Editor's pick: Religion and motivation without gods
Someone from another planet reading Graham Lawton's article on faith and atheism might easily think the three Abrahamic religions and atheism are the only belief systems on the planet (15 April, p 32). Buddhists and Taoists do well without any creator god. The most worshipped deity in history, one that even atheists can recognise, is our local star, which actually is the light of our life.
Editor's pick: Religion and motivation without gods
You quote David Sloan Wilson asking whether atheism can “motivate people to prosocial action, can it get you out of bed?” It probably motivates me indirectly: the aberrations of many religions make me, and others, work for a more just world with more people aware of reality.
Editor's pick: Religion and motivation without gods
The first human to realise they were going to die pretended gods would make a comfy afterlife. Atheism is the absence of self-delusion. All babies are born atheists; then the trouble starts.
Fossils… if only they could actually talk
Whether Homo naledi could talk or not we will never know (29 April, p 6). We will certainly not be helped much by the study of brain casts that, at best, provides an imperfect picture of the anatomy of the brain.
Several other areas of the brain are important for talking and the comprehension of speech. Functional PET scanning confirms that connections are important in all aspects of brain function. We are certainly not going to be able to map out any of these in fossils, and so whether they could talk or not will have to remain a mystery.
It is understandable that anthropologists want to wring as much information as possible from the generally scanty remains at their disposal. But they would do well to remember it is unwise to speculate if you can't validate.
First class post
We could use an extra dimension or two now – humanity is laying waste to what we know
Maggi Carter by the news that gravitational waves could show hints of extra dimensions (6 May, p 8).
At last, an explanation of simultaneous lightning
When I worked at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, a number of astronauts on the International Space Station reported a huge number of lightning flashes happening simultaneously all over the planet. Some of them thought the flashes were somehow communicating with each other.
Shannon Hall discusses the billions of high-energy cosmic rays that crash into our atmosphere and their effect on thunderstorms (15 April, p 37). These could well be the worldwide trigger for lightning strikes.
How do other apes see us watching them?
You accompanied Sam Wong's article on research suggesting that other great apes have a “theory of mind” with a rather provocative picture caption: “I know what you're thinking” (8 April, p 10). This prompted me to question further whether and how the apes may analyse us.
Do they see us as hairless and more intelligent versions of themselves, mirroring the way we might describe them as less bright, hairy versions of us? Do they comprehend the difference from their perspective as we comprehend it from ours?
Are they sufficiently aware of our potential that they should be afraid of us as, for example, the humans in the film 2001 came to fear the computer Hal? And as far as they are concerned (with more than a casual nod to novelist Douglas Adams's concept of white mice running an experiment on us) exactly who is studying whom?
Carbon pricing: is this a cunning plan?
Michael Le Page describes the international community implementing a global carbon pricing scheme and imposing carbon tariffs on goods produced in the US (8 April, p 22). But may this be what President Trump wants to boost American manufacturing? If the rest of the world imposes tariffs on the US, it could impose retaliatory and punitive tariffs, protecting US manufacturers from foreign competition. American industry would have the further advantage of lower energy costs as it would not have to pay for its emissions, or bear the costs of complying with a carbon trading scheme.
Compulsory consumption: you have been warned
Roger Denison asks who will buy all the goods produced in automated factories (Letters, 29 April). Back in 1954, the American science fiction writer Frederik Pohl produced the novelette , set in a future society in which the automated factories produce so much in the way of goods that, to prevent economic catastrophe, every citizen is required by law to consume so much food, drink, clothing, and so on, every day. In a later story, the humans attempt to shut off the factories by blowing up their supply lines…
I hope that this is a case of “forewarned is forearmed”.
Always look on the bright side of nuclear war
You warn us about the perils of a “local” nuclear war that would result “in a nuclear winter that would lower global temperatures for years” (22 April, p 5). Wouldn't that solve another problem, that of climate change?
The dreadful prospect of having been right
You say oceans could rise by 3 metres by 2100, topping the 2013 IPCC estimate by 2 metres (8 April, p 7). Thirty-odd years ago I pointed out that, at the end of the last ice age, sea levels rose by about 50 millimetres per year, equivalent to about 4 metres by 2100 starting now (). Yet, in so many ways, I hope I am proved wrong.
Understanding chemical bonds and energy stores
Anna Azvolinsky reports work on artificial photosynthesis (15 April, p 28). She writes that plants “store their energy… in chemical bonds. In other words they make fuel”. This risks reinforcing the common misconception that energy is stored in bonds.
The point – counter-intuitive to some – is that strong chemical bonds are strong because they have lower energy than others, and more energy must be added to break them. Photosynthesis breaks strong bonds in water and carbon dioxide using energy from sunlight. The new bonds that form are weaker. The bonds in carbohydrates, and indeed fossil fuels, are quite strong – it is the very reactive gas oxygen that has the weak bonds.
The problem with saying that energy is stored “in the fuel” is that people then think there are “energy-rich” bonds in the fuel, where the energy is somehow stored. In fact the energy is stored because oxygen and fuel have been separated, and it is the replacement of weak bonds in oxygen by strong bonds in the oxides that actually packs the punch. It takes energy to break bonds – they do not store energy.
Whale stranding and valued remnants
I enjoyed Geoffrey Patton's story of rescuing whales on the US eastern seaboard (Letters, 18 March). There are many more whale strandings in one part of Aotearoa or New Zealand – “Farewell Spit” in the north of the South Island.
I call this hook-shaped spit “the scythe of death”. Once stranded there, the magnificent mammals stay stranded. Volunteers assist workers from the Department of Conservation to refloat them but, as happens in Florida, the whales appear to have a death wish and head back to shore, to be refloated again. When they are exhausted they are euthanised.
Maori people consider much of their carcasses to be taonga – an object or natural resource that is highly prized. The teeth of some of these whales are used for carving. When I was teething, I was given either a whale or a shark tooth that had been rubbed smooth to bite on and encourage my milk teeth to push through my gums.
Clues to brain size from coding knowledge
Carl Zetie discusses why we have never filled up a brain (Letters, 22 April). Since on , an unconventional computer programming or information language to handle poorly structured information. The original research looked at how humans and computers might work together on complex tasks. I now see a relationship between the brain's neural nets, language and intelligence.
It seems to me that initially, brain size is related to the time spent on trial-and-error learning in a single lifetime. The invention of a self-modifying language is a major tipping point. One generation can pass information to the next as abstract concepts, reducing trial-and-error learning times. High-level generalisations need less storage space and the savings increased as language became more sophisticated.
Further, civilisation allows us to call on shared knowledge and books so we no longer need brains as big as those of our pre-language ancestors in order to survive, and are actually left with some spare capacity to enjoy science, the arts, and the world around us.
Maybe that's not such a knotty problem
You report researcher Christine Gregg jogging on a treadmill to capture details of her shoelaces unravelling (22 April, p 19). I suspect a major contributor to loose laces is the difference between kinds of knot. After a friend pointed this out to me I spend a lot less time seeking low walls and high steps.
For the record
• The haddock hanging out around 85 ° North were 550 kilometres from the Pole (8 April, p 32).