End of the multiverse? End of a whole branch of sci-fi!
Are you kidding? No multiverse, no parallel Earths? Do the physicists killing off the many-worlds idea have no conscience? A whole subgenre of sci-fi is damned to extinction. Gone, vanished down a literary black hole with just a few dog-eared remnants littering the non-event horizon. Me? I’m just finishing an Adrian Tchaikovsky book involving… oh, never mind (11 January, p 32).
The truth is out there on modern ufology
Fortean Times, UK
Ufological culture has always been concerned about governments hiding “the truth” and distrustful of scientific authority. That isn’t new. The situation is complicated, though, by the dominant narrative about aliens and UFOs changing, moving from benign space brothers to evil greys and now to “disclosure”, the idea that citizens can get authorities to reveal “the truth”. Rather than being anti-science or anti-government, this treats both with a kind of reverence (8 February, p 21).
At least in the US, ufologists have gone from investigating phenomena to writing letters to get “all-wise” authorities to reveal “the truth”, showing a somewhat touching faith in government procedures and scientific omniscience. Rather than being driven by a new anti-elite impulse, it is more a product of the social media age, where stories spread rapidly, believers can organise more effectively and rumours can be magnified fast. It is something the Trumpian right has exploited, not driven. US ufology seems more interested in evidence standards than before 鈥� at least today it seeks results from government labs.
On the divisions afflicting society
The only eco-novel of the many I have read that doesn’t demonise climate deniers is Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver. Here, you can see their good intentions, their misunderstandings and their humanity, as author Kurt Gray shows in his book Outraged, reviewed on your pages. This made me realise I had been demonising them myself. There are other ways of sharing the burden of global warming. We are all human and all in this together (25 January, p 28).
'Useless' ear muscle gives me a sixth sense
I can slightly move the “useless” muscle that lets some people wiggle their ears. Of more interest is that I feel the muscle slightly twitch when someone/something approaches outside of my visual field. It feels almost like a sixth sense, but obviously it is linked to my auditory system picking up a sound I don’t appear to actually hear and making my auricular muscles twitch 鈥� a bit like a dog “pricking” its ears up. Perhaps it’s not such a useless muscle after all (8 February, p 19).
Another vote against fighting fire with fire
In fire-prone southern Australia, intentional burning to combat wildfire risk is controversial. These burns run for weeks every autumn and the smoke is a health and environmental hazard (1 February, p 12).
The effect on wildlife and plants seems to be rarely taken into account. Fire does reduce fine, easily burned plant matter, but also prompts intense regrowth. Repeated burning leaves soil open to erosion and encourages annuals and fine-leaved perennials to flourish, adding to the fire risk. Lightning strikes are inevitable, but public education, sensible location of housing and encouraging weed-free old-growth forests go a long way to reducing the wildfire threat.
Defossilised polyester needs hot and dirty gases
LanzaTech’s fermentation process to make “defossilised” polyester appears to need more reactive inputs, which is why it favours hot blast furnace exhaust that contains carbon monoxide and hydrogen, as well as carbon dioxide, rather than the cool, pure, waste CO2 streams that reader Dave Covell suggested (Letters, 1 February).
Sabre fangs perfect for making hominids a meal
Your article on sabre teeth reminds me of a visit I made to a fossil site in South Africa. Using a hominid skull and two curved fingers, a researcher graphically illustrated how a sabre-toothed tiger could leap on an unfortunate hominid from behind and grab its skull, with its two fangs nicely inserting into the eye sockets and through to the brain for an instant kill (18 January, p 19).
Surely it is all about degrees of consciousness
In his review of Jeff Sebo’s book, Michael Marshall writes that we “can never be 100 per cent sure if another being is conscious”. Perhaps we can if consciousness is a question of degree, a continuum of levels of awareness, not an either/or thing. Think back to your earliest childhood memory 鈥� it may be vague and episodic, but you were certainly conscious then, just not as conscious as now. Maybe those early memories give us an inkling of what it is like to be a chimp or an elephant. We can be reasonably sure that they are conscious to some extent (1 February, p 26).
Adventure and curiosity drive us to colonise Mars
Paul Friedlander says past colonisation has been a hunt for opportunities to trade or get rich, hence the same will apply to Mars. This leaves out one of the strongest drivers: curiosity/adventure. It is often assumed that billionaires are motivated by money, but if you look at Martian colony proponent Elon Musk’s track record, he has, at numerous times, . Maybe this time his belief is simply that humanity needs to exist beyond Earth (Letters, 1 February).
Taking the sparkle off the cosmic gem
The odd gem-like shape created to simulate the fundamental nature of our cosmos just “knows about” fundamental principles of physical theories like quantum mechanics and relativity? This seems a little frightening (25 January, p 10).