Matters of gravity
While the potential confirmation of gravitational waves and inflation (22 March, p 8) is understandably exciting, I had hoped 快猫短视频 would give a sober assessment of the observations and their interpretation. Instead, you have chosen to sensationalise it by talking it up as a confirmation of the multiverse.
As a church minister with a background in astrophysics, I frequently find myself having to defend both the idea of a multi-billion-year-old universe and the integrity of the scientific process. I argue that scientific results are subject to rigorous scrutiny, not spin and hype. You will therefore understand why I find 快猫短视频‘s treatment disappointing.
Not long ago, great excitement was generated by neutrinos seeming to travel faster than light 鈥� until a calibration error was discovered and the result was retracted. The difficulty of extracting the gravitational wave signal from the cosmic microwave background data suggests that a retraction could also happen here.
Wichenford, Worcestershire, UK
Matters of gravity
Two points about your special report on the origins of the universe struck me. First, how can Harvard academics get away with hyping their big bang findings when the work has not yet been peer reviewed or published? Lesser mortals can be reprimanded by their employers, or even sacked for such behaviour.
Secondly, why is Ivan Korendovych (p 12) credited with the idea that it is statistically impossible for enzymes to have formed when life originated, when Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe have long been widely vilified for saying the same? I assume that Korendovych quoted their work.
Sheffield, UK
Addiction cure
I read your feature on breaking harmful behaviours (15 March, p 34) with interest. I am 81 years old and have played video games since the 1980s, mainly the simple, repetitive ones like Minesweeper, Solitaire and Tetris. I used to play late into the night and time would disappear. In my 70s, I would find myself at 3 am still playing and suffering from the cold, sometimes almost unable to walk. I think I was lucky not to have succumbed to hypothermia. It was a drug, totally mindless, but I think playing games blotted out any worries.
Last Christmas, I was diagnosed with temporal arteritis, and put on the steroid prednisolone. From the moment I started the medication, I had no urge to game at all. My daughter has given me an iPad, I have an iPhone and a laptop beside me, but not a twitch! The mental effects of this medication are very odd.
I wonder if any other readers have had similar experiences? This might be of some interest to those investigating chemical solutions to addiction.
Name and address supplied
Double trouble
In her feature on medically accurate digital doubles (15 March, p 46), Linda Geddes discusses how interactions between different conditions can complicate treatment, and touches on the ethical dilemma in which knowing about a health risk can negatively affect a patient’s quality of life.
What isn’t mentioned is the additional case management load and associated costs of the digital double, and how the technology might be made available to everyone in an equitable way.
Bellbowrie, Queensland, Australia
Einstein's Swiss role
Your editorial on gravitational waves (22 March, p 5), reports Einstein as having worked as a “lowly clerk” at the Swiss Patent Office. In fact, he was working there as a “technical expert third class”, although that term would have been correctly translated as “patent clerk” in the US parlance of the time. In modern US and European parlance, as a government employee, he would properly be described as a “patent examiner”.
Back then, the Swiss Patent Office only examined patent applications relating to timing means. It is interesting to speculate whether the problems Einstein came across contributed to the genesis of his theory of relativity, which would make this period of his life more than the “gap year” impression given by your “lowly clerk” description.
Chichester, West Sussex, UK
Human flood
Adam Corner (22 February, p 28) writes that “more flooding is on the way for the UK if ambitious action on climate change is not forthcoming, but there is no guarantee that the public will join the dots”. May I suggest some more dots to consider joining?
A growing population makes increasing demands on Earth’s finite resources. By 2050, a global population in excess of 9 billion is predicted. Do we not need a conversation about education and contraception, aimed at achieving a rapid humane population reduction?
Mathern, Monmouthshire, UK
Baby blues
Clare Wilson’s article detailed the negative effects of stress on women’s fertility (29 March, p 16). I started one of the first fertility clinics in London in 1971. It soon became clear that stress was a significant factor in some women’s failure to conceive.
One woman was making a lot of money by working 18-hour-plus days in the City of London. I encouraged her to think about reducing her workload and possibly changing her life in more radical ways. She wrote to me a year later to say that she had thought about my comments in the taxi on the way back to work, and had handed in her resignation that day. She had taken up horticulture and was now six months pregnant. She had never been happier.
There are countless similar stories that I have listened to over the years, but my evidence has always been anecdotal. How good it is to hear scientific support for something that has been so apparent for a long time.
Tarrant Gunville, Dorset, UK
Time winding down
What Joseph Silk’s article (8 March, p 26) on the philosophical challenges of cosmology neglected to mention was the issue of time. Within the observable universe, there is a multitude of different states joined into a particular sequence.
As I understand it, Lorenzo Maccone suggested that the arrow of time is defined by memory, and this mechanism of memory is intimately bound up with the second law of thermodynamics. Our present state can only remember a past because our current entropy is higher than that of the previous state. Perhaps we can generalise this so that every increase in entropy in the physical world represents the recording of a memory about the past. When we drop a glass and it breaks, the fragments encode a memory of having been part of an unbroken glass. Maybe the final heat-death configuration of the universe stores the complete memory of the history of the universe up to that point?
Hamilton, New Zealand
Warmed over
Helen Knight’s feature discussed generating energy from ocean heat (1 March, p 48). I wonder, with all the holes being drilled for fracking (15 February, p 36), is there any opportunity to tap into geothermal energy either during or after fracking operations? The sort of depths being drilled lead me to believe there would be a significant thermal gradient capable of generating quite a lot of power long after the gas has been extracted.
If there were a renewable power source that could be harvested relatively cheaply after the initial gas extraction, it might well appease anti-fracking groups.
Chard, Somerset, UK
Soft landing
Reading the sad story about rugby players’ risk of brain injuries (15 March, p 11), I was reminded of the time my London school was evacuated to Llanelli in Wales during the second world war.
My friends and I decided we would like to play rugby and, while we were having a go, a man called out to us loudly. He explained that if we were going to play, we had better learn how to do it safely. He taught us how to fall and roll, and how to avoid breaking our wrists. We practised assiduously for the next few weeks and he always materialised to watch and encourage us. He never told us his name. When I was 14 years old, my headmistress informed us we would have to stop playing, because rugby was dangerous and unladylike. I have never forgotten that kind gentleman.
Now I am old and a bit decrepit. I’ve had a number of falls, but I have never broken a bone in my body because I always remember to roll as I fall. The moral of this story is that, in all sports, safety training is needed before you try to develop your skills. After all, we only have one brain.
Fairlight Cove, East Sussex, UK
Muddied waters
I was surprised by Shaun Machale’s suggestion that clay constitutes an underground sponge with impressive water retention (22 March, p 30). Conventional hydrogeological wisdom suggests the opposite: the fine clay particles do not permit significant porosity and clay’s plasticity hinders the development of fractures, which create permeability.
It is true that clay strata retain water, but it is structurally bound and not easily exchanged. The result is “clay heave” or subsidence, which is an undesirable phenomenon.
If there is a beneficial effect from forking the lawn, then it is most likely due to the creation of macroscopic voids or bypass of a compacted surface layer.
Deganwy, Clwyd, UK
Eye opener
Alan C. Larman’s account of seeing ultraviolet (15 March, p 33) prompts me to write about my own experience. Three years ago, I lost the sight in one eye because of septicaemia following a dog bite.
The vitreous humour was removed from my eye and replaced with silicone oil, restoring my vision immediately. Within six months, I developed a cataract and had to have a synthetic replacement lens. This restored the vision in the eye to a better standard than ever before.
The following evening, I went for a drink in my local pub, and noticed I could see the ultraviolet light of the counterfeit note detector behind the bar much more distinctly with the repaired eye than with the other.
Assuming that both my retinas are equally sensitive, I wonder whether, during the course of evolution, Mother Nature has devised protection against UV light for our eyes that is not afforded by either silicone oil or a prosthetic lens. Does anyone have the answer?
LLangoed, Anglesey, UK
Name game
Gwynne Williams (22 March, p 31) raises a very important issue about genetic modification. It is absurd to lump together the selection of desirable characteristics in a genus or family of plants, with the introduction of genes from quite unrelated organisms.
The first process has been going on for millions of years, with or without human aid, and doing it by directly altering the genome would appear to be desirable and relatively risk-free.
The second process is much more novel, and that is probably why many people are very wary of it and would rather wait until we know a lot more. We urgently need different words for these very different processes.
Uki, New South Wales, Australia
Mint humbug
Moheb Costandi makes several references to the cooling taste of mint or menthol in his look at hot foods (1 March, p 44). The fact that mint stimulates some receptors that also respond to low temperature explains why it is often characterised as cool.
However, that is not the whole story. To me, it tastes fiery, and therefore I detest the mint flavour of most toothpastes and mouthwashes. I can’t be alone in this; why else would it be called peppermint?
London, UK