Editor's pick: Flagging our motion in time
You ask why we move forward in time and make it clear that physics has no clear answer as to why time passes (5 September, p 34). The article reminded me of an ancient Zen koan.
Two monks were watching a flag flapping in the wind. One said to the other, “The flag is moving.” The other replied, “The wind is moving.” A Zen master, walking nearby, overheard them. He said, “It is not the flag nor the wind that is moving but your minds.”
The idea that our minds experience the four-dimensional “landscape” of physical reality in a chosen time direction would explain the phenomenon of time passing without violating any physics. Perhaps the Zen master was right philosophically and scientifically?
London, UK
Beyond cracking down on antibiotics
You report moves in the UK to prevent oversubscribing of antibiotics to curb resistant infections (22 August, p 6). People with cystic fibrosis spend their entire lives fighting off infection to slow the progression of lung disease. Nine out of ten people with the condition eventually die from respiratory failure.
Antimicrobial resistance poses a particularly significant threat, which is why the Cystic Fibrosis Trust is working with scientists and the pharmaceutical industry to bring new treatments to market. While control measures are welcome, this is a global problem requiring coordinated action across all governments and societies.
I recently visited a pharmacy in Spain for antiseptic cream to treat a minor ailment. I was rather alarmed to be offered an array of products including an antibiotic.
London, UK
<b>First class post</b>
If I saw my own genome, I couldn’t read it
Russell Bushby of a “right to see our dead relatives’ genomes” (5 September, p 26)
Let us consider the arrows of times
快猫短视频 recently considered conundrums such as the imbalance between matter and antimatter, the “arrow of time”, and the concept of “before the big bang” (5 September, p 30). Might some of these be resolved, or at least recast, if the big bang created two universes simultaneously: one of matter progressing in a positive direction on the time axis, and another, otherwise identical, of antimatter occupying the same space but progressing in a negative direction on the time axis?
Or why restrict it to one time axis? Why not multiple matter/antimatter universes occupying the same space but progressing in opposite directions along time axes that are at “right angles” to each other 鈥� that is, mutually orthogonal?
This would at least have the virtue of removing the matter/antimatter imbalance as well as introducing a pleasing symmetry to the event. It may even impinge on dark matter and dark energy, as, presumably, gravitation would be universal and there would be twice as much matter (as we can currently see) in existence for each time axis.
London, UK
The roots of consciousness
I agree with Peter Halligan and David Oakley that consciousness plays a key role when it comes to communicating with others in a creature’s social milieu (15 August, p 26). I suspect, however, that this is a secondary benefit rather than the primary evolutionary driver.
In virtually all discussions on consciousness the emphasis is on cognitive abilities and benefits. It is more likely that feelings and emotions were the main drivers, especially fear and pain, pleasure and desire. For plants, conscious feelings would have no benefit whatsoever. What’s the point of experiencing fear or pain if one can’t avoid its source?
It is ironic that science does its best to downplay consciousness, especially its role in providing a sense of individual agency, when there would be no science at all without it. In answer to the oft-asked question: why is there something rather than nothing? 鈥� there is nothing when you’re unconscious, and without consciousness the universe might as well not exist. It’s only because of consciousness that the universe has meaning, and meaning has been most manifestly realised through science.
Melbourne, Australia.
The roots of consciousness
When you truly accept that minds are embodied then there are no unconscious processes. Instead, my conscious states are how my body feels as it encounters the world and acts on it. We can now see how the counter-intuitive argument that consciousness is disconnected from our actions is an artefact caused by the dissection of mind from body.
St. Ives, Cornwall, UK
The roots of consciousness
An internal narrative for social benefit doesn’t actually require consciousness: it could simply be facilitated by a collaboration between unconscious processes. In that case we would be a species of zombie (in the philosophical not the filmic sense).
We are still left wondering why we have a sense of self that is exquisitely and individually felt. I am more attracted to the suggestion that consciousness is some kind of innate potential of very complex material systems, processing information in a recursive fashion.
Leeds, UK
Reason and taking responsibility
Adrian Bowyer makes an interesting point that either individuals and the people who police them are responsible for what they do, or nobody is (Letters, 8 August). I think, though, that this reasoning can be taken further.
Surely, if we all have no control over our actions, then we also have no control over seeing that we have no control. We would also have no control over (apparently) deciding to be more lenient towards criminals 鈥� if this is what we do 鈥� as a result of realising that they have no control over their actions. Equally, we would have no control over not doing so. The “end result” is not necessarily the same either way, as Bowyer claims, if by this he implies that the research quoted will not alter our attitude towards, and the sentencing of, criminals.
Hull, East Yorkshire, UK
What we really fear from nuclear power
Geraldine Thomas may have misunderstood “public anxiety over nuclear power” (22 August, p 26). I suspect that the problem is simply that from long experience people just do not believe the industry’s repeated attempts at public relations. The endemic culture of secrecy, obfuscation and plain lying about safety incidents doesn’t inspire confidence. Fatuous attempts to rebrand, such as renaming the Windscale reprocessing plant in the UK as Sellafield, haven’t helped either.
From a technical standpoint, the continuing reluctance to fund development of thorium reactors rather than the uranium favoured by the original considerations of generating plutonium for military use is troubling. I don’t believe nuclear power is the bogey that some environmentalists claim. But in its current form neither is it the panacea claimed by those with a vested interest.
Ringwood, Hampshire, UK
What we really fear from nuclear power
Thomas makes a good case for the safety of nuclear power but misses one reason for public mistrust of the nuclear industry. Its representatives on TV in the 1960s told us how completely safe nuclear power was, and that there could not possibly be any kind of serious accident. This was despite the fact that grave dangers had already been demonstrated by the accident at Windscale on 10 October 1957.
Even at a young age something told me not to believe them: if the public is to ever trust the nuclear power industry then it needs to come clean not only about the risks but also about the lies it told in the past.
Kimberley, Nottinghamshire, UK
What we really fear from nuclear power
Regardless of whether people make unreasonable associations between nuclear power and nuclear war, or harbour unreasonable fears of small doses of radiation, it is entirely reasonable for them to fear being made homeless.
Compare the area of the exclusion zone around the site of the Chernobyl reactors in Ukraine with southern England. The risk of a disaster happening is, I hope, very, very small: but, when it happens, the consequences can be very, very severe.
East Wellow, Hampshire, UK
Panspermia coming in and going out
You report astrobiologist Chandra Wickramasinghe saying that genetic material and living organisms are continually exchanged between Earth and neighbouring star systems (8 August, p 28). Is this a two-way exchange? If so, it’s hard to reconcile with the report on the same page of a balloon that, following a meteor shower “returned with samples of microorganisms found 27 kilometres up, too high to have been lofted from Earth’s surface”.Surely to get to a neighbouring star system bugs would have to ascend further?
Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire, UK
The theatricality of life and death
I may be able to help explain Bob Trenkamp’s observation that a standing position using leg muscles for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) seemed to be lost for decades after failing to catch on (8 August, p 23).
As a 14-year-old in 1973 I realised that young people, as well as older people, may not be able to perform kneeling CPR. I asked my science teacher whether using feet and legs would be better. In 1976, when I started ambulance officer training, while still at school, I got to experiment on our Resusi Anne mannequin. My demonstrations to trainers were ridiculed.
Allowing for discrimination by age and pecking order, I think the main problem may lie with how it looks to stand over, and then stand on, a recumbent casualty. Hollywood prefers the dramatic “down there with ’em” effect.
Burleigh Heads, Queensland, Australia
<b>For the record</b>
鈥� We meant to say that Ebola threatens western lowland gorillas (5 September, p 12).
鈥� Some adjustment needed: at the size we printed the stereoscopic images of gibbon skeletons, you need to unfocus your eyes, not cross them, to try to see the 3D effect (5 September, p 24).