Non-proliferation obligations shirked
Your report of the 2015 meeting of the countries party to the omits the issue most important to the majority of states which do not possess nuclear weapons (16 May, p 6). Article VI requires all parties to negotiate a “treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control”. The has Article VI further creates “an obligation to achieve a precise result”. The failure of nuclear states to do this helps sustain the conditions in which countries such as North Korea or Iran can create nuclear weapons without absolute worldwide condemnation.
Eugene, Oregon, US
<b>For the record</b>
鈥� We were too chilled in reporting iceberg capture (16 May, p 24). The chunks of Greenland ice drift southwards towards Canada at speeds of around 0.7 kilometres an hour.
A curse on all rhino horn users
Rather than creating 3D printed rhino horns, why not a well-publicised campaign to put a curse on users? The market for the horns is based wholly on superstition, so wouldn’t that work better?
Coventry, West Midlands, UK
A curse on all rhino horn users
My first reaction to the imminent introduction of 3D-printed rhino horn (9 May, p 7) was: what a good idea. Can they do the same for elephants’ tusks and all the bits and pieces that the practices of traditional medicine demand, such as bear bile and tiger extracts?
Surely the argument is purely economic: if you flood the market 鈥� any market 鈥� you drive down the price and make it unviable for poachers to continue. I’d be interested to know what happened to the traditional practice of pearl fishing once cultured pearls arrived.
Glasshouses, North Yorkshire, UK
What's the matter with dark stuff?
鈥� The overwhelming view among physicists is that something unseen makes up 80 per cent of the universe’s matter, and that this “dark matter” refuses to interact with normal matter except via gravity. What exactly dark matter consists of is an open question, but not its existence.
What's the matter with dark stuff?
快猫短视频 has developed an annoying habit of declaring confidently that “Dark matter makes up 80 per cent of the universe’s matter…” without qualification (for example, 2 May, p 11). I was under the impression that dark matter is a hypothesis in search of confirmation 鈥� or did I miss the part where it was discovered and explained?
Jomtien, Thailand
Shaming carbon emitters fairly
Leslie Coull’s letter calls for carbon-emitting countries to be judged fairly (18 April). China manufactures an enormous quantity of goods for consumers around the world. Maybe the associated emissions should be added to the tally of countries that import these goods, and subtracted from those of China and other manufacturing nations.
Mudgee, New South Wales, Australia
When the weather was in Russian
Mark Viney, reviewing Michael Gordin’s book on the dominant languages of science, mentions Russian (2 May, p 45). In the 1950s the Soviet Union was seen to be ahead of the West in long-range numerical forecasting. 快猫短视频s in the UK’s Meteorological Office had to learn Russian to keep abreast. The late Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon Press held the rights to translations of Soviet Academy of Sciences publications, but just sat on them.
St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK
US voters hit by double-dealing
You discussed the effects of discrimination on US voter rolls (9 May, p 8) but not Interstate Crosscheck, which matches voter names across states, ostensibly to catch anyone attempting to vote more than once. It , so people with different middle names can be struck off voter rolls. It disproportionately affects minorities (7 February, p 30), so few raise objections. How many votes get suppressed by this, the real voter fraud?
Canyon Lake, Texas, US
Editor's pick: Reasons to be believers, part 2
As Graham Lawton says, the need to act quickly is the most fundamental reason why we need to have beliefs (4 April, p 28). Animal brains have developed pattern-seeking capacities that lock on to whatever looks like danger in an uncertain environment.
But there is a second reason to be a born believer, which is particular to us hominins. A human child needs to be suggestible, with a habit of submission to authority. If, as children, we do not believe instantly that what our caregivers say is true, we may blunder into danger and wind up dead.
Habitual scepticism about what our parents say is not adaptive for the very young. Only when we become more capable of looking after ourselves can we afford this luxury. But by that stage, the habit of believing in apparently authoritative statements is so deeply ingrained that scepticism is often not an option.
Instead we remain suggestible, stuck in a childhood pattern, open to indoctrination. Thus not only do we have an inbuilt tendency to believe that unexplained activity is due to an “agent”, but our suggestibility also leads us to accept assertions of authority, especially when our emotions are aroused.
Liston, Suffolk, UK
Reality before consciousness
You consider the question of whether consciousness creates reality (2 May, p 33). But surely at some point the universe existed before any consciousness was capable of observing it.
I prefer to believe that the universe is strange, particularly on a quantum level. I hope it remains so.
Colmworth, Bedfordshire, UK
Boldly to set sail for lands unknown
Many explorers and sailors will have kept journals. Is there nothing in the records they left behind which can throw light on the issues facing those heading for Mars and elsewhere?
London, UK
Boldly to set sail for lands unknown
Andrea Maltman discusses experiments to probe our ability to spend long periods in a small group with limited space and resources (16 May, p 36). But a number of such “experiments” have already been done.
Sailors, especially on early exploration and colonisation expeditions, spent long periods at sea with very limited space, finite and often inadequate resources, and vessels that needed constant attention. Polar explorers experienced interdependence, danger and limited resources within a smaller group.
The environment of nuclear submariners may be more like that of a Mars mission, although the crew is larger. 快猫短视频s who work on the polar ice caps for months on end are another group offering parallels.
Cam, Gloucestershire, UK
Is a wall of doom racing towards us?
We read that the vacuum of space may exist in an unstable state and could spontaneously decay into a lower energy state at any time (2 May, p 35). We are told that this decay would, if it occurs, radiate out from an initial point at the speed of light.
Is there any reason not to believe that this decay could have already occurred at some remote distance, and that the boundary between the two states is now racing towards us? If so, is there any way we could detect the approaching end of everything we understand as reality?
Might this explain the absence of time travellers from the future 鈥� in that there is not much future (as we know it) remaining?
Tavistock, Devon, UK
Hubris in our little galactic suburb
By a process too involved to go into, I obtained the galactic-mail address of an alien. I tried to send a message asking for expert comment on your statement that humans are the most powerful species in the known universe. I got an automatic reply to the effect that communications were not accepted from galactic nature reserves. My guess is that ETs may not feel any need to demonstrate their intelligence in a form that humans would find meaningful.
Brussels, Belgium
Hubris in our little galactic suburb
To say that “we are the most powerful species in the known universe” shows staggering hubris (2 May, p 5). If we were to be sure that it is true, our definition of “known” would have to be so demanding that it would exclude practically the whole universe. A more realistic claim might be: we haven’t found anything more powerful than us… yet.
Edinburgh, UK
What do we mean by 'understand'?
You ask, “Can we understand everything?” (2 May, p 34). There is a lot more to that than unifying quantum mechanics and relativity, though these may do a great job of describing the constituents of the universe and their interrelationships.
How does it happen that anything exists at all? What are time and space? Could there be universes with dimensions that are neither space-like nor time-like? Why does the speed of light have exactly the value it has and no other? How does it happen that the laws of physics are the same everywhere? Are these even the right kinds of question to ask?
We characteristically think of explanation as answering “why?” questions: but is that the right way to do it? We think we understand a lot only because we have no idea of what we do not understand. Our brains are still too close to those of our primate ancestors to do so.
Tongwynlais, Cardiff, UK
Do you think the universe might only exist because gorillas are looking at it?
tweets for naturalist David Attenborough, by “Does consciousness create reality” (2 May, p 33)