In the scientific community there are two main schools of thought on the origin of life on Earth. One is that life was started here via a process known as panspermia. This is where bacteria are carried through space from another planet on a comet or meteor. The idea is that these bacteria would somehow survive impact and then go on to flourish on the new planet, in this case Earth.
While the theory of panspermia is certainly valid, Earth was heavily bombarded by meteorites prior to the start of life, it still doesn’t answer how life came to be in the first place. The likelihood of something surviving an impact combined with landing somewhere where it could thrive seems like a remotely small chance as well. The more widely accepted theory is that life on Earth originated here and did not come from another planet.
No concrete theory has been put forward that shows how life can come into being from non-living material yet. Without perfectly sterile lab conditions and a few hundred million years it may prove impossible. However it is theorised that life began as a series of organic chemicals and molecules. One of these molecules gained the ability to replicate itself. The crucial feature of this replication is that it was not perfect, there would sometimes be ‘errors’ in the reproduction.
If an ‘error’ in reproduction left that particular strand at a disadvantage then they would not reproduce as much and would eventually die out. If an error or mutation left a strand at a clear advantage, however, then they would reproduce in greater numbers and would take over. This is the start of natural selection and evolution, the theory that is thought to govern the development of all life right from the beginning to where we are today. Eventually DNA would emerge as the dominant force in replication and life was well on its way to becoming cellular.
Eventually primitive life would evolve membranes and so cells were born. The leap to membranes is actually easier to comprehend as the phospholipids present in cell membranes form bilayers spontaneously when placed in water. This property would allow the contents of life to be contained within the confines of a cell. The cells that would go on to become the ancestors of all life on Earth were present at this time, just over 3.5 billion years ago. They were primitive compared to modern cells, still lacking a nucleus, mitichondria and chloroplasts.
The next main development that would change the planet came with the advent of photosynthesis. Photosynthesis would allow life to use sunlight as an energy source. Cells that did not develop photosynthesis would also benefit as they could consume the photosynthesising cells. The secondary effect of stimulating the growth of life was what is know as the ‘Oxygen Catastrophe’. Oxygen is a waste product of photosynthesis and was toxic to a great many organisms. The waste oxygen would have first become bound to limestone and iron in the sea, before it could escape into the atmosphere. The atmosphere would slowly build up in concentration of oxygen and the ozone layer eventually formed, guarding the planet’s surface from harmful ultraviolet radiation. As a substantial amount of life died from oxygen some would find a way to harness it to enhance their metabolism.
Cells would continue to adapt over millions of years, gaining organelles and nuclei. At this point in history, around 1.1 billion years ago, the first supercontinent was beginning to take shape and plant, animal and fungus cells had split and were clearly defined, although still single-celled. As colonies of cells built up in volume over time some cells in certain parts of the colony would evolve into specialist cells giving a benefit for the whole colony. As this division began to take place it could be said that this was the start of multicellular organisms. Around 900 million years ago the first multi-celled animals began to appear.
Around 770 million years ago scientists believe that the planet went through a phase that has become known as Snowball Earth. For 20 million years the oceans froze over and the Earth entered a severe ice age. Eventually after time volcanic eruptions would cause enough carbon dioxide to enter the atmosphere and heat the planet due to the greenhouse effect.
By 530 million years ago fish had evolved and were the first known vertebrates. With the ice melted, the ozone layer present and complex life thriving in the ocean it would only be a matter of time before life would take to land.
Nine billion years after the Big Bang the building blocks of the Solar System were present as a huge molecular cloud, several light years across. As parts of the cloud began to collapse there is strong evidence that there were several supernovae near to where the Sun eventually formed. The remnants of these short lived stars and their resulting explosions would create regions of over-density within the cloud, potentially leading to the collapse of material due to gravity and so the eventual birth of the Sun as a protoplanetary disc.
As the disc spins due to momentum, molecular collisions in the centre start to become more common, and the heat starts to rise. As more and more matter began to collect in the middle the Sun started to take shape as an extremely hot and dense protostar. Over time the mass and heat reached the point where nuclear fusion was possible, and the Sun as we know it today was formed, complete with a relatively small amount of leftover material that would go on to form the planets.
The formation of planets is again down to gravity. As the dust particles began to collect to form large rocks they would grow slowly larger through collisions. These early formations are known as planetesimals. The outer solar system was the only area where it is cold enough for molecules such as methane and water to condense, and so the inner planets are formed from heavier rocky elements. These elements are relatively rare and so the inner planets could not grow as large as the gas giants that would eventually form from lighter elements further out in the Solar System.
Initially there were up to a hundred small planets orbiting the Sun. Over the next hundred million years these would collide and merge to form the four rocky planets and their moons that we have today. It is thought that the Earth’s moon was formed from a collision with a Mars sized object towards the end of this period. Around four billions years ago the Earth and other terrestrial planets would undergo what is known as the Late Heavy Bombardment. This is a period in time that lasted for several hundred million years where the inner planets where peppered with meteorites and asteroids. The high number of impacts is credited to the migration of the gas giants causing gravitational instability in the Solar System. Evidence of this is present in the highly cratered surface of the Moon and Mercury as well as several large craters on Earth.
Once the Late Heavy Bombardment was over it is believed that solar winds will have pushed much of the excess material out into interstellar space and that the Solar System settled into what we see today, with nine planets and an asteroid belt separating the gas giants from the rocky inner planets.
During and shortly after this time the Earth was very different to what it is now. Known as the Hadean eon the world was hot, dry and extremely volcanic. There were no oceans or oxygen in the atmosphere and the surface was molten. Due to this liquidity the heavier elements fell to the centre of the planet while lighter ones would remain nearer the surface. This process would eventually give rise to the layered structure we see in Earth today.
The next events on Earth would eventually give rise to the planet being hospitable for life. As gravity allowed more of an atmosphere to be retained temperatures would fall to such a level that the outer layer of the planet cooled and a rocky crust was formed. As gases were released from volcanoes and asteroid impact the Earth built up a significant atmosphere that contained water. As clouds formed and rain began to fall the oceans filled up. Within 750 million years the Earth had oceans of water and a rocky crust, although there was significantly less land then than there is now. While the atmosphere didn’t yet contain an ozone layer and very little oxygen the stage was set for the evolution of life. There was liquid water, a stable temperature and enough organic chemicals in circulation that would allow bacteria to thrive.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This is how the Bible kicks off, and for almost two millennia was the accepted theory for how the Universe and the Earth came into being. A tricky subject and something that takes a great deal of thought to even contemplate, the origin of time is not an easy thing to study. Up until modern technological advances and the advent of space telescopes it would in fact seem logical to credit a divine being with the creation of the Universe, simply for lack of a better explanation. However what this simple sentence does not explain is how the Universe was created, it merely says that it was done.
In the late 19th century and early 20th century scientific thinking began to overtake religious ideas as men such as Darwin and Einstein began to publish their theories. Many of the new scientific ideas would look to explain the laws that govern the way things are and the way that they came to be. While Darwin would upset a great number of religious people with his ideas on the origin of life on Earth, Einstein and his contemporaries’ ideas would cause relatively less stir in those circles due to the vagueness in the description of the start of time in the Bible.
While Einstein would lay the foundations for modern scientific thinking with his theories of special and general relativity his work would be expanded on later by numerous scientists, physicists and astronomers. Through the 1910s and 1920s it was discovered that the Universe was expanding, the term ‘big bang’ was actually coined as a derogatory term for the theory by Fred Hoyle while speaking on BBC radio. The genesis of the modern big bang theory started in the 1960s and has come on massively in the last ten years with additional data from the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).
Big Bang theory states that the Universe was created in a single event 13.7 billion years ago. The initial condition of the Universe is still not fully known, but it is widely thought that it began as a singularity of infinite density and temperature. The first stage of the Big Bang is known as the Planck Epoch, lasting just a couple of trillionths of a second. At this tiny interval in time gravity was thought to have been as strong as the other fundamental forces, suggesting that everything was united as one single force. Understanding of this phase of the Big Bang is still limited, but experiments are planned in the future to gain a better knowledge of what happened. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN will enable further research to be done into the earliest phases of matter but will not allow research to be done directly into the Planck Epoch.
Still during the initial fractions of a second the Universe would undergo several major changes in its infant state. The main things being a cooling and then exponential growth through cosmic expansion. At this stage the Universe consisted of a quark-gluon plasma, which is essentially the building blocks of matter as we know it. As particles such as photons continued to form over the crucial first few seconds of the Universe the matter that was coming into being started to become more recognisable. After three minutes the temperature had dropped to the level where protons and neutrons can begin to combine into atomic nuclei. After 17 more minutes the temperature and density fell to a point where nuclear fusion was no longer possible.
For the next 70,000 years matter continues to form. Following this hydrogen and helium atoms start forming as the density of the fledgling Universe starts to fall and photons are free to travel, resulting in the cosmic microwave background that we can see present. This radiation gives us a picture of what the Universe was like at this point in time.
Over time the Universe starts to become transparent and structures begin to form due to gravitational forces. The Universe loses its homogenous nature as matter starts to clump together. After approximately 100 million years the first stars begin to form, eventually generating the heavy elements that will start to give life to planets. Even larger groups of matter will collapse and form galaxies. After billions of years the Universe begins to resemble that which we see today. Around 8 to 9 billion years after the Big Bang our own solar system is formed, with life evolving just one billion years after the formation of the Earth.
So while we have a fairly decent idea of how the Universe came to be it is quite apparent that there are a large amount of unanswered questions. Undoubtedly these will be solved in time. The Universe does however give us a lot more to work with in regards to how our solar system was made, and what the Universe was like to begin with than you might think. If you take into account the speed of light when we look out at the systems outside the Milky Way it is effectively like looking back in time as it has taken light millions, if not billions of years to reach Earth. The further out we look, the further back in time we’re looking.
As scientific theory advances and experiments are more detailed it’ll be interesting to see if there are any significant advances in the Big Bang theory and if any questions on the origin of our Universe are answered. When the Large Hadron Collider is switched on at CERN we may have some of these answers, and it’ll be interesting to see what conclusions are drawn.
In years gone past video game villains were over the top caricatures of film villains. Often portrayed as a psychopath bent on world domination for whatever reasons, these villains would give the game a reason for being, you played the hero and you must save the world from the villain. As time has passed and the technology used for computer games has come on so too have the characterisation and portrayal of villains into something more akin to their film brethren. In this article I will take a look at some of my favourite video game villains and explain what made them so great.
The G-Man from the Half Life series of games is one of the most iconic villains ever to make an appearance in a game. He takes the appearance of a tall, thin man in a cheap suit, much like a government employee. His qualities are similar to that of the Cigarette Smoking Man from the X-Files TV series. You’re never quite sure of his motives, at times he directly helps you and at others he will hinder your progress. He can often be seen observing the players actions and will talk to you in a cryptic fashion.
Uncertainty is what makes the G-Man such a great villain. You’re uncertain of his motives, his identity, his allegiances, his power and whether or not he is human. He gives the player numerous Hobson’s choices, where you must decide between two seemingly unfavourable options. He remains perfectly calm in times of seemingly high danger so you’re left wondering if all that goes on is entirely down to his plans. Even after two full games and many expansions you’re still left with very little information about the G-Man, and it is this sense of foreboding and uncertainty that makes him such a great character.
A completely unemotional AI is always an engaging villain, just see films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Matrix as examples. The thought of an entity that has absolutely no remorse or mercy can be genuinely scary, and when Valve added a dash of dark humour to their incarnation in 2007 they created an instant classic. GLaDOS was the star of Portal. A sentient AI that seemed genuinely unhinged she would constantly tease you throughout the course of the game. She provided a slew of memorable quotations and an unforgettable final battle. While not intrinsically evil it shows that computer villains can be extremely effective in a cold, heartless way. They don’t hate you, they’re just doing their job, and if that means burning you to a crisp, then so be it.
Another classic villain archetype is that of the fallen hero. Probably the greatest use of this example is in the Star Wars series of films where Anakin Skywalker is corrupted and becomes Darth Vader, a complete transformation from the ultimate good guy to one of the most notorious villains of all time. In Warcraft 3, the character of Arthas suffered a similar fate. Once held up as the perfect hero he becomes corrupted by power and becomes the leader of what was once his enemy. He even leads armies against his former home and kills his father. The sight of one destroying what he once looked to protect was also used in Star Wars, and has significantly more impact that some motiveless villain doing it out of spite.
Of course, no video game would be complete without the ultimate in virtual villains – other players. If you thought that the bosses you faced in Resident Evil were bad then think again, they’re nothing compared to what players will do to you. The anonymity of the Internet creates an interesting environment where no one is accountable for their actions. Because of this people are basically free to act as they wish, and so will use every advantage, cheat, exploit and hack they can get their hands on. You’ll encounter a surprising amount of devious cunning when multiplayer competition is involved and certainly other players are the ‘villain’ that have had me wanting to throw my keyboard out of the window more than any other.
There are, of course, many more great villains that this but I feel that these represent some of the more successful ones in crossing that barrier between film and games in presenting more believable characters with some amount of depth to them. As the technology reaches a point of near realism game designers will have to work harder to create great games and so I’m sure more time will go into characterisation. This should lead to some classic villains in the future, and I look forward to what comes next.
With the new English football season upon us we’re sure to see some fantastic and breathtaking goals. Every season a handful of players pull out something magical and score a goal that you didn’t think was possible. Looking over the best goals from last season made me wonder, what would be the best goals ever scored? Well I’ve done some research and this is what I’ve come up with.
10. Geoff Hurst for England against Germany in the World Cup final in 1966. As an Englishman I think this one can almost go without saying any more. The goal that clinched the World Cup for England and secured our only international triumph to date has a special place for any football fan from the country where it was born. When you combine the goal with the black and white footage and unforgettable commentary from Kenneth Wolstenholme you get a classic moment for English football and one that hasn’t been replicated since.
9. Zinedine Zidane’s left foot volley in the Champions League final in 2002. Volleying a ball that drops from a height is one of the hardest skills to pull off in football. To volley it with such power and accuracy on his weaker foot is why Zidane was such a special player.
8. Carlos Alberto for Brazil against Italy in the 1970 World Cup. The Brazil team of 1970 have often been thought of as one of the greatest teams of all time, with this goal one of their crowning glories. It is a brilliant team goal involving the whole team and when Carlos Alberto bursts out of nowhere to provide the finishing touch you have a moment of World Cup history.
7. Trevor Sinclair’s bicycle kick for QPR in 1997. If volleying a ball was one of the hardest skills then an overhead kick must be the hardest skill to pull off. Sinclair’s overhead kick is the best one I’ve ever seen, hit with precision off a pacey cross with flawless technique, it is simply an amazing goal.
6. Roberto Carlos’ free kick for Brazil against France in 1997. Dubbed the banana kick, or the impossible goal the amount of swerve that Roberto Carlos managed with this kick is unreal. The flight of the ball completely fooled French keeper Fabian Barthez as kids all over the world spent the next day trying to replicate this jaw dropping piece of skill.
5. Tony Yeboah’s volley against Liverpool. Another volley, and this is a special one. Seemingly from nothing Yeboah smashes the ball against the underside of the bar to beat David James from 25 yards. Yeboah would score a similar goal the next week before fading away. Still, if you’re going to be remember for something you may as well be remembered for an outstanding goal.
4. Nayim against Arsenal in the Cup Winners Cup final. One of the first goals of its kind, Nayim’s audacious lob fooled everyone, David Seaman included. The vision to spot the goalkeeper off his line combined with the perfect execution is what makes this goal so good. Add it to the fact that it is in a major European final and you have one of the best goals ever scored.
3. George Weah for AC Milan against Verona. This is an absolutely amazing goal. Picking the ball up inside his own penalty area Weah beats four players on his own while running the length of the pitch to score. One of the best goals of all time no one has ever come close to scoring anything like it since.
2. Marco Van Basten for Holland against the USSR in 1988. This is the best volley ever scored. Hit from an impossible angle it is still unbelievable to watch the ball fly in, it is hard to think that a volley will ever beat this.
1. Diego Maradona against England in 1986. No, not the handball that should have been disallowed. The other goal. The one where Maradona beats five England players before calmly slotting the ball into the net. While not running as far as George Weah, Maradona didn’t just use pace to beat players, but ghosted past world-class English players like they weren’t there. If there ever was a one man team it was this Argentina team, and Maradona was their driving force. An incredible player and this was his best goal.
Well these were my favourite goals of all time. There are a lot I’ve left out, but search for these on YouTube and you’re sure to be amazed.
The guitar solo is something that is synonymous with rock music. There have been countless rock guitarists come and go over the years, all with a unique take on what makes a great solo. For as many guitarists as there are playing solos there are far more people listening and forming opinions on them. No one will ever agree on what their favourite guitar solos are, but here are ten of mine in no particular order.
1. For the Love of God by Steve Vai. The seventh song on his breakthrough 1991 album, Passion and Warfare, For the Love of God is often held up to be Steve Vai’s best work. The song is essentially one long guitar solo and covers almost all aspects of Vai’s playing. An inspiration when I first heard it, it was the piece that really showed me the depth of emotion that was possible to convey while playing guitar.
2. Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd. Often revered as having one of the best guitar solos of all time, the guitar playing in Comfortably Numb is outstanding. Pages and pages have been written about this solo, but for me it showed how effective blues phrasing could be in a rock setting. The big draw for me here was the tone as well, Dave Gilmour uses compression wonderfully well to give a warm and punchy tone that fits the song absolutely perfectly.
3. Beat It, solo by Eddie Van Halen. A great song that really comes to life with Van Halen’s guitar solo mid way through. Eddie Van Halen was the defining guitarist of the 1980s and opened up so many techniques and ideas that would be copied endlessly. He has recorded countless amazing solos across his career but I feel that the one in Beat It is among his best. It’s only short but is a pure explosion of his style showcasing breathtaking technique, style, tone and phrasing. If you ever want to discover why Van Halen is such a great guitarist then just listening to this solo should be enough.
4. Always With Me, Always With You by Joe Satriani (live version). I’m picking the extended live version from the Satriani Live! DVD rather than the studio version for this, mainly for Satriani’s wonderful improvisation section at the end of the track. This song showcases just why Joe Satriani is such a good guitar player. I’ve heard several different live versions of this song, as well as having seen him live a few times in person and he plays just as well every single time. The song is a masterclass in how to solo melodically and tastefully. Satch never makes a mistake either, and everything he plays is done to absolute perfection. You won’t find a better played guitar solo, and I doubt you’ll find a better player either.
5. Nottingham Lace by Buckethead. I only recently started listening to Buckethead, so it’s hard for me to pick out one solo in particular given that he excels in so many different styles. I picked Nottingham Lace out because it is a marvelous display of his technique as well as his melodic playing. Well worth a try and I’m looking forward to discovering the rest of his back catalogue.
6. Wonderful Slippery Thing by Guthrie Govan. Guthrie Govan is nowhere near as famous as he should be. An English guitar player, he is absolutely phenomenal, with a complete mastery of his instrument and a remarkable ability to play across a huge range of styles. I picked this song as it has been his strongest for many years, and the version on his recent album, Erotic Cakes, showcases his fluid style. A great player, hopefully soon he’ll get the recognition he deserves.
7. Goodnight Kiss by John Petrucci. While John Petrucci is most widely known for his lightning fast alternate picking this solo shows that he can pick out some beautiful phrases when playing in a more restrained style. The solo plays smoothly over changes and changes the style of the song superbly to blend into the next track, Solitary Shell. Petrucci is a great guitarist who has managed to blend blues and metal into a unique style, and I feel that this solo is one of his best.
8. Bliss by Paul Gilbert. Again with a player like Paul Gilbert I found it hard to narrow it down to one solo. I knew I wanted something from him in here, but was unsure what exactly. In the end I just picked my favourite song, which also happens to have some fantastic guitar playing in it as well. On Bliss Gilbert shows his Hendrix influence as well as considerable restraint, playing fast just where it is needed for maximum impact. A great player with a fantastic attitude to music.
9. Soma by Billy Corgan. This is pretty much the guitar solo that really started me playing. My biggest early influence was the Smashing Pumpkins, and in particular the album Siamese Dream. The solo in Soma stands out as one of Corgan’s best and is played to perfection as the song reaches its peak.
10. Bold as Love by Jimi Hendrix. A little cliched to include Hendrix perhaps, but his influence on guitar playing is unquestionable. In a similar situation to Paul Gilbert I was unsure of which to pick so in the end just picked my favourite song. Often overlooked for some of his more famous songs I actually feel that Bold as Love displays Hendrix’ songwriting at its strongest, of course it helps that is also has the fantastic guitar work you’d expect from him too.
Over recent years the Web has grown into an integral part of every day life. If you’re of the same generation as me, born in the 80s, it is hard to imagine life without it. Used for everything from entertainment, mail, news, work, commerce, communication and everything in-between, the Web has found a way to be ingrained in everything we do from day to day.
In my memory the net has gone from simple text html documents on a 28k modem to full streaming video and audio on mobile devices via wireless broadband. The Web isn’t all that old though, and the growth has been staggering for the short time that it’s been around.
Here I should point out the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web. The Internet is the series of interconnected networks that provides the backbone for the Web and all other communication technologies to operate. The Web is the series of interconnected documents, typically the web pages that you visit.
Despite the prevalence of the Internet and the Web in almost everything now, it isn’t actually very old at all. The technology that powers the Internet is older than the Web, which was actually started in 1990 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The Internet was already widely used within academic and military circles in the USA at this point, but what Burners-Lee did was create a means with which people could easily browse documents and access information from their computer. By December 1990 he had created the first browser, WorldWideWeb, as well as the first web pages, which were documents detailing the nature of the Web.
By 1991 web servers began popping up all over the world, and testing had begun on the first universal browser that would allow anyone to access the documents stored on the Web. In 1992 there were 26 servers in the world, and by 1993 there were over 200. In February of that year Mosaic was released, the browser that allowed anyone that owned a PC or a Mac to access the Web. From this point the growth is staggering.
By 1994 Netscape had been formed and released their first browser, Netscape Navigator while Microsoft had released their Windows browser, Cello in 1993. At this stage the Web was still in its infancy, and in May 1994 the first International WWW Conference was held at CERN, a year after they had decided that use of the Web would be free-to-use and royalty-free, a major factor in its success.
By 1995 the ever expanding Web was starting to pick up momentum and gain some attention in the media and popular culture. By this point Netscape Navigator was the most commonly used browser, but Microsoft had licensed Mosaic to use as the basis for their own browser, Internet Explorer, which would be bundled with Microsoft Windows 95 Plus.
New versions of each browser were released in quick succession to keep up with the new technologies and demands of their ever increasing user-base. In 1997 Microsoft released Internet Explorer 4, which was faster than before as well as allowing a much more dynamic display of information. The browser also integrated itself into Microsoft’s dominating OS, Windows.
Microsoft would go on to use its monopoly on home operating systems and its massive budget to crush the competition from Netscape in the following years as versions 5 and 6 of Internet Explorer completely dominated the market. Netscape eventually released the source code of Navigator as an open source browser, Mozilla. This would eventually lead to the creation of the Firefox browser, now a significant rival to Internet Explorer.
By 1998 most companies had realised that with all the commercial benefits and opportunities that the Web could bring that a website was no longer optional, but required. This would lead to the much hyped ‘dot com’ boom and bust of the turn of the century.
Low interest rates in 1998-1999 would help tempt venture capitalists into investing in dot-com businesses that were seeing their stock values rise extremely quickly. This lead to remarkable situations where start-up dot-coms could be worth millions despite never having made a profit, or in some cases never even having taken any revenue.
The boom lasted into the year 2000, where the stock value of the technology rich NASDAQ Index peaked at more than twice its value from the previous year. On March 10th the dot com bubble burst. Massive multi billion dollar sell orders for companies such as Cisco, IBM and Dell were all processed on the March 10 weekend, this selling prompted a chain reaction as investors found themselves past Y2K without incident and so spending was reduced.
The failure was also undoubtedly linked to the poor showing of Internet companies during the Christmas 1999 season. Their lavish spending and valuations now seemed foolish and most of the dot com businesses went out of business throughout 2001.
The fallout of the dot com era was a large amount of overcapacity on many Internet networks, as well as cheaply available high speed broadband. From the ashes many companies did manage to find a successful niche online and started to form stable businesses. Google, Amazon and Ebay are excellent examples of this.
2002 would see the advent of user driven content, and the real start of Web 2.0. Up until this point the Internet was generally something that you could browse and view, but not edit. Websites would be built by companies and organisations with the intent of users reading them from their computers.
As websites such as MySpace and Facebook began popping up, so did the popularity of instant messaging services such as ICQ, MSN and AIM. During the early 2000s the Web would undertake a shift from being commercially driven to being built around interpersonal communication. Many people began seeing the Web as a cheap and easy way of keeping in contact with friends and relatives. As more and more homes were connected to broadband the Web became integrated into the personal computer and the Internet became the primary communication tool for millions.
2002 also saw the advent of the blog and RSS feeds. A blog enabled just about anyone to have their own personal space online that was easily editable. Previously owning and running a website was the domain of people with sound technical knowledge and a grasp of HTML. With blogs just about anyone could start a site and create something where their voice could be heard. This would essentially bring the Web to the masses as people realised that traffic online could be a two-way thing.
Around the same time Google was rising to prominence as the premier search engine. Google would help to organise and clean up the Web for people. Using complex search algorithms Google attempts to rank pages based on their relevancy and reputation. Their streamlined search page enabled users to find what they were after in the sea of content available online much more easily than before.
In 2005 YouTube was founded by three ex-PayPal workers. The website hosts user-uploaded videos in a quick loading format based on Flash that enables people to watch videos on just about anything. YouTube proved to be the fastest growing website in history. The site now hosts 84 million videos, with 3.75 million user channels. YouTube was a significant step forward for the Web and user-generated content.
Since 2005 the Web has exploded with all kinds of user-generated material. Recently it has been social networking sites that have seen the most growth, with Facebook proving to be an international phenomenon. These sites enable users to have a much more personal connection to the Web than previously. With people using the Web as their sole means of communication while sharing photos and video it has become totally ingrained in everything that we do.
As the flood of user-generated content continues to grow it is hard to predict where the growth will stop, if at all. This kind of content is what has enable the Web to reach the point it has reached now. In just 18 years it has gone from the domain of nuclear physicists and computer scientists to the domain of everyone. Even people with little to no computer knowledge can browse web pages, or set up a blog.
It’ll be interesting to see where the Web will go next. With Web 3.0 just around the corner many people, including Sir Tim Burners-Lee are predicted the advent of the Semantic Web, where the Web will understand and satisfy the requests of people as they search and surf. I imagine the Internet will merge into every facet of technology and entertainment in the future, even more so that what is happening today.
It is an interesting time and also interesting to note that the reason people buy a computer now is not to compute, but to use the World Wide Web.
My money is on Liu Kang, given that he can turn into a dragon…
I’m sure anyone that has ever owned a video game console or played games on their PC has those few games that they remember most fondly. As the game industry has grown up and evolved so too have the players themselves. The kids who were playing Mario on their NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) and SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) are now spending hundreds of pounds on top end PCs and Xbox 360s.
I’m no different and video games were a huge part of my childhood while growing up. While many people are glued to their TV spending hours watching the same mindless shows I found that games consoles gave a much richer experience. I’m not alone and there are many great games I’ve played over the years. The following five games are ones that stand out above all others and the ones that changed the way I saw electronic entertainment.
Tetris was the first. As a six year old boy in 1990 I was the proud owner of an original Nintendo GameBoy with Tetris included as the only game. Now obviously as one so young I was never much good at it. I never saw the rocket ship that supposedly appeared if you got a really high score, and I never finished the game. However, what Tetris did do for me was spark an interest in computer games.
Created in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov the game is one of the most popular and influential of all time. It has appeared in some form on almost every single device capable of running games since it was first released. The version that I played 18 years ago on the GameBoy was one of the most popular and the version that shot it to international success. Tetris is consistently named in the top 5 of ‘Greatest Game of All Time’ lists, I expect for reasons similar to my own.
There have been many games since that have far eclipsed Tetris in almost every facet but it still remains that first introduction to video games for thousands, maybe millions of people.
Next up is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. A flagship title for the SNES in the early 90s, A Link to The Past was unlike anything I’d ever played before. Offering two huge worlds to explore and a plot not unlike anything from a Lord of the Rings book it offered more gameplay and replay value than any game I’d played. For the time the graphics and the sounds were amazing and I spent many hours lost in the immersive game world.
The reason I picked this game over it’s successor, Ocarina of Time, is that this is the first Zelda game I played, and as such has left a lasting impression. While Ocarina of Time is generally thought of, and rightly so, as being the superior game it was A Link to The Past that really made a huge success of the Zelda franchise.
The next game I chose for this article is one that is actually fairly similar to A Link to The Past. It is made by a Japanese company, features a large explorable game world, a great cast of characters, an engaging story and fantastic gameplay. Final Fantasy 7 was a massive hit. The first of the series to make any impact outside its native Japan the game features one of the best stories ever told in a video game.
This was the first game where I felt that games and film were really starting to merge. FF7 featured many non-interactive cut scenes and FMV (full motion video) sequences to augment the gameplay and help tell the story. While many people are put off by the lengthy pauses in action and hefty amount of text to read I found that the game became like reading a book in which you could decide how the story would unfold and which characters would star, and even if they would live or die.
The success of Final Fantasy 7 led the way for many similar games to get made and flourish in the western market, which typically hadn’t warmed to Japanese RPG titles, instead preferring driving and fighting games. It is my belief that even online games such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft would never have enjoyed the level of success they have if it wasn’t for FF7.
Usually games based on films are some of the worst games you can play. I don’t think I’ve played a good one before or since my next entry. As important as FF7 was for the Playstation, Goldeneye 007 was so for the N64. A brilliant game that helped bring FPS to consoles and pioneer many features that are simply taken for granted these days.
However the reason I’ve mentioned Goldeneye isn’t for the single player game, nor for the groundbreaking technology. It is for the multiplayer. This was the game that made me realise that as fun as games were, they were far more fun when playing with and against your friends instead of on your own. I lost countless hours of sleep in the late 90s to all-nighter Goldeneye multiplayer sessions with school friends. A brilliant game and the best use of a film license that I can think of.
Last up is a game that brought me back to the PC for games, and one that thanks to its huge modding community has kept me playing for years after its initial release.
Half Life and its sequels and mods that followed were and still are the defining PC games of their generation. The first Half Life game was praised for the complete immersion it offered the player, telling the story entirely through the eyes of Gordon Freeman, without ever taking control from you.
Half Life also had a huge and dedicated modding community. These people created their own single and multiplayer games using the Half Life engine and the SDK released by Valve. Of these mods Counter Strike is by far the most successful and was later released as a commercial product. Counter Strike also happened to be the game that introduced me to games online and on LANs, an extension of the multiplayer gaming enjoyed with Goldeneye on the N64 some years earlier.
Well these were the games that influenced me the most, it is really hard to pick a top 5 and there are many that I’ve missed. I’m sure that some will agree with the games I’ve listed and others won’t be able to comprehend some of the titles I’ve left out. Hopefully in the future we’ll see some games that will push the boundaries even further and eclipse what we’ve seen so far.
Just recently I watched a trailer for the upcoming Terminator film, Terminator 4: The Future Begins. The series is one of my favourite film franchises and I’m looking forward to the new film, even in spite of the disappointing Terminator 3. Part of the reason that the films are among my favourites are the ways in which they deal with time travel and the paradoxes that it could potentially cause.
The film tells a story where in the near future artificial intelligence has taken over the planet and sends cyborg assassins back in time in an attempt to kill the future leader of the human resistance. At the end of the first film the robot terminator is crushed and destroyed, the only remains being the forearm and part of the microprocessor ‘brain’. The irony here is that the only way that the machines are eventually created is by using the parts left behind from the destroyed one.
It creates an interesting paradox in that the terminators would never have been invented if they hadn’t come back in time, so in theory the machines came into being by simply appearing out of thin air. The film dealt with the fate of John Conner, leader of the human resistance and whether his actions were predetermined or the result of a choice. In the end nothing he did could stop the inevitable and the machines started the war. The series raises a large number of interesting questions about time travel and the effects it may have.
This leads me onto the subject of time travel. Is it possible? It is a subject that has captured the collective imagination and inspired countless works of science fiction. As well as inspiring works of fiction it is a subject that has been the topic of serious scientific investigation and thought. Many notable physicists including Albert Einstein and Steven Hawking have done significant research into the prospects of the possibility of time travel. In this article I will have a look at some of the more common theories of how time travel may be possible and the effects it may have on the universe.
In fiction time travel has been presented in a huge number of different ways. The most common use is that of a time machine that can propel people backwards and forwards in time, or in some cases only in one direction. Popular examples include the DeLorean from the Back to the Future trilogy and the Tardis from the Doctor Who television series. In reality such devices are impossible but provide a romantic vision of how one might travel through time.
However despite these ideas of time travel it has been proven that time travel backwards in time is for the most part impossible. Time travel into the future, however is seen as being arguably possible. There are considerable (ie virtually impossible) boundaries to overcome but the possibility within the laws of physics is there for time travel into the future.
Theoretical time travel into the future would work on the basis of time dilation. If one was to travel away from the Earth at close to the speed of light before turning round and returning at the same speed then considerably more time would have passed for the people on Earth than those on the spacecraft. This would allow a form of travel into the future where people could arrive back at Earth several thousand years after they left even though they’ve only felt like they’ve been flying for a few years.
This is explained in Einstein’s theory of special relativity. A common way to relate this to time travel is with the twin paradox. The twin paradox states that if someone travels away from Earth at light speed and returns several years later they will find that their identical twin has aged considerably more than they have. The maths and physics behind why this happens is extremely complex and most likely far beyond the scope of this article, but it has been proven to happen. Experiments have even taken place on Earth that have proved the theory to be correct. The National Physical Laboratory in the UK flew clocks to Washington DC and back to London and found the results to be as Einstein had predicted.
Another factor that is able to cause time dilation is extreme gravitational forces. It has been calculated under general relativity that if a person was able to live inside a sphere with a diameter of five metres and the mass of Jupiter that their time would move four times slower than of the outside world. It has been proven in scientific experiments that clocks will appear to tick slower the closer they are to a strong gravitational pull. A person will see that a clock at ground level will tick more slowly than one up a tower.
With the knowledge of how time dilation works is it just a matter of time until we’re able to build a craft that can travel sufficient distances at a high enough speed that we see some more dramatic effects than a few nanoseconds? Imagine what kind of effects a craft that travelled at near light speed to a black hole and used the gravitational pull to slingshot back home would see. The combined dilation from the journey and the gravity of a black hole should see them arrive back on Earth a very, very long time after they’ve left.
The only way that we will be able to experience any kind of time travel is through this method, or by travelling through a wormhole.
A wormhole is a theoretical object that can link two distant points in space via a tunnel. The possibility of wormholes is driven by Einstein’s theory that objects curve space and time. Imagine space as a bed sheet that is pulled tight, when you drop a ball onto it the sheet will curve and the ball will roll to the middle. It has been theorised that if two objects with sufficient mass were to depress space in this way enough that they might meet in the middle and form a wormhole between the two points. Travel through these points would allow us to cross vast distances of space in a fraction of the time it would normally take to get there.
However if we were able to move and manipulate the mouths of the wormholes then it has been thought of that they may offer a way to travel into the past. From inside a wormhole the two mouths will always remain synchronised. That is to say if a clock reads 3000 on one end, it will also read 3000 on the other end. If we were able to bring two mouths near each other and then accelerate one away at relativistic velocities before bringing it back then the mouth that had been on the journey would have aged less. Let’s say the clock on the stationary mouth reads 3050 and the mouth that has been accelerated reads 3000. If you were to enter the accelerated mouth then both ends of the wormhole would read 3000 from inside. In this respect if you’re in 3050 with the stationary mouth and you enter the accelerated mouth you will exit in the year 3000, a trip back in time.
While theoretically possible this relies on technology that is far beyond our current understanding. However it does answer one of Steven Hawking’s queries on travel into the past. He asked that if time travel were possible then why haven’t we seen any tourists from the future? Well by using wormholes it would be impossible to travel back to a point before they were discovered and accessed.
Travel back in time would also raise the well known question of the Grandfather Paradox. This is the name given to a basic cause and effect paradox that could be raised from time travel into the past. For example, imagine you were to travel back in time far enough to a point before your father was born and kill your grandfather. This would mean that you would never be conceived and would never exist. If you never exist then how do you go back in time to kill your grandfather? Logic would say that you can’t and so that means your grandfather would live and you would go back in time and kill him, which of course we know you can’t. It is this example that is often used when saying that time travel into the past is impossible.
There is a school of thought though that you would be simply unable to change anything if you went back in time. Say you went to try and kill your grandfather. You would encounter a continuous stream of bad luck and you wouldn’t be able to do it, your gun would jam, you would miss, your shot wouldn’t be fatal, you would die, etc.
The idea of time travel into the past certainly raises an enormous number of paradoxes and questions on cause and effect, none of which are answered easily. While time travel into the future remains an exciting extreme possibility I do not think we will ever see time travel into the past, and certainly not at 88mph in a DeLorean.
