The limits of science: Maggie Aderin-Pocock

Space scientist

By Maggie Aderin-Pocock Published 02 May 2012
New Statesman
Photo: Getty Images

I spend a significant part of my time participating in science communication activities. Many of these involve speaking with schoolchildren. I give a “Tour of the Universe”, which is a guided tour that starts on our planet, travels through the solar system and ends up with pictures taken from the edge of the perceived universe. One of the favourite questions at the end of the talk is “What came before the Big Bang?” – to which I have usually answered, “As time space and time were created with the Big Bang it is hard to talk about a time before time began.” But now scientists are doing just that and postulating what came before. The difficulty is, any evidence that we get is interpreted by the laws of physics of our universe, which may be very different from anything that came before. I stand and possibly hope to be corrected on this.

On the question of if there is anything science should not try to explain, to me, science is a tool that should be used to explain everything, as only understanding can help us decide whether something is worth pursuing or not. However, the chemical nature of the emotions love or hate may be where I draw the line. I would find it too scary to live in a world where we as individuals, groups or even nations could be put into either state synthetically, just by adding something to the water supply.
 
 
 

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1 comment

Mr Humanus Wright's picture

Sat, 2012-06-30 15:00 — Mr Humanus Wright (not verified)

Once again we are being told about technology in the Civilian Sector that has been in existance within the military sector, 10 to 20 years before it has been openly publicized, within the civilian sector. We are talking about the UKUSA agreement and TTCP agreements, Porton Down (QinetiQ - DSTL - DERA), RSRE (Worcestershire), and DARPA, NASA and CIA-DST. This technology is way passed its' study/experimental stage, and is in full implementation, being used activily on a procedural level, with consent and without consent. If you refer to some of the illegal programs that were being occustrated in the 50s, 60s and 70s, under ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA stemming from 'Operation PaperClip', you can gain an insight to the level of depravity that the medicial, scientific research, intelligence and military establishments were willing to go to, and how there is a huge deception on how these technologies and programs are now being presented to the public audience: William Sargant, St Thomas's Hospital, Donald Ewan Cameron, Harry Bailey and Galbraith, amongs others ... The Radio Telemetry Laboratory, and Military Radiations Signals Intelligence, Neural Oscillations, and the Central Nervous System, with ELF or VLF manipulation; under the subject heading Brain Computer Interface (BCI), Remote Neural Monitoring (RNM) and Synthetic Telepathy. Nano-Medicines have hugely allowed this early pioneering 'torture' experimentation to be unimaginably enhanced beyond all scientific expectations, for manipulation of test subjects/live subjects, 'Unethical Human Experimentation' - in the ten of thousands (every living organism has a unique 'Bioelectric Field').

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