The Corrs are scientifically pretty

Science Update... The Corrs are scientifically beautiful - official The "golden ratio" 1:1.618 is very mystical. It's been known for 2,000 years as a magical number with mysterious properties. In a perfect human being, take the next joint up from, say, the tip of a finger will be 1.618 times longer. The next one up from that will be 1.618 times longer than that. And so on. All very well and good - but this same ratio is repeated all over the human body. Other joints, other parts. Even the front teeth are, ideally, 1.618 times wider than the teeth next to them. Even more amazingly, this ratio applies to the face - the relative size of the nose, lips, brow, etc. etc. It may all derive from the basic rules that determine how we develop from the womb - the same sort of rules that dictate how a plant will grow and branch in the particular shapes and pattern that each plant does. As shown in a BBC television programme recently and described by Discovery.com: "This ratio can be used to build so-called golden shapes; for instance, a golden rectangle is one whose ratio of width to height is the golden ratio. These rectangles have been considered beautiful by many artists, and they have made appearances in some of history's most renowned works of art. Using the golden ratio one can also make golden triangles, pentagons and decagons." Dr. Stephen Marquardt, a former plastic surgeon, has used golden ratio-based geometry entailing 40 different sized golden decagons to producre a mask that he claims "is the most beautiful shape a human face can have". The BBC programme showed how the mask can be applied to human faces and, uncannily, those faces that fitted the mask were perceived by people asked to view them as very beautiful. Here is the mask...

Researchers at the Lindberg Institute for Scientific Truth have been preparing to test the mask - and Dr. Marquardt's theory. Chief scientist Dr. Gilly Carlin told us about what is generally regarded in the scientific community as the ultimate test. The researchers intend to use 3 of the world's most beautiful faces (shown below). The scientific hypothesis is simple. If the faces do not fit the mask, then hundreds of years of artistic and scientific theory will be disproved, and years of painstaking research must simply be tossed into the waste paper basket. For logic tells us that any theory of beauty that does not account for the most beautiful faces of all - as judged by humans without knowledge or application of the mask - must, quite simply, be rewritten. The search for the choice of faces for the experiment was relatively easy. In fact, the attention of the researchers was drawn to the Corrs after newspaper eports that voting in an online beauty competition had been rigged by fanatical members purporting to belong to the extremist Corrs fansite Corrsonline.

The researchers investigated further - only to find that the vote riggers were in fact justified in their unconventional tactics. This competition relateds to the lead vocalist of the Corrs, Andrea. However, to their amazement, the researchers discovered that she was but one of 3 female siblings - all astonishingly beautiful. Sharon (below left) and Caroline (below right) are Andrea's sisters. They also have a brother, Jim. All 4 of them, along with the dashingly handsome Anto Drennan and Keith Duffy, make up the Corrs.

So - how successful was the experiment? Can the faces of the Corrs confirm the wisdom and science of centuries of human study and experience? Or must scientists start again in heir quest to define beauty - and to try to find some alternative to the 1:1.681 ratio?

We are happy to announce (you heard it first here) that the experiment was a spectacular success. The images below show the application of the mask to the faces of Andrea, Sharon and Caroline. As you can see - the match is perfect in each case! Scientific proof that the age-old ratio, the golden triangles, and Dr. Marquardt's mask - are correct!

The researchers are jubillant. "Our choice of the Corrs as the ultimate experimental test has been vindicated!" anounced a delighted (and relieved) Dr. Carlin. But how did the research team arrive at this choice? Why and how did they settle on the Corrs as the ultimate in beauty? Early in their hunt, investigations revealed rumours that the images of the Corrs' faces have been suppressed from the cover of their' next album ("Borrowed Heaven") - because, quite simply, they are dangerously beautiful. This was triggered by growing evidence of health and safety problems, with numerous reports of men's trousers spontaneously combusting. This has been a real problem for accident and emergency services in major cities, and special waterjet crowd-control vehicles are being brought in to attend Corrs concerts

as they tour later this year in order to dowse male fans before, during and after the concerts, to prevent major fire damage. More evidence emerged last week. After introducing the Corrs on his late night BBC programme, talk-show host Parkinson had a lucky escape when he noticed a smell of burning. Only quick intervention by fellow guest Boris Becker, who rushed to the green room and returned to empty an entire bottle of Evian spring water over Parkinson's smouldering nether regions, saved what could have been a nasty incident. Parkinson later quipped "I should have listened to Terry Wogan when he warned me". "We knew we were onto a winning choice", said Dr. Carlin, "when we heard that computers had been crashing around the world when people were downloading pictures of the Corrs without using the blurring software recommended by the Health and Safety Executive. "Pictures of the Corrs should really only be viewed after processing by appropriate software", said a spokesman. "This applies blurring so the viewer is shielded from the full impact". This is bad news for the Corrsonline site. Apparently, this site contains literally hundreds of unshielded images of the Corrs. "This is a major threat to innocent people around the world", continued the spokesman. "Men anywhere could download one of these pictures without realising, putting their trousers at severe risk. We are going to have to shut this site down for the safety of the world". Let's all just hope that Corrsonline sees sense and installs some automatic blurring software. We will all be the safer for it. http://www.angelfire.com/realm/jd0/corrsexperiment.html