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Click on the following titles to find out more about the science fact behind the science fiction classic The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This information was provided by Michael Hanlon, author of The Science of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. More detail can be found in our exhibition. Michael Hanlon's book can also be bought in the accompanying exhibition shop. To explore links to the Museum's own collections follow our Hitchhiker's Guide to the Science Museum trail.
The Existence of God
Parallel Universes
Precious Planet
The Ultimate Question
The Planet Factory
Teleportation
Robotics/ artificial intelligence
Infinite Improbability Drive
Many philosophers have tried to prove the existence of God but there have always been those who have doubted the existence of the Almighty (or Almighties). Non-believers point out that science has successfully answered many of the questions with which religion struggled for centuries. A few hundred years ago, God was thought to be responsible for the creation of Earth, the heavens, humans and all plant and animal life. Before that, God, or the gods, were also held responsible for pretty well all natural phenomena. Now we know where the rain comes from, what makes the Sun shine and what is going on inside the Earth that sometimes makes the ground shake.
Scientists do not know for sure how the Universe came into existence but the Big Bang theory goes a long way towards answering that most fundamental of questions. Most importantly, perhaps, we now know how we - and all the rest of life on Earth - came into being, through Darwin's beautiful theory of evolution by natural selection.
For now, the biggest question is, does science leave room for God? Perhaps surprisingly, in this age of reason, billions still say ‘yes'. Reports of His death have, as they say, been greatly exaggerated.
The idea that there could be more than one version of Creation in existence has fuelled some of the most imaginative science fiction ever written, including of course The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The idea that there could be another Earth, lurking through the looking-glass seems like a fantasy, but could it be true?
Rather bizarrely, the concept of the parallel universe is quite respectable in physics. Indeed, some of the strangest alleyways of modern science - the weird world of the sub-atomic particles and in particular the alice-in-wonderland domain of quantum physics - seem, according to some, to demand an alternate reality.
We may never know for sure. But what we DO know is that the Universe is not only very, very big, it is also very, very strange. We live in Einstein and Bohr's Universe, a place where electrons can be in two places at once, where cause may not necessarily always precede effect, where moving clocks run slow and where there may be an infinite number of alternate realities in which every possible thing that can happen does happen. A disturbing but also strangely consoling thought.
Throughout our planet's long history, the life that clings to its surface has faced a series of natural calamities. These catastrophes have come from outer space and from the Earth itself. Some of these catastrophes have been large enough to wipe out a majority of species alive - what palaeontologists call mass-extinctions. Now the Earth faces another mass-extinction, this time not caused by an ice age or a meteor strike, but at the hands of one extraordinary species, Homo sapiens, who in less than a few hundred thousand years has made its mark on our planet more than any other.
It isn't just that we are deliberately killing our fellow lifeforms (although this happens); it is that we are simply out-competing them for land and food. It is depressing to think that before this century is out we may have lost some of the Earth's most charismatic species. Imagine a world without tigers, without the mountain gorilla or the snow leopard. It could easily happen - in some cases there are only a few hundred of these animals left. We can argue about global warming, the effects of pollution and whether or not nuclear power is a good thing. But you can't argue with extinction. Once the last mountain gorilla has died, that is it.
Life, the Universe and Everything. When Douglas Adams wrote about the Ultimate Question, he summed up neatly what thousands of philosophers, inebriated students and pub bores had been agonising about for centuries. What is it all about? What does it mean? Where did the Universe come from and where is it going? Why am I here?
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, we learn that a race of hyper-intelligent beings who, in our dimension, are the small furry creatures we call mice, build a stupendous computer to settle the Ultimate Answer once and for all. The computer - Deep Thought - churns away for millions of years and finally comes up with a result - 42. This of course will not do, and the mice build another computer - The Earth - to find out what the actual question was.
It is unlikely - to say the least - that the true answer to life, the universe and everything will be a simple number like 42. Nevertheless, physicists and cosmologists, who are probing the deepest mysteries of matter, energy and the Universe do hope that when we finally arrive at a Theory of Everything - a theory which explains the fundamental forces of nature, the nature of matter and time and how the strange world of the sub-atomic particles can be reconciled with Einstein's relativity - it will be both beautiful and, in essence, simple.
The Planet Factory - planets, big bang and crunch
Planets are perhaps the most important pieces of real estate in the Universe. Our planet, Earth, is a smallish sphere of rock draped in a thin film of water and air. Compared to a star, like our Sun, or even to one of the giant planets like Jupiter or Saturn, it is an insignificant mote. And yet, as well as being obviously important to us, the Earth may turn out to be a very important object on the galactic scale.
Until the 1990s, astronomers were not able to detect planets orbiting other suns at all. We had no real idea how common Solar Systems - as opposed to just stars - were in the Universe. Now we have detected more than a hundred ‘extrasolar planets. Solar Systems, it turns out, are everywhere.
But we have not, to date, detected any alien ‘Earths'. All the planets we have seen so far circling other stars have been huge, almost certainly lifeless, gas giants like Jupiter. That doesn't mean that alien Earths are not there - it is simply the case that our instruments are not yet powerful enough to see them. Yet until we build such instruments, we really have no idea how rare a place like Earth, teeming with life, is. But we do know it is precious.
In billions of years the Earth will be destroyed as our dying Sun swells and devours the inner Solar System. In the meantime this is the only home that we have got. As the current custodians of our planet - and the first species to evolve that has the power to think about such things - we surely have a duty to protect and cherish a world, which may turn out to be one of the jewels of the Galaxy. For if we destroy our world we will not be able, as the mice did, to build another one.
How good it would be to find a way which travel was both painless and instant. No waiting, no queues, no ‘security' and no airline food. Step into a booth in London and, seconds later; walk out in New York.
The teleport machine has been a mainstay of science fiction for decades. Yet could one actually be built? Surprisingly, the answer turns out to be a tentative ‘yes'. Harnessing the almost magical powers of quantum physics, in which objects like electrons can quite happily be in two places at once, several groups of physicists have managed to teleport electrons and even whole atoms from one side of the lab to the other. And if you can teleport an atom, there is nothing, in principle, to stop you teleporting a virus, a bacterium or even a mouse. And if a mouse, then why not a man?
In practice, the challenges are formidable. The amount of computing power needed to calculate the position and state of every particle in your body would defeat even Deep Thought. And even if they built a teleport machine, how many people would use it? After all, the laws of physics seem to suggest that to teleport an object the original must be destroyed before it is recreated elsewhere. Being deconstructed may be a high price to pay to avoid security queues and airline food.
Robotics/ artificial intelligence
Thirty years ago, pundits talked of the coming ‘silicon revolution'. Back then it was clear that computers were about to take over the world, but back then no one was quite sure how. People imagined giant thinking machines like Deep Thought, whirring away in huge buildings, not a computer in every child's bedroom and a gargantuan information network - the Internet - which has completely changed the way we live.
In 1965, Gordon Moore, founder of silicon chip-maker Intel, made a famous prediction that the number of transistors that could be crammed on a microprocessor would double every 18 months. In other words, every year and a half, computers would become twice as powerful. So far, Moore's Law has held. The average home PC is now probably more powerful than all the computers available to NASA when they put a man on the Moon in 1969.
But we have still not built a Deep Thought - or a Marvin. Today's computers can process data incredibly quickly, but they still cannot think. And building the sort of robot dreamt of by science fiction writers is proving to be far more difficult than we ever imagined. Getting machines to see, hear, understand and even walk is a challenge. We may live in the machine age, but flesh and blood is still - for the moment - very much in charge.
The good ship Heart of Gold is powered by nothing less than the power of improbability. One of the unlikeliest engines ever built, the Infinite Improbability Drive derives its power from the huge numbers generated when one calculated the likelihood of very unlikely events - winning the lottery twice, being rescued in deep space thirty seconds after you have been placed there by the Vogons, and so on. It is so powerful that once switched on, the spacecraft is placed simultaneously at every single point in the Universe, thus avoiding all that tedious mucking around in hyperspace that is normally necessary to get round Einstein's speed limit of 186,000 miles a second.
We may not be able yet to use probability to power spaceships across the Universe, but there is no doubt that probability is a very powerful tool. Few of us understand probability - which is why so many people still smoke and play the Lottery, while avoiding additives in food like the plague. Probability can be used to describe everything - from the chances that a particular plane journey will kill you, to the likelihood of you recovering from a nasty disease. In many ways probability theory is a dark art indeed. The fact that so few properly understand it only adds to its power.
