:50 matter and antimatter. The cataclysmic annihilations would have made a right old mess of things and we would not be here to consider the issue.
One rather neat answer to this enduring mystery could lie in what the cosmologists are calling ‘symmetry breaking’ and it works like this.
Picture a dinner party at a large round table. The guests take their seats and a waiter brings the bread basket. At the head of the table the hostess takes her bread roll and, being well versed in the principles of etiquette she places it upon the side plate to her left. The guest to the hostesses left is not an experienced diner and has no idea where to place his roll, but after a moment to inspect the table he realises that he has no choice and places his roll on the left also. This process continues around the table until everyone has a roll on the correct plate.
Conversely if the first person to take and place their roll chose to break with tradition and place their bread on the right then the entire table would have to follow.
Perhaps the processes at work in the big bang did begin creating particles of matter and antimatter at random but at a certain and very early stage particles set the rules for others to follow so that today our universe is almost exclusively comprised of matter.
‘What’s that?’ you cry
‘Almost exclusively! What do you mean almost?’
Well yes, you see, the typical common or garden stuff that you find lying around the universe is probably going to be matter, but the other stuff is around mostly in the form of the odd particle or so formed as a result of a nuclear reaction, and anyway it doesn’t tend to stick around for long before it quietly annihilates with a matter particle. What a fragile thing existence is!

‘Suspicious minds’ is the second in my trilogy of ‘The Bretherton Mysteries’

Taster:
The first ‘Blooming marvellous’ introduced the villagers of Bretherton and Audrey Parsons, Leader of the ladies choir and fount of all knowledge on village matters. In this new tale we meet Audrey and her associates once more, in pursuit of the vandal whose activities threaten that bastion of rural life the late summer show!

Constable Clifford Davis was way out of his depth and he knew it!
For the fourth time since all fools day the hallowed earth of the Bretherton allotment society, a number of kitchen gardens and several small holders’ fields in the district had been desecrated by vandals and with the harvest month of August still to come, the villagers were angry.
The assembly in the little village hall was unusually belligerent as the unhappy policeman tried to address them from the stage. Unable to make himself heard Constable Davis was quickly reduced to waving his arms in a peculiar flapping action as if to press the hubbub into silence.
Nobody noticed.
And nobody noticed Audrey Parsons, small farmer, leader of the Bretherton ladies choir and fount of all knowledge on matters of village life, as she quietly mounted the stage and drew the officer into the wings.
She returned to centre stage…alone.

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The first in the Bretherton village mysteries

Taster!
A village mystery! Emma Brigham has not been seen for sometime. Some believe she has been the victim of a dreadful murder and the St Bretherton ladies choir are convinced that they know the perpetrator! 3500 words previously unpublished.
* * *
The story
“She’s dead, dead and buried, and he done her in!” If Audrey Parsons was speaking out of turn on that summer evening, then she was only voicing what everybody thought.
Mr Paul Brigham had bought a small holding in the village just before Christmas. Mrs Brigham and the two children moved in at New Year and the whole village was buzzing with talk of the new family as winter gave way to springtime. New blood is always to be celebrated in a small community and the arrival of the Brighams seemed to presage the green shoots of the coming spring still sleeping in the soil.

=> Read more!