What Theoretical Physicists Don't Tell You

    "If you see the chemistry department running away from something then you should try to keep up.  If you see the theoretical physics department running away from something, there's probably not much point."
~Anon

 Clearly, physicists are evil. Their closely guarded knowledge is kept away from the general public and shrouded in secrecy, lest we mere mortals realise how little they actually know, or find out what they're up to.  So, for the first time, I expose their web of hidden knowledge.

They Use A Secret Language

Physics is full of properties with cosy, familiar sounding names. Particles have properties like colour, flavour and spin, even "energy", despite nobody observing so much as an aura around a particle.  None of these things are related to what these words actually mean in everyday life. They can't have a colour, because we can't even see them (and they're far smaller than the visible wavelength of light anyway). They don't have a flavour, because you don't see quark flavoured ice-cream.  OK, there is a cheese called quark, but that's just pedantry.  There's nothing grave about gravity, relativity has nothing to do with your family tree and the word "quantum" can be applied to anything you want to sound impressive.  It's all one big cover up for something or other.

"Maths, Or It Didn't Happen"

To make their tinkering with language even more obscure, and in an attempt to exclude the social science department and those pesky "ethics committees", physicists shroud their most simple theories in complicated mathematics, meaning anyone who wants to understand it has to do the equivalent of a university maths degree!  That's a whole degree in an entirely different subject!  Do vets have to do a law degree? Do geologists need to learn marketing? Again, it's an ugly big conspiracy designed to confuse.

Take, for example, the equation that helped kick-start quantum theory:

E = hf

E is energy, and f is frequency.  When Max Planck was investigating the relationship between them he found they weren't equal, so he just made up a number, called it h, and stuck it in there to fudge the equation.  And for that he gets a so called "constant" named after him.

They're Usually Wrong

Most physics is wrong! It's a dirty little secret they don't let on to.  Take, for example, the first physicist, Sir Isaac Newton. His "triumphant" theory of gravity is wrong!  Entirely wrong! It turns out it only works when you're not moving.  Physicists will bleat on about it being the limit of relativity as the field and velocities tend to zero, but what they mean is it only works perfectly in situations where there's no gravity and nothing moves, which is pretty useless for a theory of gravity.

Basically, all physics prior to relativity and quantum theory, which is everything prior to about 1920, is wrong (they'll claim it's an "accurate estimate" or "limit condition", but it's still wrong).  That's 1,920 wasted years!

Physicists also react joyfully when a long established theory is shown to be wrong, and happily replace it with yet another fudged equation and made-up words.  Admitting you're wrong is no way to gain credibility, even if the evidence says you are wrong.  Imagine if politics worked like this - it would be chaos.

They Invented Nuclear Bombs

Yes, possibly the most damning evidence of all.  Physicists from all over the world bear direct responsibility for whatever politicians do with nuclear weapons.  The politicians, clearly, are blameless - they don't know enough of the complicated maths stuff to understand exactly what a nuclear bomb will do.

Many of the greatest names in physics, Oppenheimer, Feynman and many others, conspired during the Second World War to create a weapon that could destroy the world.  The fact that the German military were trying to make one of their own is no excuse, everybody knows two wrongs don't make a right, and the autobiographies and interviews with all of the participants shows they all knew what they were building and all understood just how horrific the weapon would be.  Oppenheimer himself quoted the Bhagavad Gita after seeing the first test - "Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds."  If that's not gloating I don't know what is.  I'm pretty sure he added "Mwahahaha!" after he said it.

Ignoring the weapons aspect, this research was also instrumental in developing nuclear power (evil), furthering theoretical physics (evil) and radiotherapy treatments for cancer (evil).

They shouldn't have done it, that's blatantly clear. After all, there's a reasonable chance that we'd have beaten the Nazis before they developed their own.

Further Reading:

[1] xkcd 669, "Physics professors don't like working in frictionless vacuums after all, they're such liars."

[2] Abstruse Goose 406, "Bastard theoretical physicists, how do you sleep at night?"

 

Non-Quantum, Feline Based Encryption Protocol

Abstract 

Whilst the common house cat, Felis silvestris catus, has a long standing association with quantum superpositions and the associated applications in cryptography, it has so far failed to substantially add to the development of the field, a situation known as the Wigner's Cat Paradox.[citation-needed]
  The author demonstrates a purely classical encryption method which allows a message to be encoded in such a way as to be not only encrypted, but unreadable by any party for a period of days.

Method

Alice and Bob wish to share a message without a third party, Eve, being able to read it should she intercept it.  These names are traditional in cryptography (A, B and Evesdropper), and this technique requires a further person, Henry.  Henry is, in this case, a rather smart stripey black and gold cat.

Alice is a very clever biologist, and has carefully encoded the data she wishes to send into the DNA that codes for the pattern of stripes in Henry's back.  This data may, clearly, be encrypted itself, the stripes simply code the ones and zeroes.  Increased per-packet data density may be gained if technology permits defining hair colour at a follicular level, with a theoretical maximum in the tens of Megabits per Henry.

I'm sure the geneticists are all over this already, they know what they're doing.

When Alice has encoded her message into Henry she encrypts it by removing Henry's fur in a humane and loving manner.  Not shaving, cats really don't like that. Alice is kind and uses a special catnip scented depilatory cream that he loves.  Oh stop complaining, Schroedinger may or may not have killed his cat.

Now Alice sends Henry to Bob.  Henry can travel how he wants, either by having a mad-cap solo cross country adventure, a dark and moody road-trip with a friend or by luxury yacht.  Up to him.  See?  Schroedinger put his in a box, but Henry gets to have adventures.

Henry's fur will take around a week before any pattern becomes visible, even on close inspection.  For this period the message will not be readable by sight, although it could be recovered from a sample of Henry's DNA.  Current DNA sequencing and searching is not currently able to decode binary information from the stripes on a cat.[please-tell-me-I'm-wrong]

Upon his fur regrowing Henry gets a huge bag of catnip, a medal, and the run of Balmoral.

Questions From Friends (Part 2) - Radiation & Radioactivity

Another slightly-cheaty post from me, unashamedly based on an email conversation with a friend who writes Fan-Fiction.  If you're unfamiliar with the genre, it's generally an extension of an established fictional world, for example Harry Potter or Clarke's Space Odyssey series - anything you want in fact, it's a fan-driven and fan-written culture that has sprung up because people love the characters and setting, and want to explore it further.  Sadly, lawyers love getting involved, even when (as is normal) it's all done on an amateur basis and for free, which is why you're not getting a link to the final fictional result of this discussion.

I received an email containing the following request:

[Let's imagine] a new processing chip has flooded the market...it's actually
radioactive, but a thin coating of plastic has disguised this fact.
(Yeah yeah, point is, it will leak eventually.)

However, by a series of improbable coincidences, the radioactivity is
discovered a week after launch by a scientific gentleman, actually
scanning for evidence of radioactivity from a difference source.

What, exactly, does the scan pick up? I mean, I know it picks up
radioactivity - like a Geiger counter - but if I want to refer to that
radioactivity in scientific muttering, what do I say? Unstable
isotopes? Fission activity? Help!! Is there useful vocabulary I can
drop in?

Cool.  I wish all fiction authors would put so much thought into their technowaffle, as it's officially called.  I'll point out that, much as I love it, Star Trek in all its forms is one of the worst perpetrators of Bad Technowaffle.  (Red Dwarf, on the other hand, is one of the best.)

So, my reply, which was written as an informal email if you spot any glaring errors in style or content:

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[General personal salutations deleted]
 There are three basic types of radiation, alpha, beta and gamma.  All are produced by the decay of atomic nuclei, according to some very beautiful quantum mechanical magic which I'd love to go into but will omit for brevity (give me a shout if it's useful).  Particular nuclei (eg Carbon 14 or Uranium 235) omit a particular type or types of radiation when they break up (decay) and produce "daughter products" which are themselves radioactive, so they decay producing their own particular type or types and so on, until you have stable isotopes left (or just ones with a very long half-life).

An isotope is simply an atomic nucleus with a particular number of neutrons.  Carbon, for example, is defined as any nucleus with six protons, and the normal stable form has another six neutrons, hence Carbon 12. Carbon 14 has eight neutrons, and according to quantum wibbly stuff is more unstable and likely to decay.

Alpha radiation is simply a Helium 4 nucleus, the most common low-mass "chip off an atom" that is produced.  It's by far the biggest and heaviest lump that's ejected when a nucleus decays, and it is generally fired off at very, very high speed.  It can do a hell of a lot of damage to entire cells when it smashed into them, so it's very dangerous in the body.  However, because it's so big it's fairly easy to stop.  A sheet of paper, or indeed a thin film of plastic/resin, will stop it in its tracks.  This is what all the decontamination showers are about, washing off the contamination which produces the alpha before you can accidentally ingest or inhale it, it's relatively harmless on the dead outer skin layers (you can safely hold a piece of refined uranium in your hand), but when the source gets into the living cells inside the body it really kicks off.

Beta radiation is a high speed electron. It's not an electron that existed in the atoms in the first place though, it's made out of the leftover energy from an atom breaking up, and some of that leftover energy also gives it a hefty kick of kinetic energy.  Beta is the more benign of the three in some ways - it can be stopped by a thin piece of metal, an inch or so of wood, that kind of thing.  Beta will mess with atoms when it hits them, so it can cause mutations and hence cancers, and as it can penetrate a few millimetres of flesh you don't want to have any long term exposure - however, that's never stopped us worrying about cathode TV screens - cathode literally means "spits out electrons at high speed" - they're just electrically created beta radiation, and if you leave a Sellafield radiation badge sellotaped to a TV screen overnight and leave it playing it will detect enough radiation to get you removed from your job while they investigate! (My dad did it with his old badge when he left - you'd probably face a real risk of cancer if you did it for a month solid. As long as you're an inch or so from the screen you're fine for centuries.)

Gamma is the odd one out - it's not even matter, it's just a photon of light.  Just like radio, infra red, light, UV and so on, but with particularly high energy (in other words, a very short wavelength).  Different isotopes produce gamma with different energies, it's a very direct E=mc^2 demonstration: The energy (and therefore wavelength) depends directly on the amount of mass the nucleus loses when it splits, and that depends on which isotope it is - I'm getting quantum again...
Gamma can penetrate anything up to a few inches of lead, it's insidious, nasty stuff that's very difficult to escape.  It carries so much energy that it can kick electrons out of atoms, which changes their chemistry and really screws with the body's functions.  If you want to kill a lot of people in a nasty way with very little defence against it then gamma rays are what you want.  (Although SF would suggest at this point you would face an army of very big, very muscular and exceedingly pissed off green people...)

(There is a fourth kind, high energy neutrons as released in neutron bombs, but I've only just realised this and won't comment until I've read up on it and found it was first published in the 1920s!)

So...relevance to Silicon chips with a coating of plastic.  If your geiger counter picks up anything significant it won't be alpha.  You also need something which has a long enough half life to be of danger to the consumer, and most of the unstable Silicon isotopes decay in milliseconds, so they're out.  What is a good candidate, however, is Silicon 32.  It has a half life of 153 years, so it's going to be "live" for several human lifetimes.  It decays by beta, so you've got something which would be hindered by a plastic layer, but could be a danger with a little poetic license (eg silicon carrying current, ie a chip, boosts the beta).  Alternatively, people could be exposed in another way, like exploding chips (would only need to be a puff of Magic Blue Smoke) or, as Gerry suggests, "people licking them - there's nothing geeks like more than fission chips" - he says you're free to pinch that if you aren't already using it as the title)

First article on Si32 that popped out was one on geochronology - it's produced by cosmic ray impacts in the atmosphere. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187110140900017X

*************************

So there you go.  That's how much thought and research goes into what ended up being about 1% of the storyline of an amateur piece of fiction done purely for fun.  There are certain science fiction books that you can pay actual money for which don't do the job half so well.

The Naming Of Timelords

With apologies to T.S. Eliot.

The Naming of Timelords is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of Moffat's odd games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a Timelord must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First there's the name Gallifreyans use daily,
Such as Luton, Graffito, Salpash or James,
Such as Chovor or Jobiska, Rynde or Bill Bailey--
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Doctor, The Master, The Rani, Romana--
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a Timelord needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his time reputation,
Or control his TARDIS, or cherish bow ties?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Rassilon, Ao, or Pandak The First,
Such as Yassinbur, or else Apeiron-
Names that never belong to more than one Timelord.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover--
But THE TIMELORD HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a Timelord in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.


With thanks to the Gallifreyan Conlang Project for the names.  All real, apart from James. And Bill Bailey's so obviously a Timelord I'm leaving him in.  Seriously, check T.S. Eliot's original, he's snuck himself in there. 

The Discrepancy

Ladies, gents, bots, potentially sentient networks, a guest post.

This is brought to you by Richard Tee (@RichardTheGeek) after a Twitter discussion on the subject of Dark Matter and Dark Energy and whether or not they're a whole big ugly cheating fudge.  The post below is Richard's take on the matter, the long rambling bit of fiction in the menu on the right entitled "The Discrepancy" is my attempt, I thought I'd give "making it all up" a go seeing as a clear and coherent argument was in such good (single malt loving) hands.

****************************

The internet. For a computer scientist with a hankering for physics, the internet can be a fun (and scary place).
The other day, I was involved in a very good Twitter Chat with two online friends, the subject of which was the concept of dark matter and dark energy.
As one of my personal heroes Dr. Richard Feynman once said “It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.” – well Dr. Feynman I couldn’t agree more – sadly many people in modern cosmology think otherwise.

Why do you ask? Simple – we are wrong.

Before you hang me out to dry, kindly let me explain.

In the study of the universe, we have come across a slight problem – it seems that given our current equations and theories, we cannot account for roughly 96% of the matter that we think SHOULD be in the universe. In other words, the more we find out, the more it seems we don’t know … all the visible matter in the universe only adds up to 4% or so of the total amount of matter that should be out there!

If you haven’t guessed this is a problem.

So, what was the solution to this problem? Simple: Say that the remaining 96% of the “stuff” out there is simply, “dark” and thus not visible nor detectable by conventional means.

Simple right? … not quite.

A recent study from the AMS (Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer) was searching for positrons – which it found … that wasn’t the problem, the problem was that an expected results showing a “drop off” for dark matter was not present. Furthermore, given the nature of how we think dark matter behaves, we would expect it to be non-isotropic, meaning concentrated towards the direction of the galactic center. This was not the case: In fact it was nice and uniform.
So what does this mean? Nothing really. That in itself is a bad thing for the dark matter/energy group.
Of course, I am not saying that dark matter and dark energy doesn’t exist, but having it represent 90+% of the universe is a bit … far fetched.
Why am I so against dark matter/dark energy as the solution to our cosmological problems? It seems that it is just bad science.
Basically, as Feynman said, if the theory APPEARS correct, it can be assumed as long as the data supports it – at which point we need to re-write our theory to support the new data. This doesn’t seem to be the case of dark matter/energy. The observations seem to contradict our theory, and thus to “fix” the theory we happen to mention that it only accounts for 4% of what we can see.

The analogy I can make is spending. It is like a teenager saying they manage all their money very well … out of every $100 they keenly save $4, and the other $96 is unaccounted for… Would you let them manage your finances?

We may find out that one day, dark matter and dark energy are in fact present in very high quantities in our universe. However my gripe is that the fact that few people seem to be demanding a simpler and less exotic solution to the problem.
Ladies and Gentlemen, it is time to erase the blackboard and start from scratch on this one.

@RichardTheGeek

Questions From Friends (Part 1): Is Our Universe A Simulation?

I've had a couple of interesting geek-type questions from friends recently, and as Twitter is a bit too limited for long explanations this is probably the place to explore them.

The first question is from Twitter's @LoisAnnounces, an expert on both cultural geography and asking awkward philosophical cosmology questions:

@_thegeoff So lattice quantum chromodynamics- space as 4D? But does this prove we're living in computer gen. universe?arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847
— Lois Jefferys Jones(@LoisAnnounces) April 25, 2013

(For those not familiar with the link, arXiv is a "pre-print server" where draft versions of physics papers are published, allowing free access to anybody who wants it - a very good system which other subjects are starting to follow.)

The paper in question, "Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation" by Silas R. Beane, Zohreh Davoudi and Martin J. Savage (BDS) (direct link to the PDF) builds on the ideas presented in a famous paper published by Nick Bostrom of Oxford University, entitled "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?".

The central crux of Bostrom's argument is that if Moore's Law continues then at some point in the future we'll have enough power to simulate, to the last particle, entire chunks of the universe, from whole molecules (now/near future) to biological cells, multicellular organisms and even, in the distant future, whole cities, planets, galaxies or, at the limit, a whole universe.  He then goes on to ask what the odds are that we're living in the "one original universe" or one of the countless simulations that an advanced civilization could create - the implication being that the odds are in favour of some variant on a "Matrix" scenario - we're all probably living in a computer simulation of some description.

While this makes for a very nice bit of philosophical theorising, it's not actually definitive in any way - what's needed is some sort of test before we all start learning Kung Fu, wearing lots of black leather and attempting to escape from our digital world.  This possibility of performing such a test is the main theme of the BDS paper (which, I should point out, is well beyond my limits in many ways!)


A great many "simulations" exist in physics - in fact, it could be argued that a good definition of physics is "the search for the simplest possible way to make a universe that matches ours".  From Newtonian mechanics to relativity, string theory and dark matter, all physics really is is a series of computer programs which seem to accurately mirror the universe around us (precisely why we can develop programs like this is a different, and equally fascinating question), and the specific "program" in the BDS paper is something called lattice quantum chromodynamics (lQCD), which thankfully is easier to explain than it is to actually do!

There is no Theory Of Everything at the moment (well, string theory might be, but nobody knows yet), so physicists tend to work on their own little subsets of reality in the hope that everything can be joined up later.  lQCD is a technique that deals solely with quarks, the particles which make up most matter, but doesn't include electrons (in other words there's no chemistry in this program) and also doesn't handle time, gravity or light in any meaningful way, so it's not a complete simulation.  The basic technique is to create a lattice, a grid of points in space, and give it a starting position with all the quarks in various positions, then run the simulation to find out what happens.

It's a remarkable powerful technique, and seems to match reality extraordinarily well.  It also has another interesting feature, which is that it's very efficient - in fact, it may be the most efficient way to simulate this small chunk of reality, and this is where it gets interesting.

The universe tends to do things as efficiently as possible - for example, there aren't, as far as anyone can tell, two different systems to make gravity work and to handle the conservation of angular momentum, one necessarily implies the other, it's all tied up in the one theory.  Space and time are another example - once thought to be two entirely separate entities, Einstein's work a hundred years ago led to the realisation that they were two sides of the same coin.  So, the BDS paper asks, could the universe actually be running on lQCD?

They've taken a simple, effective form of lQCD and assumed the universe plays by exactly these rules - and then they've done the classical science thing of asking what that universe would look like if this was the case.  Obviously, yes, it will be very similar to ours, that was the whole point of developing lQCD in the first place, but this is never a guarantee - Newton's law of gravity stood for several hundred years before we found a mismatch between it and reality.

The main prediction they find is related to the "GZK cutoff", a complicated way of saying there should be a maximum energy for any cosmic ray particle hitting the Earth.  This is something that is predicted by many theories, and the big test for many of them is exactly where this cutoff applies - something which is still unclear.

The nice thing about the BDS paper is that they're able to relate the GZK cutoff to the actual spacing of the lattice in lQCD - if our universe does run on lQCD then we can potentially discover this, and even find out some of the settings under universe -> file -> preferences.

So, returning to the original question, are we living in a simulation?

We're back to philosophy here - specifically the identity of indiscernibles. Let's assume that the universe does actually use lQCD - this doesn't actually imply a simulation scenario.  Yes, it could be a simulation, but it could equally well just be "the way things are".  Mathematical models crop up all over the place; plants grow in fractal structures, cicadas mate on a prime-number based pattern of years and the Golden Ratio seems to be behind many features in the natural world, but this doesn't mean there's some sort of Grand Simulator furiously tapping away on a keyboard.

If the universe obeys a "program" such as lQCD it doesn't have to mean there was a programmer, just as the existence of Pi doesn't imply the physical existence of a mathematically perfect circle (which, ironically, is impossible under lQCD).

Long story short? I can't put it any better than the great Randall Munroe, of xkcd.com (yet again).

StarKites Taina Review (12m)

For those who don't know, I'm a bit of a kite fanatic.  Having started on sport kites (the little hang-glider shaped things) I moved onto powerkites, then kite landboarding and have been a keen kitesurfer for many years - to the extent that I moved a few hundred miles partly based on kitesurfing opportunities (but mostly to keep the girlfriend happy, honest!)

Recently I was offered the chance to review a new brand to the UK, a company called StarKites.  To be honest, I was a little skeptical to start with, there's a lot of new entries to the kite market each year, and most of them are cheaply manufactured close-copies of the big and established names.  Not the case with StarKites however, I was pleasantly surprised though....full review follows:

StarKites Taina 12m Review

Background

I was sent a Taina 12m and Nex bar and lines which had seen around a years use as demo kit.  I have not received any incentive or gift in exchange for this review other than a loan of the kite for a couple of weeks.  What follows is my honest opinion of the kite without any bias towards or against the manufacturer or distributor - I had never flown any StarKites product before.

I weigh 10st / 65kg and I'm 5'8" / 1.75m tall.  I started kitesurfing with a Flexifoil Strike (C-kite), spent several years on a Peter Lynn Venom and for the last year and a half I've been flying Flexifoil Ions, Mk II and III.  I normally ride in fairly choppy conditions with anything up to head-high waves when there's good swell.  I'm mostly into freeride (back/front loops, carving transitions, jumps with grabs and rotations) and some wave riding which I'm trying to improve at!  I don't really go for wakestyle tricks.

Out Of The Bag

The bag itself is essentially a 50 litre rucksack with a doubled-over liner to allow it to expand and store the kite with the struts still inflated if necessary.  There's a separate outsite pocket for bar and lines, and a second zipped entry at the bottom of the bag which can be used for storing a wetsuit, towel etc.  Reasonably heavy duty cordura and plenty of zips and straps to keep things in place.  No metal components at all, so you're not going to end up with rusted zips.  It's red and black, if that kind of thing bothers you.

First impressions of the build quality on the kite are good.  The stitching is tidy, with white thread on black fabric making any problems or unravelling easy to spot.  Reinforcement patches are used in all of the high-stress areas and there is a lightweight plastic "bumper" on the center of the leading edge to give a little extra protection during ground handling.  Cordura is used on the tips of the struts to protect against wear.  All in all it's not a heavyweight, "indestructable" build, but it's perfectly adequate and results in a nice lightweight kite that should stand up well to everyday use. 

There's a simple and fairly long bridle for the main lines with a pulley on each - both pulleys were already showing signs of getting jammed with sand and salt and the pulley wheels showed wear from the line running over them rather than turning.  This will always be a problem with using pulleys on the beach, but did not seem to affect the flying characteristics in any way, from the looks of it the pulleys will "fail" pretty quickly without regular maintenance, but even then they should continue to function without any problems.

The rear lines attach to one of three different settings on the wingtip allowing you to tweak turning speed and bar pressure, with the middle setting being the ideal all-round setting as far as I'm concerned.

The Look

I'm not all that bothered about graphics and colours, as long as the kite is bright enough to make out against the sky or sea and easy for a search and rescue team to spot!  This particular model comes in brown and yellow with black leading edge and struts and some white detailing - works fine for everyday use, but in an emergency I'd like some reflective panels built into the wingtips.  The girlfriend is more into visual styling, so I'll leave the aesthetic comments to her:  "It's not brown, it's more of a bronze/burgundy.  70s retro, I like it, and the big star logo".  So there you go.

There was a tiny amount of colour bleeding visible on the white panels, but nothing to bother about unless you're planning to enter your kite into the equivalent of a classic car show.  If you want a pretty kite to show off on the wall then buy a Rok, this is for kitesurfing and it's going to get wet and stuffed in a bag at some point!

Bar & Lines

The bar and lines are generally very simple - four generic colour-coded lines (red=left, white=right) which have the power/rear line attachments reversed so you can't get them the wrong way around.  The depower strap is the simplest possible pull-pull strap arrangement and works well.  The line leaders are polyurethene coated to protect against wear - they do, however, make winding/unwinding the lines a little awkward and aren't really necessary.  The bar ends are nicely rounded, enough to safely wrap the lines without them falling off but not enough that it's likely to catch on a harness mid-kiteloop!  The bar itself seems to be carbon with a one-piece aluminium insert in the center (although it's difficult to tell without stripping the coating off!) and the hole in the middle is nicely machined, it's not going to go eating your depower line.  Most components seem to be very bog standard generic items making replacement and/or repair cheap and very easy.

Safety Systems

The primary safety is a departure from the simplicity of this kite.  It's a large plastic and metal construction with a vaguely cone shaped release - unfortunately the cone points away from you, so cold, wet and tired hands tend to slip on it, you need a reasonable grip to activate it in a hurry.  The metal components may well suffer in time - the setup I was using was already showing patches of rust in places, and the plastic has become worn leaving ragged edges where the safety line runs through.  It works, but personally I'd rather go with a simpler pin-and-loop or Flexifoil style top-hat arrangement. 
  Don't get me wrong, it works well enough, but it's a departure from the "Keep It Simple" ethos of the rest of the setup, and an unnecessary one at that.  I can't help but wonder if it's related to various international standards which require a maximum release force of X under a total pull of Y, something which has resulted in companies producing overly complicated safety systems in the past.
  Curiously, the primary safety also has "Total Weight: 35kg-90kg" embossed on it - this is confusing.  In climbing and rope access it's common to quote a safe working load and/or maximum load on equipment (something that could be useful in kitesports), but this is clearly something different.  I'm assuming it's the weight of the rider, and that it's actually rated at forces far higher than 931 Newtons (95kg) because otherwise it would have popped every time I jumped with it.  Nice try, but confusing and potentially misleading.
  The primary releases the kite onto a single front line allowing the kite to flag out and pretty much giving a 100% kill on the power - the kite inverts and falls to the ground. 
  The secondary safety is the pin-tucked-into-a-tube type - it works well enough and let's face it, it's rare to use this anyway.  The leash is fairly standard shock cord with a couple of lightweight stainless steel clips which look like they'll fail under a load of 100kg or so, which is a good thing.

In Flight

The first thing you notice is that this is a pure-bred bow kite, as far removed from a C-kite or hybrid as you can get.  If you try to fly the Taina like a C-kite you'll be very disappointed, the power generation through the window and ability to depower it by driving it to the edge are very minimal, and completely swamped by the depower range on the bar, which has so much throw it's silly.  I'd estimate that the power delivery is 70% on the bar and 30% from the kite's speed through the window, the complete reverse of a C-kite.  You don't get the explosive power and never-ending grunt, but what you do get is a kite that is very, very easy to fly in a wide range of conditions.

Close to a stall this kite still produces a lot of power, meaning the upwind performance in nasty choppy conditions is very good - if you've spent much time on a landboard you'll be familiar with getting upwind by trundling along fairly slowly, well you can do the same on the water with the Taina.  It does love a bit of apparent wind, but you don't have to build up some speed to get upwind - you can if you want, and it's still the preferred method, but you can pootle upwind while avoiding the worst of the chop if you need to.

When properly lit up the Taina performs very nicely indeed.  The power builds comfortably and the depower range means you rarely feel overpowered, although this is a double edged sword for relatively short people like myself - to fully depower the kite you've got to reach forward so far you end up in poo-stance rather than leaning back and edging against it, which isn't the ideal situation - I'd shorten the depower line and sacrifice some of the depower for a little ergonomics if this was my main kite.  People with longer arms will love it though.

I never had the chance to try the kite in flat water, but I suspect it's an absolute beast when lit up - upwind performance at speed should be very good, and low wind performance should be at least respectable - other reviews suggest it's far better.

Jumping

Smooth, easy and very forgiving.  It's not a wrench into the air as you get with some kites, just a nice firm hoist upwards with lots of float.  Again, you don't need to really wang the kite back hard, just give it a reasonably purposeful turn towards the zenith and then pull the bar in and up you go.  The quick turning speed means you don't have to crank the bar over to redirect the kite, just keep the bar pulled in with your leading hand and that's enough to bring the kite around.  I've not tried a kiteloop with it, but I'd imagine it's a fairly pleasant experience.

Stability

I managed to Hindenburg the Taina once, after messing up a jump and landing well downwind of the kite.  In relatively normal situations overflying simply results in the kite sitting back a little and drifting back into the power zone without any drama - great for newbies and wave riders who won't have to worry about catching up with the kite.

It eats gusts for breakfast - you certainly know about them through the bar feedback, but there's rarely enough of the gust transmited through the main lines to put you off balance, and again, the long throw and depower range come into their own.  My first session with the Taina was in fairly gusty conditions (~18mph gusting to the high 20s, maybe touching 30) and I never even adjusted the depower strap after I was up and moving on the first run.  Landboarders flying inland will appreciate this if they like flying LEIs.
 
 

Relaunch

I tried testing the relaunch twice, once on purpose once after wiping out. Both times the kite relaunched itself before I really had to try - very easy.

Marks out of 10

Build quality - 8
Launching - 7
Stability - 9
Safety - 5
Power - 8
Jumping - 9
Waves - 8
Freeride - 8
Freestyle - 6
Wakestyle - 4
Ease of use - 8
Newbies - 9

Overall - a solid 8.5 out of 10, a really nice kite for somebody who wants to do a bit of everything, whether on water, land or snow.  It's not the highest performance kite I've ever flown, but kites designed for pure speed, power or whatever are invariably pigs to fly.  This is aimed at the average rider (which, statistically, most of us are) and does a very good job of it.