Local Sport

The eXe Files

Coaching staff at ECFC have become somewhat anxious about their recent run of results, and have employed a clairvoyant scientist to advise their tactics for the weekend’s match.

Club statisticians have noticed that in the last three weeks, City won 3-0 at home against Burton Albion and subsequently followed this result with a 3-0 defeat away at Rushden & Diamonds. The pattern repeated itself again when they won their next match 2-1 at home and followed this with a 2-1 reverse away at Halifax. With a home game coming up against Morecambe on Saturday, club sceptics are nervous that a healthy home victory could result in a repeat score-line against them in the next away visit to Northwich Victoria.

In order to try and ensure this pattern is not sustained, local soothsayer and paranormal investigator Professor Eric Diora has been hired to investigate the phenomenon, which already holds more supernatural 'evidence' than any episode of Most Haunted.

In an exclusive interview, Diora stated that he will attempt to view how the outcome of Saturday's match could affect a subsequent score-line, using a mathematical model which combines space and time (often referred to as the space-time continuum), together with the affects of causality.

He confided that the concept of significant aberrations in the space-time continuum are not generally perceived in every day life because we only exist as three-dimensional beings and therefore perceive time only as a result of memory – remembering what was, as a variable interval from what is; i.e. if we had zero memory we could not detect time and consequently would exist only for the current moment. The result of this is our apparent perception of time as a linear line which only travels forward, similar to primitive humans perceiving the Earth as flat.

In the same way that gravity and evolution weren't 'invented' but discovered – they exist despite humans and not because of us. The possibility of time exploration is not something that is constructed in some kind of fictional Time Machine, but exists as a separate intangible entity.

Diora explained that with space being a three-dimensional element, adding time to form a fourth dimension, time and space become a single entity which is influenced by mass against movement and thus causes the space-time continuum to be curved and ultimately intelligible to an enlightened reader. To demonstrate, if a 'body' travels through a gravitational field -GM|r with a minus element following the astronomical convention wherein potentials are negative, at a distance r from a source mass M, then s is a "curved" space-time path length (along the shortest path in a curved geometry).

Furthermore, dividing each term by c² which converts the length-like interval ds into a time-like interval readily identifiable as the elapsed proper time for the body, dt can be clearly defined in the theory of relativity as follows:

This allows a view of space-time interval ds as a purely time-like interval dt that appears length-like through multiplying it by c and hence (!) curved space-time can exist as a concept without a curvature of space itself.

The subtle effect in the relation between coordinate time and "space-time" can be displayed in clock-slowing effects of velocity and gravitational potential, but Diora delves much deeper.

Moreover, if the components of space and time, whether quantifiable by specific distance and duration or dependently linked increasing in relation with each other by infinity +∞, then computing the angles and length along the full length of the curve resulting in a sphere effect would point towards locations whereby events can be viewed either looking back or forwards in time, depending on your current position both literally and metaphysically.

Diora amplifies the equation with regard to football matches (as well as all walks of life) by working on the principle that equal causes have equal effects and this proposition is to be understood in both directions for the continuous sphere effect to reproduce itself: equal effects have (are the results of) equal causes; also applies.

The former expression denotes an indicator of predictability - if we know the effect e₁ of c₁, and we know that another cause c₂ is equal to c₁, then we can predict that c₂ will have an effect e₂ equal to e₁. The latter (converse) expression denotes reversibility and if we know two equal effects e₂ and e₁, and we know that e₁ was caused by c₁, then we can retrodict the cause c₂ equal to c₁ of e₂ - we can reverse the process (at least informationally).

The whole expression can be reformulated as quantified variables: distinct causes have distinct effects (and vice versa).

Therefore if information could travel faster than the speed of electromagnetic radiation in a single reference frame, causality would be violated; in some other reference frames, the information would be received before it had been sent, so the 'effect' could be observed before the 'cause'.

Due to special relativity's time dilation, the ratio between an external observer's perceived time and the time perceived by an observer moving closer and closer to the speed of light approaches zero. Information propagates to and from a point from regions defined by a light cone.

The interval AB (in the diagram above) is 'time-like' that is, there is a frame of reference in which event A and event B occur at the same location in space, separated only by their occurring at different times, and if A precedes B in that frame then A precedes B in all frames: there is no frame of reference in which event A and event B occur simultaneously. Thus, it is hypothetically possible for matter (or information) to travel from A to B, so there can be a causal relationship (with A the 'cause' and B the 'effect').

Depending on the physical position or speed travelling correlated with the distance from which events are occurring then hypothetically, past or future events from an exact era could be perceived from the hypersurface of the present. In the event of massive distances between the 'present' and coned light, the viewer may not even be conscious of any time difference between themselves and the events taking place elsewhere, e.g. stars which have burnt out millions of miles away are still visible from Earth. However, the curve of the continuum is not necessarily consistent.

Many space-time continua have physical interpretations such as a compact space-time which has closed, time-like curves, which violate what might be logical ideas of causality (past events consequently affect future ones or vice versa). Of course, this supposes a significant degree of pre-determinism which would suggest the score of every future football match and indeed every event that ever has or ever will occur, at least in our universe, will follow a specific path to the point whereby there exists parallel universes with every possible event and circumstance exactly the same up to a single decision. The different critical choices that are chosen consequently cause the reality in that universe to travel in different directions as a direct result.

For the purposes of this equation they need to be analysed carefully as they can produce equivocal results. In this case, the farthest that can be observed is the distance that light has been able to travel during the 14 billion years since the big bang expansion began, and the most distant visible objects are now about 4 x 1026 metres away which only defines our observable universe. The parallel universes of our 'other selves' are spheres of the same size centred on their planets and therefore each universe is merely a small part of a larger "multiverse" – which brings into practice topology concerned with order, contiguity, and relative position, rather than actual linear dimensions.

Therefore, if a topological consideration is included whereby the relationships such as adjacency and connectivity are analysed to adjust compactness, modification and relativity, every intentional score-line:
of home matches X influence subsequent matches in a finite subset (taking space and/or time as being finite) to an extent, thus producing the ultimate equation:

The Professor finally concluded his equation with an unholy dosage of LSD and a chuckle which coincided with a flash of lightening.