Energy to spare
Your article on cold fusion could have gone on to say that there are similarly puzzling reports of excess energy production in other experiments involving the electrolysis of water (29 March, p 36). The most notable involve the electrolysis of potassium carbonate solutions, where the energy output is typically two or more times the energy input.
But, like the Pons/Fleischmann experiments, there is no hard evidence of nuclear fusion. No gamma rays or neutrons are detected. The only trace of a “smoking gun” comes in some reports that tritium levels in the electrolysis products are well above what would be expected from the tritium content of the water. So it looks as if it is somehow possible to rob the energy bank. Although the jury has not yet been assembled, it does seem that there are at least grounds for investigating the case properly.
Melting, not burning
Your article on the ongoing investigation into the Columbia space shuttle disaster raises the spectre of aluminium burning (29 March, p 9). This is a myth. As far as I am aware, it started with the accusation that HMS Sheffield was lost in the Falklands War in 1982 because its aluminium superstructure burned, forgetting perhaps that HMS Sheffield was an all-steel vessel.
First, the article states that aluminium spacecraft parts rarely survive an uncontrolled re-entry into the atmosphere. Well, they wouldn’t, because as soon as the melting point of aluminium is reached (660 掳C), it melts. How could the parts survive intact at the temperatures involved?
Secondly, we read that powdered aluminium is used as a fuel in the shuttle’s own solid rocket boosters. Yes, very finely divided aluminium reacts explosively. So does very finely divided iron. Yet steel in the massive form does not burn. Neither does aluminium in the massive form.
Finally, we are told that if its oxide surface layer is breached, aluminium can burst into an intense and virtually unquenchable flame. I have spent a lifetime standing next to aluminium melting furnaces, in which high-temperature burners impinge directly onto the surface of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of aluminium. At the melting point, it melts. I have never seen aluminium burning in any form, let alone unquenchably, and nor do I ever expect to.
Cops already know
Your article on email networks gives the false impression that cops and other intelligencers are living in the dark ages of techno-analysis and that we are entering an era of enlightenment with a new ability to analyse criminal communication traffic (29 March, p 19).
Having been involved in procurement projects for the Metropolitan Police some ten years ago, I can assure you that not only has this technology been commercially available for a long time but that law enforcement agencies have been using such technology to analyse various criminal links, whether email, telephone calls or other associations, ever since.
Bulk traffic analysis was developed through the BT labs at Martlesham in Suffolk around 1990 and a similar interface for law enforcement is now available through various vendors. The most popular products are called Analyst’s Notebook and Link Notebook. Others work along similar lines.
Whether similar algorithms to that described in the article are in use is difficult to say, but the end result is so similar as to make any extensive research redundant. For examples, see and .
Edibly venomous
Your article refers to Gila monsters as “poisonous” (1 March, p 24).
This is incorrect. Gila monsters are perfectly edible (I know this from personal experience). They are, on the other hand, venomous.
Feast of images
One of the reasons I am an avid subscriber to New 杏吧原创 is not only the text that I read, but also the images I see. Indeed, “reading” an issue of New 杏吧原创 is a visual feast. I often wonder why the authors of articles are prominently noted but not the graphic artists.
One case in point was the fascinating recent issue on DNA (15 March 2003). The twisted human chains, and the dark grey-brown machine images were highly evocative. Our internal “satanic mills”. Who created those wonderful images?
Visualisation techniques have extended our capacity to model phenomena. Images enable us to work with and extend text and numbers. Where does the technology of images stop and art begin, or is the apparent interface between art and science merely an artefact of our own scientific reductionism?
Science demands evidence and rigour, but the answers to the important questions that scientists ask may require several different forms of answer. Images suggest ideas and the design of experiments, the results of which may best be interpreted using not only scientific visualisation but also freer artistic interpretations which suggest new ideas鈥� and so the cycle continues.
Maybe I am suggesting that the boundaries to science cannot be as clearly defined as several of us have been trained to believe.
Lttrs n txt msgs
Ian Walker writes that the ternary system used to write text messages on mobile phones is inefficient because, unlike Morse code, it is not “letter frequency optimised” (29 March, p 30). Before we think of changing the text input method, we might have to recalculate those frequencies. The most common letter in the English language is known to be “e”, but I doubt if that’s true of txt msgs.
For the record
鈥� In our piece “Bones tell where victims lived and when they died” (15 March, p 7), we should have mentioned that Benjamin Swift, of the Department of Pathology at the University of Leicester, came up with the idea of using lead and polonium ratios to date bones. He collaborated with Stuart Black to test the technique.
鈥� An error crept in during the editing of our feature on missing baryonic matter (22 March, p 40). We stated that oxygen atoms shake off five or six of their eight electrons to leave O2+ and O3+ ions when we should have said O5+ and O6+.
Following our story about patterns of email traffic (29 March, p 19), we heard that Roger Guimer谩 of Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain, and his colleagues reported similar results last year. Details are at .
Theories aren't guesses
One thing ruined Graham Lawton’s excellent article on DNA repair for me, and that was his misuse of the word “theory” (15 March, p 38).
Creationists and others who are antiscience focus on “theories”, assuming that this term means they are mere guesses. Lawton’s use of the word gives credence to this view.
He tells us that Adam Heller proposed a “radical theory”, when all Heller is doing is hypothesising. He has no data. Yet scientific theories must have data to support them. Lawton then goes on to say that “there’s reason to believe this isn’t just a clever theory”. Now there’s grist for Jerry Falwell’s mill. Falwell is the minister who travels the US telling everyone that “evolution is just a theory”, and Lawton has now validated that stupid statement.
Also, “Heller and [Keith] Friedman admit their theory is speculative and has some problems”. Theories aren’t set in concrete, and we expect them to change as new data comes along, but are they speculative? I think not. Hypotheses are speculative, but theories are backed up with experimental evidence.
I cannot imagine what has happened to the word “hypothesis” and why science writers never seem to use it. In mixing these words, they do a grave injustice to science, and provide ammunition to science’s enemies.