Editor's pick: Now find neutrino background
Your intriguing series of articles on 11 things we are sure exist, but have never seen, misses out what is arguably the most important: the cosmic neutrino background (19 March, p 30).
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) was predicted by big bang theory and discovered 50 years ago by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, providing one of the best tests of the theory. The same theory predicts a sea of low-energy neutrinos.
We have indirect evidence that this is correct, which comes from somewhat arcane measurements of the amount of helium in the primordial universe. But not only are we unable to detect the cosmic neutrino background (CNB) directly, I can foresee no experiment that could do so.
Why is this important? These neutrinos are almost certainly the most numerous objects in the cosmos, and contribute more energy to the universe than the CMB. Ironically, the temperature of the neutrinos is the most accurately known unmeasurable parameter in physics: 1.945 kelvin, or 71 per cent of the CMB temperature. The CMB produced two Nobel prizes, so I think we can safely predict one for the discovery of the CNB.
Stuttering and brain hemispheres
I was interested in Norman Miller's article about stammering and particularly the discussion of the role of the left and right brain hemispheres (2 April, p 34).
I am a fluent speaker and hear equally well in both ears. However, when using the telephone I infinitely prefer to listen with my right ear. I am right-handed, so writing anything down involves curling my left arm round to hold the phone, an awkward posture. I have tried to use my left ear on the phone, but I can't stand it even for a minute.
Observing colleagues suggests this listening preference is unusual. Has any research been done into its causes?
Stuttering and brain hemispheres
I am very glad to know that speech impediments are now getting the benefit of scientific research. But while Miller has a stammer, I have a stutter. For a stammerer certain letters or words are hard to get out. A stutterer repeats syllables or words.
Many of my academic colleagues wouldn't know of my stutter, whereas my immediate family would tell you it is terrible. This leads me to suspect that stuttering is strongly emotionally triggered, whereas stammering is not. This is not to deny biological causes of either, although it has proven easier to propose biological causes for stammering.
First class post
And I was always thought monogamy was to do with property
Lynne Gardiner that sexually transmitted infections explain monogamy (newscientist.com/article/2084041)
Attention deficit and consciousness
Describing things we have yet to detect, Linda Geddes discusses the seat of consciousness (19 March, p 30). She mentions global workspace theory, which suggests that a stimulus must outcompete all others in order to be noticed.
If this is how consciousness comes about, might there be a link with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? As a person with ADHD, I often find that various stimuli attract my attention simultaneously. Would it be possible that the threshold a stimulus must reach in order to be noticed is lower in individuals with ADHD, thereby allowing more stimuli to be noticed?
Can I play the piano telepathically?
It is clear from Andrea Stocco's description of his work on telepathy technology that this is in its early stages (5 March, p 28). But if and when it becomes possible, I know what I would want.
I like to play the piano, but I do it quite poorly. Maybe one day it might be possible for a talented pianist to transmit her or his performance to an individual of reasonable dexterity playing another piano at the same time. Or, better yet, to record and perform that same piece of music at a later date.
Try raising an AI to be a good learner
The rapid development of artificial intelligence is certainly impressive (19 March, p 20). The real world remains a big obstacle to AI, but machine learning is a good approach that seems to be yielding results.
Building on this, it would be interesting to see how well an AI system would learn if it were given a humanoid body and raised exactly as a human child would be, from baby to toddler to child to teenager, and finally adult. It would do all the normal things a child does, including going to kindergarten, school and university. I wonder whether such an AI would learn as well as any real human child.
Gravitational wave meets black hole
Martin Hendry of the University of Glasgow states that he does not expect gravitational waves to exhibit interference effects (Letters, 26 March). However, in the case of a gravitational wave encountering the event horizon of a black hole, I would not expect the wave to propagate unchanged across the black hole.
Surely it would act as an obstacle, or some kind of lens, or even as a resonator if the radius is such that light gets looped back around the horizon. I would expect the wavefront to have a different shape in the wake of the black hole.
Stapleton, Shropshire, UK
Martin Hendry writes:
• In fact I have a graduate student investigating the possibility of detecting interference effects, in the form of gravitational lensing and microlensing. It's not that interference effects wouldn't happen in principle, but that we don't expect to detect them with Advanced LIGO, and I could have made that clearer.
Writing on pain and about drugs
You report calls to tackle an opioid painkiller epidemic (26 March, p 6). Chronic pain patients (CPP) are up in arms, or injecting them.
Studies show that when CPP have limited access to medical opioids, they turn to street heroin, the unpredictable quality of which makes it more deadly.
Although opioids come with risks, CPP have little in the way of medications to assuage their soul-searing pain. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that of the 100 million people with chronic pain from opioid overdoses. Compare this with the finding that die every year as a result of taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. By these numbers, NSAIDs are more deadly. Cannabis, if legalised, would alleviate some of these drug issues and a lot of pain, especially, I predict, among those with arthritis.
But an oft-overlooked aspect of chronic pain is mental stress. I believe continual stress rewires the brain in much the same way as post-traumatic stress disorder.
CPP become desperate, and desperate people do desperate things. CPP will do anything – anything – to make the pain stop. This puts them at greater risk of suicide. A 2008 study shows that patients with back pain have a 33 per cent increased risk of suicide. Patients with migraines have a 68 per cent increased risk.
A physician's duty is to heal patients by all appropriate and effective means. Removing opioids from the toolbox leaves physicians with fewer tools. Politicians should keep their mitts out of the toolbox.
Long-gone glaciers long known
David Dare says that in 1959, “climate change as we now understand it was unknown to us” (Letters, 27 February). It might not have been understood as it is now, but it was certainly known about.
In an article in Weather in 1950, the climatologist said of changes in glaciers in countries bordering the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans: “1850 to present. Period of retreat of glaciers. At first this was slow and irregular, but later became rapid and steady.” He went on to refer to the “warming of the Arctic” over the previous 100 years and the decrease in the area of the floating ice cap. The article includes photographs of the Rhône glacier in Switzerland taken in 1928 and 1948, illustrating the retreat in those 20 years.
Fairy rings were plain on the ground
You claim to report the first observation of grass-ringed “fairy” circles outside of the Namib desert, in the Australian outback (19 March, p 14). I worked as a field geologist at the Telfer gold mine in the Great Sandy Desert in the early 1980s. The tendency there for spinifex grasses to grow in circles around a barren centre was obvious, and I recall discussing possible explanations with the late E. M. “Dinky” Goble-Garratt, a research botanist then resident at the mine village.
Large areas of spinifex are frequently lost to fires started by lightning. Could monitoring of post-burn recolonisation give clues to the circle development processes?
How it has taken so long for the link to be made between two desert environments on the western sides of southern continents at similar latitudes is as big a puzzle as the origin of the circles.
Suburban raccoons go all nonchalant
Sam Wong described the timidity of raccoons on the Gulf Islands of British Columbia in Canada (27 February, p 9). This contrasts with them being aggressive pests in most city suburbs in the US. It seems that where there is no active hunting they become blasé about city noises, including dogs. Perhaps they, like humans and at least some cetaceans, form what we could call subcultures.
For the record
• We should have stated that the plot showing migrations in 2010-2015 was based on provisional figures (9 April, p 29).
• The old phone rings to tell us that Bakelite, widely recognised as the first synthetic plastic, is in fact and phenol (12 March, p 36).