Effect and Cause

Professor Theodopolos Troodos-Ophiolite looked at his students over the top of his glasses. He wore half glasses, the top half was missing, thereby telling the world that he still had good long distance vision in spite of his advancing age. He was one of those people who took pride in thinking they looked younger than their calendar years. Few knew that he wore contact lenses to deal with his age-related presbyopia. It was also darkly rumoured that his sometime visible silver roots owed their existence to a man dye.

                His students belonged to the third year cohort who were grimly sticking with geology, in spite of the ridicule from their colleagues who were sitting back with many less lecture and tutor contact hours a year, reading Cider with Rosy or Under Milk Wood in the student union bar, with little care as to the rigour of the subject, just picking through the bones of other people’s creative work and writing vapidly critical essays.

                Theo was today talking of the recent, over the last ninety five years, discovery that the Earth’s magnetic field was declining in strength. The magnetic poles were also moving across the surface of the Earth, but that had been noted and explained as the effect of Coriolis forces in the planet’s molten core. It had been known since the sixties that a reduction in strength meant that the magnetic field was heading for a one of its periodic changes in direction, hence the well know expression that, ‘The South will be North and the North, South.’

                ‘It is expected that the ‘flip’ will happen this year, in the summer, while  you students are lazing your time away and your Professor will be busy marking your progress so far while working on next years’ lectures and using any spare time to look into this strange event. One effect that we have already worked out is that further effects will cause causes instead of the usual scheme of things where causes cause effects. We will just have to get used to the idea that the law of cause and effects will have been stood on its head.’

                ‘Can you give us a practical example of this, Professor?’ asked a thin, pimply student, Michael Fish, who was known for achieving remarkably high marks.

                ‘Yes, Mr Fish, I can and I will. Assume we have a windy day. What will have caused the wind?’

                ‘The differential air pressure in the atmosphere resulting in a gradient so air will flow from areas of high pressure to those of lower pressure.’

                ‘Yes, well done, Mr Fish. But now it will be different. The result is the wind but the cause will be, amongst other things, wind turbines and waves. You will see that cause and effect will now have to said and written as ‘Effect and Cause’ as the effect now comes before the cause. You will note, of course that the second law of thermodynamics has not been violated.

                ‘But, where will the energy come from to turn the windmills,’ protested Michael.

                ‘It will come, of course from the Grid which is fed from power stations…-‘

                ‘…but doesn’t the power go back into the generators?’ Asked Ludmilla Karaoke.

                ‘No, you are confusing entropy with enthalpy, Miss Karaoke. Energy is not reversed, it is just that cause and effect are exchanged. Let me give you a simple example. If you are willing, I will show you what I mean. If you will kindly assist me, Mr Fish by standing out here at the front.’

Michael reluctantly walked down to the front of the lecture theatre and stood facing Theo.

                ‘Now, my intention is to slap you in the face, with your permission, of course, Mr Fish’ There was a collective gasp from the audience, it was unheard of for a member of staff to strike a student and was a sacking offence.

                ‘Well, ok, if it will help our understanding.’ Said Michael reluctantly.

                ‘I think we will all agree that the intention has been stated, I will now slap Mr Fish’s cheek, agreed?’ Asked the Prof. The students all nodded in agreement.

                ‘Now you will see a red mark slowly appearing on his left cheek. Please note that it is appearing before and without the slap. I will now slap him to complete the action. We now have cause and effect, but not in the usual order. The effect came before and caused the cause. Does everybody understand this? It is important to get a grasp of this before we move on to the next stage’

Michael was now very angry at being humiliated in front of his colleagues and swore to himself that he would exact some sort of revenge on his arrogant professor.

                ‘What would have happened if you announced your intention to slap him, the red mark appeared and then you changed your mind and did not slap him?’ Enquired Alfred.

                ‘Good question, Mr Wegener. Now we have to bring in the principle of quantum infundibulumarity and involve that pesky cat of Herr Schrödinger again, but that is a story for another day. It is something you can think about over the two days before my next lecture.

*

Captain Luc leaned on the guardrail of the port bridge wing and watched Professor ‘Theo’ as he looked out to the horizon from the TMA winch with a thousand yard stare of an experienced mariner. No one knew that Theo could not wear his contacts at sea, because of the salt in the air, so his distance vision was limited to the seagull soaring above the stern of the Jacques Picard, looking hopefully for scraps discarded from the galley. Theo was still playing the role of a young, early promoted, brilliant professor. Luc was bored, they had been following the same course for three days now and the sea was unusually calm, for the North Atlantic. This was possibly because of the theory that the Prof was investigating. Luc enjoyed the drama of a good storm.

 The ‘Picard was heading due East at six knots to avoid too much strain on the Extra Special Flexible Steel Wire Rope ( ESFSWR ) that was trawling the Towed Magnetic Array ( TMA ) close to, and parallel with, the sea bed more than two kilometres below the ship. The resulting signal was sent up the signal cable to the Electronic Magnetic Assembly ( EMA )in the control room where it displayed and recorded the strength and direction of the Earth’s magnetic signature imprinted in the rocks on the sea bed. They were now 10 kilometres East of the mid ocean ridge where new molten rock was being forced up from the depths of the Earth. It was quickly cooled by the sea water thus recording the direction of the magnetic field at the time.

The magnetic signal from the newer rocks could be seen as far weaker than the older rocks further away from the spreading zone. This confirmed what Theo had theorised in his lab, the Earth’s magnetic field was due to flip suddenly soon, possibly this summer if the trend line was to be believed. The problem now was how to improve the accuracy of that prediction because he knew that all hell would break lose when that happened. Ships and aircraft would get lost, ICBMs would suddenly be targeted on friendly sites and cities, hikers the world over would get lost – if they believed their compasses - and, possibly worst of all, geocaching enthusiasts would find that the coordinates on their hi-spec GPS receivers would no longer take them to hidden treasures.

*

Theo was back in his favourite lecture hall, 7b, leaning against this favourite podium and looking up at his less than favourite geology students – some of whom he regarded as being as thick as the ultra mafic rocks they studied.

‘Would you care to summarise where we had got to earlier in the week Miss Karaoke?’

‘You had just announced your intention to slap Michael’s face and a red mark appeared. You were then going to explain what would happen if you changed your mind and so didn’t supply the effect to cause the cause, as it were,’ said Linda.

 ‘Thank you Miss Karaoke. Yes, it gets difficult doesn’t it, maybe we need to invent some new words to cope with this confusion but I am confident we can do the job today with the ones we have and leave the invention of neologisms until another day.

You will remember Herr Schrödinger’s cat that languished in the box in a weird unclassified state so that it was neither dead nor alive until the opening of the box ‘forced’ it to choose to live or die – in other words the opening of the box collapsed the wave function. We now have a similar situation, Mr Fish’s face is in a state of proto slapping. It shows the red mark that would be caused by a slap but it does not hurt or show permanent damage until the effect, ie the slap, is carried out. I won’t carry on to prove this demonstration because, as you know, the striking of students by staff is not allowed by this university. I do, however have another, perhaps more striking demonstration for you – and I believe it is not against the rules of this institution.

‘I have here a hand gun which is loaded with one bullet. I will shoot myself in the head. The proto bullet hole will appear, but as long as I do not have the intention to carry out the threat, I will suffer no harm.’

 The mark of a bullet hole slowly appeared at the Prof’s right temple but he did not appear to be harmed at all; he carried on with his lecture with no hesitation and did not seem to be in any pain even though the stigmata on the side of his head would normally be enough to bring about a swift death.

   ‘I trust that is enough of a demonstration to convince you that we are now in a new paradigm’, said Theo as blood dripped slowly onto his collar. ‘I will now turn to the concept of infundibulumarity that I mentioned earlier and explain how …’

   The professor stopped talking and slid slowly to the floor – dead.

Michael smirked silently to himself, his idea that the intention to carry out the action didn’t have to be by the person carrying out the effect had been proven to be true. He was also aware that an undiscussed intention did not carry any fingerprints or DNA that could prove his guilt.

The coroner ruled at the inquest that the Professor’s unfortunate demise was a clear case of suicide.