Angels can't fly: Official

Yeah and

A) these are mythical beings &

B) wasn't it scientists that told us Bumble Bees shouldn't be able to fly, despite the empirical evidence to the contrary

That's a pity

Has anyone told them yet?

Wings != flight

Who ever said that they fly by flapping (or otherwise using) their wings?... I always thought that the wings were meant to be symbolic and that they actually flew by levitation.

Not that I believe in them at all anyway, I just like to discredit published 'research'.

Someone help him

This guy needs a girlfriend/hobby/pet......something....anything to keep him occupied..............either that or he needs sectioning for thinking that this is a useful piece of research.

They'll be telling me next that ...

... there isn't a tooth fairy or santa

My God!

Professor Wotton's other current research includes "the transport and fate of faecal matter in streams and rivers", according to his UCL biog.

He's taken poo sticks a bit too literally hasn't he?

Rubbish!

This is rubbish. I don't believe in angels, and as a result, I know that imaginary beings can do what ever you want them to do. Why do scientists always assume that the physical world is the only world? As Mary Poppins once said, if you want something to happen, you just have to close your eyes and imagine it.

Erroneous assumptions

You mistakenly assume that the agents of God are limited by physics. This clearly isn't the case, them being imbued with the omnipotent power of the Lord and all, and therefore they can fly if they feel like it - unlike the flawed, limited beings down here who aren't granted an exemption from such trifling matters. Did you really think that God was bound by mere physical laws, which He Himself created out of nothingness?

Wasn't sure whether to go with "Joke Alert" or "Fail".

but for the true believers

anything is possible, when it just exists in the flutterings of the neurons between their ears.

They do love a bit of self delusion.

as for me, I'll go with the Prof :)

Putti aren't cherubim

Nice to see the Prof got it right in his title.

Article Link

Here's a link to the article.... http://www.ucl.ac.uk/opticon1826/currentissue/Articles/Article_LS_Wotton_Angels.pdf

Uh?

As somebody with no axe to grind (or cross to wave, as it were) there is an obvious flaw in the man's argument. He's approaching a scientific subject from a non-scientific direction. From a scientific point of view I'm sure there a re all sorts of reasons why angels - people with wings - can't fly. Muscles (lack of), weight, ability to not drink and fly...

But God, if you take the position that He exists, simply imbues angels and cherubs with the ability to fly. Physics just wouldn't come into it. If God had to obey the laws of physics, please explain the parting of the Red Sea, Walking on Water, Water into wine...

ROFLMAO!

where did he find an angel to examine?

artistes never saw them, they just made up the image and the church approved it. In fact, even the picture that they have for Jesus and Marry are both _made_ up by some artiest, then *approved* by the church to be used.

religion depends on faith, yet for some reason, the church saw fit to *make up* some *idols*, so that the believers can relate to religion through them. If angels do exist (I'll leave it to the reader to decided if they do), then you can bet that it looks nothing like the images drawn by the artistes. After all, I don't remember anywhere, where it says that humans where created to look like angels (they existed first, right?).

note, by idols, I am not referring to Jesus, Marry and the Angels, but the made up images. Trying to give a face to something that they never saw.

High winds required? - no problem

Where some of you will be sitting on those clouds, there should be plenty of that. Just mind the chill factor, or is that only for relative windspeed?

And if you dont think you can sit on a cloud, there's always Laputa as a fallback.

The one with Warren Worthington III in the label.

But does Wotton take into account...

...that perhaps angels have less or no weight because they're no longer corporeal or because of divine intervention? Or that fairies have access to magic the negates their physical weight?

Bees

They seem to manage alright...

I assumed they flew by magical rather than aerodynamical principles.

After all if they exist at all then there's a magic sky fairy who can make anything happen by wishing, so if he wishes for them to be able to fly then they can and that's an end of it.

IOW, this is rather missing the point. The fact that they can't fly is really just one minor facet of the fact that they don't actually *exist*.

Time on his hands

Looks like it's not just me who is looking for ways to fill their idle time at work in the run-up to Christmas.

Neither, apparently...

...can bumble-bees. (Yes, I know, I know, and the pineapple's for the first smart-alec that mentions "dynamic stall").

Loony

Does someone PAY this guy to waste his time (and their money?) on this 'research'?!!

FFS!

Yes, but wasn't it already proven donkey's ago that in order for a 6 foot man to fly with wings, he would need a chest cavity 3 times the current size of a human's. Bloody students wasting my time and most likely taxes on pointless research, telling us stuff we already know! Why don't you get a real job Mr Professor?!

To quote the late, great George Carlin..."20% of people believe in angels in the US now. What are you f**king stupid or something? Freaking angels! What it is, is all the drugs from the last 25 years, still in the bloodstreams of all the US citizens, that'll get you some freaking angels my friend!"

Shock news

Professor investigating painting of an imaginary supernatural beings determines the person doing the painting didn't understand the laws of physics - alternatively the professor fails to understand the laws of physics don't apply to the imagination!

PH - a being probably wouldn't live up to the imagination either ;-)

Good to see...

...such academic brains and resources being put to good use.

What a complete twat!

No, really, he is. A complete tit-head!

If angels DO exists <insert ancilliary argument here> who's to say that they actually have Human make-up? For a start they don't have genitals (go on, watch Dogma for proof) and Cherubs have blood constituted from Hydrogen, thus making them MUCH more boyant in air!*

Aside of that, they all have the fecking power of God to help them (for Christ's sake!). Angels and Cherubs could soar like eagles, even if they were TARDIS-shaped, if the Good Lord's whim demanded.

Professor?? Nob more like!

*I mean the hydrogen bit, not the genital bit. Although they could have helium ballast tanks where their winkles should be...

Do something useful

This UK professor needs to stop wasting time telling us things that anyone with common sense knew anyway. And he wrote a paper on this as if it needed to be proven?! Were all the serious research topics taken?

It seems to me that a lot of 'science' news lately has just been 'proving' what everyone knew anyway, such as - examples from today - whisky and red wine give a worse hangover than vodka, or women are worse at parking than men. What a worthwhile study that was!

Superman could!!

Honest! He didn't even have wings. Or, does that mean I used my childhood pocket money on DC Comics (which my teacher used to confiscate as "American Trash") was wasted? Suppose the Prof's gonna say next that Santa can't possibly fly in a reindeer-pulled sledge, and wreck the kids' Christmas.

One thing, Prof. It was said by Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, London, no less - to which my daughter at 6 weeks old was the youngest visitor (Sir Patrick Moore adored her) - that "Heavier than air flying machines are impossible*"

You don't need wings to be an angel. Personally, I think it's a part-time job, you don't even know you've got. Right place, right time. Pity the pay's crap - can't even bonk a Virgin as a perk nowadays, since the're an endangered species.

* Eight years later, the Wright brothers disproved this Wise Learned Gentleman.

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2007/09/lord-kelvin-1895-heavier-than-air.html

Research Discovers Artists Use Symbolism In Art

So, for Angels, the good prof. examines illustrations and artwork to draw is conclusion. Which is like looking at a painting of a car made by someone who had only read about one in a book, and making conclusions over what sort of propulsion it uses.

The popular image of angels as having wings is simply a device by artists and painters throughout the ages to identify them as angels, as they supposed to be able to move from heaven to Earth and hover about in the sky scaring shepherds half to death. They could fly, therefore wings, as birds fly and have wings.

Michaelangelo could hardly have painted an arrow pointing to a character and wrote "Angel" in latin or whatever. The idea of a "Halo" over a saint or angel or divine being is simply another artistic device to differentiate the characters in a scene. The "Ring Halo" is a stylised form of the halo of light used in artworks. The devil pictured as a reptillian red monster is another example of symbolism in religious art.

And yes, there are descriptions of Cherubs or Cherubin in the Bible with wings, but these are different creatures from the "common" angel. The depiction of these as plump babies as with wings is again symbolic artistic licence.

The prof. has mistaken symbolism in art for a technical drawing. And has gone on to publish a paper stating that "Creatures that don't exist cant fly." No offence to believers in angels and / or fairies, I respect your beliefs even if they might differ from mine. Was the prof. last in the jobs line and got the one nobody else wanted?