There are many age-old questions and conundrums that modern technology has unlocked for us. We know what the universe is composed of, how far away stars are, what makes a heart beat, that it takes 3,235 helium-filled balloons to lift a 100-pound person. We have discovered the secret to making cheese a liquid at room temperature and have a good idea how many doughnuts are eaten in the United States and Canada every year. Radical stuff, indeed.

However, there remain many mysteries that Homo sapiens have yet to conquer, and whilst reading the Sunday paper one Tuesday, I came across an article about the Global Living Planet Index. In a nutshell, this research has enabled scientists to calculate the decrease in wildlife populations since 1970 as a percentage. Basically, how many animals we’ve managed to kill off in that period – it’s actually 30%. And that’s when it hit me – reincarnation. No bright spark has dared tackle reincarnation empirically, and is yet to prove that enigma of whether or not reincarnation can exist.

It’s not a question to be sniffed at. Apparently one-in-four Europeans believe in it on some level, and that’s just Europe. So, if it were possible to prove that how you behave in this life is going to affect whether you reach nirvana or end up scurrying around in a sewer next time round, that would have massive implications for society, right? Everyone would be a bit nicer, right? Make the world a better place, man etc…

So, with the now admirable objective of World Peace in mind, the question was, is it possible to prove or disprove the theory of reincarnation through an examination of the figures? Can we substantiate it through methods other than hypnosis, or categorically discredit it through hard data rather than pure dismissal? Enough is enough, let’s be absolutely clear: do the numbers add up?

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Assuming there’s a one in/one out policy, for every soul that fails to make the grade and is relegated to a lower species the next time round, at the same time there must be an equal number being promoted up the leagues and into the premiership of humanity. We all know that the human population is expanding rapidly and that we’re managing to kill loads of animals ever-faster and more efficiently, so if we can calculate by how much the human population has risen in a time period and see if there is any correlation with the number of animals that have died then, voila! If the numbers match, there’s your “proof”. If they don’t, we can all carry on free from the fear that there are consequences for our actions past death (yeah, I know, unless you’re religious - I’m just going to deftly sidestep that one and refer readers to a fellow proof-seeker, Richard Dawkins, and his book, The God Delusion, for our purposes here).

Anyway, after a good ten minutes of hard thinking, the following equation evolved in the margins of the newspaper, one that would once and for all nail this sucker down, and quite possibly alter the world as we know it:

X + Y = Z

Increase in human population + increase in dead animals = Nobel Prize Proof

Although my only mathematical qualification is a wholly undeserved ‘B’ at GCSE level, it rapidly dawned on me that I was over-complicating the issue, (wrong), and a quick re-working revealed the Holy Grail:

{ X = Y } = Z

{Increase in human population = Decrease in animal population} = Reincarnation

Eureka! If these two numbers, letters, whatever they are, matched up, the human race would be onto something big. Now we just needed the figures. However, a quick call to the Zoological Society London threw up a stumbling block.

Whilst the ZSL was heavily involved in researching and producing the Global Living Planet Index, they informed me that it was not really possible to actually count all the animals in the world with any form of accuracy, let alone total how many died in a year.

Asking of a search engine how many animals there are in the world did not supply any concrete numbers either, but there are apparently about 5,460,600 species of animal in the world. However, further cursory research turned up the fact that experts guess we have only discovered about a quarter of the total number of species on the planet, let alone how many individuals might actually be alive right now. It also occurred to me that the number of animals born, not just recently deceased, also needed to be factored into the animal part of the equation - another data dead end.

In short, it’s a bloody mess. I can only hope that, one day, the professional scientists, upon whom I rely for my data, and the technology they rely upon to work with, will be able to provide some concrete figures. Until then, my ground breaking theories and equations will have to remain unacknowledged and people will continue to be not as nice as they could be. Unless it’s not actually proven true? Or people don’t actually care about a next life when they wouldn’t even remember the last? Bollocks.