WWW UBO

Cheese Genome Finally Cracked!

a +(E/2 + b) = D - Õ + Ö ª W » /y + 1210
= (7b x Õ ) = 42 £ k a = CHEESE

Cheesy helix

This apparently simple formula, conclusively proving the existence of cheese, is the result of many years of arduous research carried out by Dr Joseph Nuts at Montpellier University.

Cheese has been in common usage since the bronze age, as both a construction material and as an industrial lubricant. However, until now its existence has never been scientifically proven, although Sir Isaac Newton did claim to have determined the atomic weight of Stilton as early as 1638 - some four years before he was actually born.

This latest discovery has finally put an end to all the speculation, demonstrating that cheese has an objective reality, and is not some weird Satanist conspiracy dreamt up by Freemasons, as was previously claimed by some high-ranking members of the Catholic Church.

"University Administrators often questioned his regular requests for more alcohol and party snacks"

Speedy Cheese

Professor Sally Walters of the Chicago Institute of Advanced Bullshit has recently reinterpreted Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity in light of Cheese Theory. If E is Energy, M is Mass and C is a nice Roquefort or possibly Danish Blue, it can be seen that cheese is capable of travelling faster than the speed of light.

Boffins plan to test this hypothesis next month by placing a small piece of cheddar in the Heiselburg High Speed Particle Accelerator at Hamburg. The cheddar will be broken down into its component atoms, which will then be accelerated to their top speed and timed by a man called Billy, who is very quick with a stop watch.

This could be the first step to harnessing the phenomenal store of energy that is locked away within the cheese molecule - energy which could propel a spaceship to the furthest stars and open up a whole new area of intergalactic cookery. In fact, engineers are so confident that cheese will be the powerhouse of the future that they have already begun preliminary test runs with specially designed high velocity crackers in an underground bunker, deep in the Nevada desert.

This momentous breakthrough is seen as a welcome vindication of Dr Nuts' work, which has been heavily criticised of late.

Dr Nuts first began his research in the late seventies and has continued to devote all his time and energy to the project, interrupted only by a short spell in California State Penitentiary.

The Dr and his team of young (mostly female) researchers would often work late into the night. The sounds of giggling and merriment to be heard coming from his laboratory in the early hours of the morning only served to demonstrate Dr Nuts' determination to keep up the morale of his staff, and although the University Administrators often questioned his regular requests for more alcohol and party snacks, their faith in him has finally been borne out.

The chances of us ever truly understanding Primula are remote

Nevertheless, this discovery in no way marks the end of cheese research, as Dr Nuts himself is keen to point out.

"There is still a great deal of work to be done, so no need to go cancelling my research grant just yet!" he joked nervously as he nibbled on a Twiglet. "My formula only describes basic hard cheeses such as Cheddar or Edam. We have yet to come up with a workable theory to explain soft cheeses like Brie or Camembert. And the chances of us ever truly understanding Primula are very remote indeed - I certainly don't think it will happen in our lifetimes."

The discovery of cheese looks set to herald a new age of cheese mechanics - the Japanese have already built the world's first car designed to run on Parmesan, whilst in Europe an exciting project is already underway to build a box girder bridge over the Rhine, using a variety of mainly hard cheeses from the south of France.

A giant leap for cheese-kind

Meanwhile, NASA have recently launched a Gorgonzola into low altitude orbit. Quite why they have done this is yet to be explained, but it does at least represent a small step for satellite technology, if not a giant leap for cheese-kind.

The inevitable side effect of this increased interest in cheese has been a huge hike in its market value, with Wensleydale in particular having doubled in value since the announcement.

In the UK, security has been tightened up at the National Cheese Reserves in Luton, following a tip-off that it was being targeted by a gang of international Red Leicester thieves.

In fact, so great is the demand for cheese that Mozzarella is currently changing hands on the black market for over £400 an ounce.

'Yellow Gold'

Cheeses
of the World

But not everyone has welcomed the new cheese theory, particularly in the many small cheese-mining communities of South Wales, which depend on the so called 'Yellow Gold' for their existence. At present, cheese can only be made by brainy people using very complicated laboratory equipment, but it will not be long before a simple and cost-effective industrial cheese-making process is developed. They fear that this breakthrough will pave the way for the artificial synthesis of cheese, and strip them of their livelihoods.

Reassurance has come from Dr Nuts himself, who claims that scientists are presently only able to synthesise a low-grade industrial cheese and that demand for naturally occurring cheese forms will remain unchanged.

"The technology for cheese welding is still in its infancy."

Furthermore, he points out that the technology for cheese welding is still in its infancy and that as a result it would be impossible to artificially create some of the fantastic cheese structures that are found to occur in nature.

Currently, Dr Nuts is being hotly tipped to receive the Nobel Prize for his work, and even though the full implications of his theory are still not entirely understood, it is widely believed that his discovery is possibly the single most important scientific breakthrough since Winston Screwball discovered Marmite in 1926.