Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
Quantum agriculture?
INCREDULITY followed Ruby Hills鈥檚 alert on a course in New South Wales. The organisers that 鈥淒r Patrick MacManaway鈥� will be conducting a Quantum Leap Level 1 workshop at Dubbo.鈥�
Regular readers will know that Feedback considers occurrence of the word 鈥渜uantum鈥� outside actual physics an indicator of fruitloopery: we were not disappointed. The twist is new: 鈥淢acManaway has produced some of the first scientific evidence of the effects of Subtle Energy in agriculture with yield increases in potatoes of 4%, 16%, 18%, 42% and 47% on five different varieties.鈥�
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How would that work, then? 鈥淪ubtle Energy is based,鈥� they say, 鈥渙n frequencies which cannot be measured by conventional instrumentation but which can affect organisms at a cellular level.鈥�
We note that New South Wales in April 2012. So yields might well go up, and for a reason that is entirely measurable.
While appreciating the angst of drought-stricken farmers, Feedback thinks the subtle energy idea is a bit like curing the common cold: anything that distracts you long enough will appear to work. And the cost of the course was certainly distracting: $1639 for a day, with a year鈥檚 鈥渞emote maintenance and support鈥� available for $2000.
Does the caption that Frank Fahy saw in The Guardian newspaper on 4 November 鈥� 鈥淪olar eclipse lights up Africa鈥� 鈥� imply the discovery of anti-light, he wants to know
Lateness in the abstract
RECEIVING an email entitled 鈥� Abstract Deadline Approaching鈥�, Graeme Faris was initially 鈥渘ot quite sure what to do鈥�. Fret about lateness in an abstract sense, possibly? Recall the dictum attributed to writer Douglas Adams: 鈥淚 love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by鈥�? Fortunately, reading on, a more concrete sense of 鈥渁bstract鈥� came to mind, and the air was thick with the sound of papers being summarised.
More midnight sun confusion
FEEDBACK noted that the UK government鈥檚 scheme for promoting solar electricity generation 鈥� the Feed-in Tariff 鈥� was 鈥渃omplicated鈥� (23 November). More than a dozen readers immediately wrote to let us know that we were even more confused than we thought we were.
We were puzzled over how a 鈥溾�� system that can store up to 9 kilowatt-hours of energy for use at night could pay for itself, when it would reduce the amount of electricity that solar panels could export to the grid during the day.
In what Guy Cox describes as 鈥溾�� of prices set by , we failed to notice that the most important bit of the tariff is not what you feed into the grid 鈥� but a payment for every kilowatt-hour of solar electricity you produce.
Our estimate of the time to get your investment back as 鈥渘ot in your lifetime鈥� may thus have been a tad harsh 鈥� for younger readers. Angela Cotton estimates 鈥�55 years, ignoring changes in electricity price and consumption鈥�. Andy Barton gets 鈥渁round 25 years at the quoted cost of 拢5500, if the batteries last鈥�.
John Thompson notes: 鈥淚f the UK renewables market had been designed and managed by engineers or scientists such devices would not make sense, but it鈥檚 been developed by accountants and politicians.鈥�
Apologies for spreading our confusion, or theirs.
Full solar energy
MEANWHILE, Gerald Legg read the promise of the Midnight Sun system discussed above to power your home 鈥�24 hrs a day with green energy generated by your solar system鈥� quite differently. 鈥淲ith the sun鈥檚 output alone being approximately 3.86 x 1026 watts,鈥� he observes, 鈥渢his 鈥榬evolutionary product鈥� would certainly do more than power one鈥檚 home.鈥�
Expanding confusion
SEVERAL readers wrote questioning our discussion of how the galaxy z8_GND_5296 could have formed 700 million years after the origin of the universe 13.8 billion years ago, and yet be 30 billion light years away (9 November).
We went back to Steven Finkelstein, a co-discoverer of that galaxy. He confirms: 鈥淥ur two galaxies are moving apart from each other at faster than the speed of light. But Einstein would be OK with this, because the galaxies are not travelling through space that fast; rather, new space is being created between them, pushing them apart.鈥�
Which reminds us of something鈥� (Readers well-versed in the lore of quantum physics may jump directly to the next item, without passing through the intervening words.) A decent maxim when dealing with the largest things, as well as the smallest, is that attributed to Danish physicist Niels Bohr, responding to colleague Wolfgang Pauli: 鈥淲e are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.鈥�
Stick to the rulers!
FINALLY, pedestrians, according to the sign that Hugh Carter photographed at a construction site in Toronto, 鈥渕ust adhere to traffic personnel鈥�.
Luckily, as his sister Norma reports, 鈥渢here weren鈥檛 any traffic personnel around at the time, so he went home鈥�.