Editor's pick: Refresher exams for politics, please
Your leader notes irrational legislation (30 January, p 5). Whatever politics is said to be, its purpose is evidently to enable senior politicians to secure benefits for themselves, their colleagues and friends. Any benefits to members of the public, such as economic well-being or security, are merely outcomes: by-products of the process. The purpose of something and the outcome, if the purpose is accomplished, are different things.
Further, politicians, almost uniquely, face no tests of their capability to do the job for which they are paid. Constituency selection processes are intended only to establish that an individual has a chance of delivering a few outcomes. Their ignorance of many subjects – other than politics itself – leads to fiascos such as that described by Clare Wilson (30 January, p 26). The UK Tory party advocates sacking “underperforming” teachers: is it not well past time that there was an independent system that culled the 50 most useless politicians each year? This would include exams in science, history and relevant disciplines.
We need a parliamentary process that is fit for purpose in the 21st century. That this might disqualify some from participating at a high level is a small price to pay for avoiding the damage they wreak on everyone else.
Could the rich race for fusion glory?
Some of the hyper-wealthy of this world are currently engaged in races to land on the moon or to place astronauts on the surface of Mars. Their argument that the future of humanity depends on our being able to escape the confines of Earth may be true, but only on billion-year timescales.
It seems to me that there are much more pressing and no less exciting possibilities for their philanthropy and for their competitive spirits. I accept that the alleviation of world poverty or the elimination of killer viruses are far too mundane to excite their interest.
Now we learn of a number of different ways in which fusion energy may soon become available to us, and that, as with many such projects, one of the biggest missing factors is investment (30 January, p 34).
Would it not be a wonderful thing if all the billionaires of the world – using the mounds of cash they have sequestrated from the global economy – were to engage in a race to see who can be the first to produce a fusion reactor with actual positive output? How much more satisfying would that be than merely mimicking what national organisations have already achieved?
First class post
Slavery is linked to human expansion too… we need to use our ingenuity to create a better world.
Lilium Carlson to a report linking belief in punitive gods to expansion of societies (newscientist.com/article/2077082)
Extraterrestrials hiding dark matter
Discussions of extraterrestrial life seem to preclude the possibility that ET life might not want to be seen (16 January, p 38). If we watch birds from a hide, the birds don't see us. When we watch animals from a vehicle in a game park, the lion sees us but doesn't perceive us. In the , Douglas Adams had a spaceship land on a cricket pitch in the middle of a game; the ship was seen, but not perceived. This raises the possibility that ETs may already be here, unperceived. Might they make themselves known when we graduate to the club of civilisations that avoid self-annihilation?
Discussion of ETs also tends to anthropomorphise alien cultures (as I have just done). In , Fred Hoyle imagined a cloud-energy life form that eats stars. It would be good to see more of this kind of imagination brought to the discussion.
Extraterrestrials hiding dark matter
Missing aliens could also explain dark matter – the 80 per cent of mass missing from the universe. I propose that pan-galactic mega-civilisations have existed since before we first studied the night sky. Long ago they enclosed four in five of the stars in our and other galaxies in “Dyson spheres” that capture almost all their energy output. Perhaps they left the rest to give themselves something to look at, or as nature reserves.
I hope they don't come for ours.
Whose Oort cloud is that, then?
I was struck by Stuart Clark's description of the Oort cloud reaching more than halfway to the next solar system (23 January, p 28). Does this imply that some of “our” cloud intermingles with the Oort clouds of other stars?
Can a block of ice 2 light-years away really be said to be orbiting the sun? The possibility that such an orbit would be completed without being modified by passing stars during its enormous period seems small. So are the vast space between the stars populated with wandering orphan comets?
I was also struck by the highly elliptical orbits of the mini-planets in the Kuiper belt. While the probability of our star passing close to another in the vastness of space is slight, 5 billion years is a reasonably long time for it to be swinging around the galaxy. Are these objects with highly elliptical orbits possibly captured from another stellar system – perhaps at some time nearer the origin of the sun, when there were more stars nearby?
Big viruses growing in big ponds
Garry Hamilton gives three examples of large viruses, all found in bodies of water (23 January, p 34). Is it possible that there is some link between the size of these viruses and that of the habitats in which they have been found?
Big viruses growing in big ponds
Giant viruses may have entered cells to become nuclei, as other organisms may have done to become mitochondria and chloroplasts. But is there any reason the process could not go the other way?
Could nuclei have found an evolutionary advantage in dispensing with the expensive apparatus of their cell and becoming free-living parasitic organisms – giant viruses?
Standard viruses would then be a leaner, meaner pared-down version of these.
Big viruses growing in big ponds
Although Dmitri Ivanovsky discovered viruses in 1892, the word “virus” has been in use in English since at least 1599. It was used to mean a poison or infecting agent of some kind. When the agent causing the tobacco mosaic disease was found to pass through a porcelain filter it was, understandably, called a “filterable virus”. The phrase was soon shortened to “virus”, a word that thus acquired a more specific meaning.
Exhaustion exists for a good reason
James Witts gives further credence to the idea that our brains, rather than our bodies, dictate how far we can physically push ourselves (30 January, p 38). His example that athletes start slower on hot days shows the power of our subconscious to decide how to perform in different conditions.
Considering the long-term health problems many athletes experience after a career of pushing their boundaries, isn't it better to work with our brains, rather than “tricking” them into greater levels of exertion? It is clearly of benefit to utilise the power of the mind to unleash our potential. However, using methods such as transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) isn't just a question of cheating – it shows a dangerous lack of respect for what our beautifully adapted bodies may know about their own limitations.
Health and safety in sex work
I read with interest Helen Gough's comments (Letters, 9 January), in response to an article on legalising prostitution (12 December 2015, p 26). Gough refers to health and safety law. One of the tenets of such legislation is that employers should take all reasonable measures to protect themselves, their employees and the public from harm.
If the law on prostitution were changed, employers and self-employed sex workers would have to enact a wide range of health and safety requirements. This could include sexual health screening, protection from violent or drunk persons, protecting vulnerable persons, controls on work equipment, public liability insurance, first aid and other areas of regulation.
Failure to address any of these could land an employer or self-employed sex worker in court for health and safety compliance failures. The natural inclination therefore would be to remain “beneath the radar” by continuing to operate illicitly.
Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, UK
The editor writes:
• This is one of the reasons that more organisations call for decriminalisation of prostitution than for its legalisation.
New vocabulary <i>para tú</i>
Hal Hodson mentions an increase in the use of Spanish words in central London (23 January, p 22). How much of this is due to take-up of words and phrases from the invented language in the Minions films, which uses Spanish among other “real” languages?
What colour are those white holes?
Stuart Clark describes white holes (2 January, p 32). These turn out to be of a very specific “colour” of radio frequency. In acoustics, white noise is distributed evenly across frequencies, “” has a specific frequency distribution; and some loosely use the term “brown noise” for a different distribution.
Will we thus be confronted with notions of pink holes, brown holes and so on?
New largest prime number wasn't lost
Recently many press releases announced: “New largest prime number found” (although 快猫短视频 was more precise: 30 January, p 17). I have a few problems with this. The number found wasn't new, its discovery was new. It isn't the largest prime number, it is just the largest one we have discovered. And it wasn't lost, so how could it be found? I'm now not sure how the discovery should have been announced.