Letters : Beetle boob
Canada
In your article “Engineered maize sticks in Europe’s throat” (This Week, 6
July, p 8), you describe the European corn borer as “a beetle larva that
destroys 10 per cent of Europe’s maize crop”. The European corn borer is, in
fact, the larva of a moth or lepidopteran, Ostrina (Pyrausta) nubilalis
.
Letters : . . .
Peterborough, Northamptonshire
Religion starts with an answer (God) and then attempts to interpret all
questions to fit it (the rough equivalent of claiming marksmanship by firing an
arrow at a blank target, then painting a bull’s eye round the point of
impact).
Theologians now cope with science because its achievements are just too
overwhelming to ignore. Few wish to end up as a 20th-century Bishop Wilberforce.
However, as the general public grows increasingly fascinated by sensational
irrationality, it is vital that science holds true to its empirical
methodology.
Inquiries into the purpose of life are meaningless unless it is previously
assumed that there is a purpose to inquire into. Religion makes that assumption
because it has to. Science can only achieve its results precisely because it
does not start with such assumptions.
The resurgence of the absurdities of “Creation Science” in the US, backed by
the political power of the religious right, shows only too clearly the dangers
of science making any accommodation with the alien thought-patterns of religion
and superstition.
Letters : Squares and circles
London
The God Squad are at it again, trying to square the circle (Forum, 10 August,
p 46). To Tony Jones’s plea, “Must science and religion always be at odds?”, the
answer is “Yes”, for the fundamental reason that religion is based on received
faith while science is based on perpetual doubt.
The latter should be well to the fore when considering proposals that puff
humanity’s own ego. Jones revives the tired old anthropic principle鈥攊f the
gravitational constant, the properties of neutrons, and so on had been only a
smidgen different from what they are, then life and our precious selves in
particular could not have evolved. This is a concealed version of Bishop Paley’s
argument from design, at one time used to counter Darwinian evolution by
selection, but now consigned to the dustbin by Richard Dawkins’s The Blind
Watchmaker, River Out of Eden and so on.
The Universe, too, evolved by a process of natural selection, especially at
the temperatures of the early stages where energy and various forms of matter
were readily interconvertible. Systems of matter and radiation that were
unstable simply disappeared and converted into those that were stable. What is
just had to be, without the need for a guiding hand.
As for the evolution of life, a couple of decades ago orthodoxy would not
have deemed that living organisms could have survived, let alone evolved, at
temperatures near that of boiling water. Now we know that life can occur over a
wide range of physical conditions. Indeed, many favour the idea that life itself
started in systems like the suboceanic, high-temperature “smokers”, or in
volcanically heated hot pools like those in Yellowstone Park. The conditions for
it to occur do not seem to be all that stringent and there is little to support
the anthropic view here
Like Richard Feynman, “I can live with doubt”. Those with a need for the
certainty of assuming that we owe our existence to some sort of supra-universal
fairy are just being plain unscientific.
Letters : Moonquakes
Canberra
I was delighted to read your article relating the triggering of earthquakes
to wholesale global oscillations of the Earth (“Here comes the big one”, 20
July, p 37).
It is known that similar effects apply to our satellite, the Moon. In this
case wholesale vibrations have led to the reshaping of many older craters into
hexagons (for example, Mare Crisium) whose sides are contiguous with
selenographic north/south, east/west, northwest/southeast and northeast/
southwest directions. There is in addition a similarly oriented system of lunar
cracks and global lineaments which are the accrued responses of immense stresses
imposed by hugely energetic vibrations.
This “ringing of the Moon”, of course, is due to repeated external impacts by
meteorites, asteroids and other planetesimals over the aeons of time which have
passed in the development of our Solar System. Earthquakes, on the other hand,
are endogenous.
In a very pretty experiment, it is possible to demonstrate the effect in the
most delightful way. A balloon filled with water is placed on a loudspeaker
driven to varying frequencies by an adjustable signal generator. Merely by
sprinkling flour on the upper hemisphere it is possible to reveal fundamental
and harmonic modes鈥攈exagons, rays, rings and concentric circles (like Mare
Orientale).
The planet Mars also displays hexagonal craters. If there was life on
Mars鈥攊t must have been pretty dicey.
Letters : Life from Earth
Australia
There is a much more plausible explanation for why Earth-like organisms might
be found on Mars than the theory of Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe that
both Earth and Mars were seeded from space (This Week, 17 August, p 6). Microbes
could have colonised Mars from Earth in the same way as the putative fossil
Martians got here鈥攃ocooned in rocky ejecta from asteroid impacts.
When primitive life got going on Earth, our planet was still being heavily
bombarded from space. Billions of tons of microbe-laden rocks would have been
blasted aloft by these impacts. Shielded from cosmic radiation and comfortably
freeze-dried, these microorganisms could have survived for millions of years in
space鈥攅asily long enough to reach Mars and colonise it.
Letters : Food first
Newcastle upon Tyne
Rob Edwards gets the connection between biodiversity and hunger wrong
(“Tomorrow’s bitter harvest”, 17 August, p 14). To start with, the starvation
during the Irish potato famine was far from natural, since Ireland was at the
time an exporter of grain. The poor diet of the Irish and their reliance on one
crop were caused by the British occupation, and the effects of the famine were
exacerbated by the soldiers who prevented starving people from eating any other
crops when the potato blight struck.
In this century, the concentration on a few high-yielding crops has been
important in feeding a rising population, while the apparent loss in
biodiversity has not been significant as a cause of hunger. In the future we
will need to develop new varieties in order to reduce disease and increase
yields, and a broad gene pool will be part of this. But we should not overstate
the problems, nor should we lose sight of the main goal of feeding people.
This does not require massive advances in food technology, however. Instead
we need to apply existing best practice more generally across the world. For
example, China manages to feed 20 per cent of the population of the world with 7
per cent of the land. In spite of this, there is still spare land in China. If
there is any limit here, it is economic rather than natural.
So rather than decrying the development of modern agriculture, we should
celebrate its successes, and argue for further advances. If this approach were
adopted, maybe a solution to the problem of hunger could be found at the UN
conference later this year.
Letters : Wrong end
Bruichladdich, Isle of Islay
It would seem that your cartoonist (This Week, 3 August, p 12), has never
lived in a flat with noisy neighbours upstairs, otherwise he would know that
when one bangs on the ceiling, one uses the end of the broom handle, not the
broom itself.
Letters : Blinking useful
Sunnybank, Queensland, Australia
An item in your magazine this spring referred to a suggestion that people
with handicaps and stroke patients be taught Morse code, and mentioned that the
author, while in intensive care and unable to speak, communicated by wriggling
his toes (Letters, 20 April, p 59). As a former Corps of Signals officer, I
support this idea enthusiastically and submit the following story of a colleague
for your information.
Keith, a former brigadier of the Royal Australian Corps of Signals and patron
of the Torres Strait Veterans Association, was struck down with
Guillain-Barr茅 syndrome, which left him completely paralysed for some
months.
After one visit to the hospital, his wife reported to family members that he
had developed an awful twitch in his eye. Soon afterwards, his grandson (to whom
Keith had taught Morse code) visited him and instantly recognised the eye twitch
as an R9 VE signal.
For the uninitiated, VE means “I have a message for you”, and R9 means
“Received loud and clear”. From this point on, Keith was able to communicate,
and I am pleased to report that he has now recovered about 90 per cent of his
mobility.
Letters : Dodgy discipline
Regarding your question “what is the difference between astronomy and
astrophysics?” (Feedback, 17 August, p 76), an American
astronomer/astrophysicist who was asked the same question replied: “I don’t know
what the difference is, but I do know that if I tell US Immigration at the
airport that I’m an astrophysicist they search my luggage, but if I tell them
I’m an astronomer they send me straight on through.”
Letters : Poetic bang
Wilton, Connecticut
George Gamow was not the first person to propose the big bang theory,
although he may be the first official scientist to have done so (“What’s logic
got to do with it?”, 27 July, p 40). Edgar Allan Poe in his prose poem “Eureka”,
does a credible job of presaging modern cosmology. See the article by A. Cappi
in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol 35, p
177, 1994.
Letters : Balloon baloney
Egham, Surrey
You state that when two partially inflated balloons are connected together
with a tube, the air in the smaller will flow through into the larger
(“Take one raw egg…”, 27 July, p 46).
The truth is even stranger. After an initial pulse of high pressure, to make
the rubber start stretching, a balloon is very close to being a constant
pressure system right up to the point when it finally bursts. When two partially
inflated, identical balloons are connected, nothing in particular happens unless
one of the balloons is almost empty. Depending on the precise properties of the
rubber, air may flow either way or not at all.
This is in complete contrast to the situation when two soap bubbles are
connected in the same way. Pressure in a soap bubble is inversely proportional
to the radius, so the air in the small bubble will quickly flow through to the
larger one.
The properties of balloons can most easily be seen using a partially inflated
“sausage” balloon: the deflated portion can be moved up and down the balloon and
it will be stable wherever it is left.
Letters : Not so daft
Nottingham
There are two reasons why we put “daft” warnings on Boots children’s dry
cough syrup (Feedback, 10 August, p 80). Firstly, in the real world, these
medicines are in bathroom cabinets and are used, in fact, by all members of the
family, particularly if an adult formulation is not readily available.
Secondly, as this product contains an antihistamine, which can cause
drowsiness, we are obliged by statute to include these warnings clearly on the
packaging.
Feedback is happy that Mr Winkle’s son did not drive to his nursery after
taking his medicine. I am even more happy that, should Mr Winkle himself have
taken this medicine, he did not have a driving accident.
At the expense of being lampooned occasionally, I think I prefer to stay
within the law, acting responsibly, in the interest of the health and wellbeing
of our customers.
Letters : A star is born
Penarth, Glamorgan
In John Gribbin’s article, “Not with a bang but with a grapefruit”(Forum, 3
August p 47), he referred to Gamow’s account of a conversation with Einstein
concerning the possibility of the creation of a star at a point out of nothing
at all, going on to comment: “If it works for a star, it works for the
Universe…its entire mass energy could have appeared at a single point.”
It is surely quite remarkable that the identical idea is found expressed by
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, in her magnum
opus, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion and
Philosophy, which was published in 1888.
At the start of Volume I, Cosmogenesis, she speaks of an archaic manuscript
being before her eyes, on the first page of which is: “an immaculate white disk
within a dull background. On the following page is the same disk, but with a
central point. The first, the student knows to represent Kosmos in Eternity,
before the reawakening of still slumbering Energy, the emanation of the Word in
later systems. The point in the hitherto immaculate Disk, Space and Eternity in
Pralaya (a Sanskrit term meaning a period of planetary, cosmic, or universal
obscuration or repose) denotes the dawn of differentiation. It is the Point in
the Mundane Egg (a universal symbol in the world mythologies), the germ within
the latter which will become the Universe, the ALL, the boundless, periodical
Kosmos, this germ being latent and active, periodically and by turns.”
Later in that volume, she quotes from the Zohar鈥攁 work of kabbalistic
theosophy鈥攊n which there is a description that is very similar to
Gribbin’s account of the “tiny seed” exploding “into an expanding fireball”. She
writes:
“In the words of the Zohar: `The Indivisible Point, which has no limit and
cannot be comprehended because of its purity and brightness, expanded from
without, forming a brightness that served the indivisible Point as a veil.’
“
In light of the above, it is worth mentioning a story that some time during
the 1960s, Einstein’s niece paid a special visit to the headquarters of the
Theosophical Society at Adyar in India, explaining that she knew nothing of
theosophy or the society, but had to see the place because her uncle always had
a copy of Madame Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine on his
desk.
Letters : Only imagine
Bow, London
Tim Crane states that “imagination is a good, but not an infallible, guide to
what is possible” (Letters, 10 August, p 50). I hope as a good philosopher he
would acknowledge that any significant advance in science generally pushes
beyond our conceptual limitations, the limits of what we could even imagine.
This is not clear from your correspondence.
For instance, who in the 19th century could have imagined the physical world
that Einstein discovered? Einstein himself utilised an interplay of mathematics
and the thought experiment to slowly push his “imagination” beyond the
boundaries of the current interpretations of physical laws.
New 杏吧原创 has half a million readers partly because it delights
in showing us that occasionally fact can be stranger than fiction. This is to be
welcomed, because after all, some scientists can be the most constrained by
preconceptions. But does Ralph Estling, who takes umbrage at Crane’s arguments
(Forum, 6 July, p 44) accept this?
Let us use our imagination to investigate. Imagine a cafe in late
19th-century Germany, where Crane and Estling are having a beer. Crane suddenly
imagines that a clock’s velocity, acceleration, or the strength of the
gravitational field it is in, can affect its timekeeping, relative to a
stationary one.
A contemporary record would then state that “Mr Ralph Estling, at first
appearing to have some difficulty in recovering his composure, soon gave
discourse at some length and not without some considerable force, upon the well
known physical laws governing spatial relationships, and those of a temporal
nature, and asserted that science has fully established that it was utterly
颈尘辫辞蝉蝉颈产濒别鈥�”
Letters : Cistern solution
Weymouth, Dorset
Your report, “Thames scheme threatens river life” (This Week, p 5) and
feature, “Waters still run deep” (p 24) in the 3 August edition prompt me to
point out that there is a way of reducing normal domestic water demand by a
third which entails neither grandiose pipelines nor the drilling of new
wells.
As I write, we are experiencing the first wet weekend of the summer. Most of
the water will disappear straight back into the sea via our drainage systems as
runoff. If every house, office, workshop, hotel or whatever had to have a
cistern to collect rainwater to supply its toilet-flushing requirements, that
water would be put to good use and, at the same time, reduce the demands on our
overburdened river systems.
Furthermore, if those cisterns were large enough to supply that demand for
(say) two weeks, then the period over which rivers and reservoirs would have to
supply the entire water requirement would also be reduced.
The technicalities of such a scheme are well within the skills of an average
plumber and electrician, the cost, as a proportion of the price of an average
house, is negligible and the components are readily available. Where older
buildings are not suited to the installation of a large cistern, the system can
be modified to position the main water storage in the roof spaces with an
ordinary water butt as the collector. The pipework, electrical components and
circuitry remain the same.
It is, of course, unlikely that we would ever succeed in equipping every
household and office block with such a system, but if the total water demand
could be reduced by 10 or 15 per cent, that would be a very significant
reduction. And it would probably render such schemes as the Avon-Thames pipeline
unnecessary.
Of course there are snags: the usual ones, of convincing the water companies
that they should be responsible for conserving a vital resource and persuading
government, both local and central, that small is beautiful.
Letters : . . .
Reading, Berkshire
I am always astounded at the words of “believing scientists”. They always
seem to be jumping on and off the fence. They can’t possibly believe in the laws
of physics if they believe that a god can exist outside those laws, and neither
can they believe in a god when they well know that the Universe requires neither
an instigator nor a sustainer.
It was Pope John Paul II who lit the “literal” firecracker in 1992, when he
suggested that not everything in the Bible should be taken literally. Russell
Stannard, as quoted by Tony Jones, follows this by saying that: “What you get in
Genesis are examples of myth鈥 fictional storyline which acts as a
vehicle for the real information you are trying to get across.”
How very convenient. This means that when parts of the Bible are obviously
wrong to the point of absurdity they can be treated as allegories. But where
they don’t contradict science then that must be the divine truth.
If some parts of the Bible are unbelievable鈥攅ven to followers of the
faith鈥攖hen who is to say which parts are believable? Shouldn’t the Pope
use a highlighter pen over the Bible so that we can at least argue over a level
playing field? It is hard nowadays to debate the issue because the believers
won’t stand still on a subject long enough. Back-pedalling is a sport at which
they have become so good that I believe it should be an Olympic event.
Letters : Pink <IT>Nature</IT>
London
We’re glad you enjoyed our recent press release (Feedback, 17 August, p 76),
which was a Floydian slip.