Reserve judgement
Fred Pearce eloquently highlights that the UK’s purported establishment of a “marine protected area” (MPA) around the Chagos Archipelago was a highly political decision, rushed through against the advice of senior officials (27 September, p 26).
However, Pearce has proceeded on the erroneous assumption that the UK has sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago. It does not.
The government of Mauritius does not recognise the so-called British Indian Ocean Territory, which the UK created in violation of international law and UN resolutions by excising the Chagos Archipelago from the territory of Mauritius prior to its accession to independence.
The government of Mauritius reiterates that the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia, forms an integral part of the territory of Mauritius under both international law and Mauritian law.
The government of Mauritius is deeply concerned that the purported creation of the MPA not only infringes the sovereignty of Mauritius over the Chagos Archipelago and Mauritius’s full range of rights over it 鈥� including fishing and mineral-resource rights 鈥� but also impedes the exercise of the right of return of the Mauritian citizens who were forcibly removed from the Chagos Archipelago by the UK.
Mauritius considers that the UK had no authority under international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to establish an MPA around the Chagos Archipelago, and on 20 December 2010 instituted proceedings against the UK government under UNCLOS to challenge its legality.
The merits of the case and the objections of the UK were heard by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) at a tribunal held this year in Istanbul, Turkey, and a decision is awaited.
The written pleadings of the parties involved are available on the PCA’s website ().
London, UK
Reserve judgement
Designating the Chagos Archipelago a no-take marine protected area (MPA) was based on the best available science.
The was rightly applied to ensure that lengthy deliberation did not allow further destruction of the world’s most pristine coral reefs.
Policies should, of course, be reviewed as further scientific evidence comes to light. In the case of Chagos, new research continues to corroborate the decision to protect this unique ecosystem.
It is misleading to claim that the no-take policy is another barrier preventing the displaced Chagossians from returning to the islands. The MPA declaration states that the level of protection would be reviewed 鈥� in full consultation with the Chagossians 鈥� in the case of resettlement.
A mere 2.8 per cent of the world’s ocean has any protection, with only 0.6 per cent fully protected, well below international commitments.
With the cleanest sea water in the world and a staggering diversity of marine life, the Chagos Archipelago is a site of resilience within the heavily overexploited west Indian Ocean.
It is an underwater sanctuary that deserves to be afforded the ultimate protection.
Warwick, UK
Split decisions
How strange that supporters of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics fail to grasp the bleak moral implications of this view (27 September, p 32).
If it’s true, it is surely absurd to worry about the consequences of “decisions”, since we all make every possible choice and enjoy or suffer every consequence. Since everything happens, nothing we decide makes any difference to reality as a whole.
Fortunately, the many worlds theory may not be true. It is favoured by some theorists because it avoids aspects of quantum mechanics which they find intuitively disturbing 鈥� but does so at the cost of infinite existential extravagance, for which there is as yet no empirical support.
Without such evidence, I shall continue to assume that moral decisions matter.
Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, UK
Split decisions
In your fascinating article on the multiverse, much is made of the way that my decisions (in this universe) affect what happens to the other versions of me in other universes.
However, isn’t the situation symmetrical? Wouldn’t the decisions of my clones in other universes have as much effect on me as I have on them? And what happens to our conceptions of morality and truth in this two-way 鈥� or should I say infinite-way 鈥� scenario?
New York City, US
Split decisions
I was delighted with this article, but it left out a number of issues which make Hugh Everett’s theory of the multiverse even more fascinating.
Suppose I make a choice, and meanwhile an inhabitant of a planet 1 light year away makes an unrelated choice. Are there four universes immediately, or in a year’s time? I would prefer to think that the multiverse phenomenon is local.
Another question: if all universes continue until they reach maximum entropy 鈥� in which all energy is evenly distributed 鈥� could they then be considered to have merged back into a single universe, since they would all be indistinguishable?
North Potomac, Maryland, US
Split decisions
Surely if there are multiple universes, we are simply in one of them, with all those going before us and after us creating further universes of their own with every decision, giving more multiverses than I can shake a stick at.
At least I know now who to blame for bad things in my life 鈥� it’s the idiot who went before me. But where does the energy come from to create all these extra universes?
Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, UK
Split decisions
鈥� It’s a common criticism. One answer is that, since the parallel worlds are inaccessible, they cannot be sources or sinks of energy. Thus the energy “needed” to make splitting multiverses doesn’t have to come from anywhere, because there is no extra energy.
Split decisions
In the multiverse interpretation of quantum computing, Rowan Hooper states that the necessary calculations are conducted in many universes at once.
Does this mean that there must be communication between parallel universes in order to arrive at the final answer?
Sidmouth, Devon, UK
Noble pursuits
Replying to my defence of televised investigations into the afterlife, Craig Gosling writes that “in the absence of evidence, David Silverman and the rest of us have every right to chuckle” (4 October, p 32).
He seems not to have read my letter closely enough. The BBC series that I referred to was very much concerned with evidence, not just blind faith.
Cambridge, UK
Free willy
Dan Jones asks whether we would abandon our belief in free will if brain scans could predict our every action (27 September, p 11).
When did my brain stop being a part of me? My conscious self may be an executive in charge of hundreds of unconscious modules in my brain.
These days I type fast with very few errors, and I no longer need to make conscious decisions to press specific keys at specific moments. Similarly, when my work requires me to solve certain problems creatively, these modules are generating and filtering the possible solutions. It is still me that solves the problem when inspiration strikes, even if my conscious executive did not laboriously reason step-by-step to that final insight.
When did the triumphant insight occur that beat the myriad other possibilities? Probably many milliseconds, even seconds, before I was consciously aware of it. But my brain is me, and my free will came in the form of accepting the solution.
San Antonio, Texas, US
Free willy
While it is true that losing belief in free will might affect how people feel about cheating or punishment, as Dan Jones asserts, the only scenario in which this matters in any way is if free will truly does exist, but people incorrectly believe that it doesn’t.
In any scenario where there is no free will, all behaviour must be pre-ordained, including what people believe about free will, how they act on these beliefs, how moralists wring their hands about such actions and so on. And none of it will matter since in the absence of free will choice, ethics and morality are empty concepts.
Personally, I have decided that the only logical course is to believe in free will. If there is none, my belief is pre-determined and doesn’t matter anyway. But if free will does exist and I mistakenly deny it, my loss is enormous.
Waterford, Virginia, US
Side-on to the sun
The protection of critical circuits from cosmic radiation may also be increased by reducing the cross section that is exposed to these high-energy particles (27 September, p 42).
During a recent coronal mass ejection 鈥� a burst of solar wind 鈥� I held a strip sensor so that it faced the sun, then changed the orientation to line up with the path of incoming cosmic rays. The decrease in detection-event counts was dramatic.
An additional precaution against cosmic rays may be to put circuit boards on gimbals so that they can align their components with the stream of radiation.
Springfield, Virginia, US
Ticked off
As a keen microscopist I was delighted to see Arthur E. Smith’s micrographs featured in your magazine (4 October, p 24).
However, I have to point out that the “sheep tick” is in fact a type of louse-fly, the sheep ked Melophagus ovinus.
Having curated old microscope slides I quite often found slides incorrectly labelled, the slides often being created by a microscope-slide preparator rather than an entomologist or arachnologist.
Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, UK
Dream worlds
I happened to be reading Catherine Brahic’s article on the importance of imagination (20 September, p 32) in tandem with Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, which contains a quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche: “We have art in order not to die from the truth.”
This seemed to resonate with Maurice Bloch’s notion, as reported by Brahic, of civilisation and culture being made up of “arbitrary products of our creative thought”.
This is a revelation, and one that makes sense of imagination not only in its exotic form of discovery, invention and creativity, but also in its mundane everyday usage.
It is reassuring and life-affirming to realise that anything which isn’t memory is imagination. It means forming new ideas, images or concepts is open to anybody, anytime, anywhere. And it confirms John Lennon’s observation that “reality leaves a lot to the imagination”.
Cheveley, Cambridgeshire, UK
Neutronyms
Further to previous letters on naming neutrons separated from their spin, how about “nontron” or “nontronspun”?
Ballina, New South Wales, Australia
For the record
鈥� Our article on quantum encryption incorrectly identified Shuang Wang as the leader of the research group (20 September, p 12). The leader is Zheng-Fu Han.
鈥� Guilty as charged: our article on mitochondria contained two errors (20 September, p 42). Hemes are not proteins but cofactors, and not all free radicals carry a charge.
鈥� Contrary to the claim in our article on dolphin intelligence, cetaceans do not currently have personhood status in any country (27 September, p 46).