The Looking Glass

STEFAN MAKHOUL At first listen, Lana Del Rey’s 7th studio album Chemtrails Over the Country Club may sound like a nostalgic ode to the '60s and to Del Rey’s own Midwest past, with a gorgeous soundscape, wispy vocals and sun-soaked visuals (in the accompanying videos), however one doesn’t need to look past the title to sense that the underlying message of the album is perhaps a little deeper and more cynical than might first be assumed. The referenced "chemtrail" conspiracy theory posits that the (ironically scenic) condensation trails left behind by aeroplanes contain chemicals used for nefarious purposes, undisclosed to the general public. In the album title, Del Rey links this with the ‘country club’, an institution of the middle and upper-middle classes, and an embodiment of Western lifestyle and the "American Dream". Self-aware nostalgia is a theme that recurs throughout the album both visually and sonically. In particular, the title track of the same name ...

IBRAHIM CHAUDRY Across the last two decades, the West has presided over the era of “liberal interventionism”, under which (predominantly British and American) troops have utilised force in the effort to attain a more humane and safer world. The decisions underpinning this interventionist doctrine have shaped modern society, being intrinsically linked to the recent surge in terrorism and increasing cynicism towards politics, without even mentioning the immense cost in blood for those involved. The purpose of this piece is not to assess each individual conflict in which Britain has been militarily involved, but to evaluate the general formula applied to the regions where the West has intervened, and consider whether it has been effective. It is also to consider whether the era of liberal interventionism has concluded, in the context of the recent withdrawal from Afghanistan, which arguably marked the final act in a five-stage tragedy: Guilt: Failure in Rwanda Confidence: Successes in Kos...

[The relative locations of the Large Hadron Collider, Future Circular Collider and the countries of Switzerland and France] DANIEL CHEEK CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is currently the largest particle accelerator in the world, designed to accelerate protons at very high speeds so that they collide and shatter into subatomic particles, allowing us to discover these. It is located on the Swiss-French border, and was commissioned in 2007, beginning operation in September 2008. The LHC's main achievement is the discovery of the subatomic particle the Higgs Boson: the particle responsible for giving matter mass. More widely, CERN provided the location  at which the World Wide Web was created by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the technology at CERN is currently being used to investigate new medicines.  How it works Firstly, protons are sent through the PS (Proton Synchrotron), then the SPS (Super Proton Synchrotron) and finally into the main Large Hadron Collider. Effectively these ar...

SUBHAN ASLAM There is a logic to history - the logic of cause and effect - and there is an ontology, namely that reality is human bodies in continuous movement. Tolstoy’s idea of history is based upon the connection between time and movement whereby if one considers them to be intrinsically linked there is a motion to history. A motion that must have a driving force, a source of power that moves history, the nature of which being a problem to define. In Tolstoy’s writings, he presents history in several dimensions, the most important being the “vertical”, the total chain of circumstance extending from the present to the past and on the basis of speculation into the future. It is the sum of human action since the beginning of time. In War and Peace, it comes down to a great mass movement of men painting over continental landscapes with their tracks and washing over it with the blood of their counterparts. War becomes the perfect analogy for history, a raw concentration of human action, ...

JAMES ELCOCK Key distribution is a fundamental part of modern communications. Without it, no secure channel between people could exist. Modern key distribution uses algorithms such as RSA and Diffie-Hellman to produce a shared hidden key between two parties to allow them to communicate, typically over a symmetrically encrypted connection using the key. The problem with these schemes is that they are not provably secure. Given enough computing power, they can be broken. This isn’t a problem with conventional computers as it would be unfeasible, however, with the birth and growth of quantum computers, soon these algorithms could be brute-forced; thus a new key distribution scheme is needed. Overview Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a key distribution methodology involving aspects of quantum mechanics. It allows for two parties to produce a shared key which can then be used for symmetric encryption. A key property of QKD is the fact that two communicating parties can easily detect an eav...