We don't need Higgs
The Higgs mechanism could perhaps explain the phenomenon of inertial mass, but it does not explain the gravitational component of mass (17 July, p 38).
Einstein’s general relativity is founded on the principle of the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass and it explains mass as a curvature of space-time. If Einstein was right 鈥� and general relativity has passed all tests so far 鈥� then surely the universe does not need a Higgs field or a Higgs particle at all.
Home-grown, old bean
In Westminster diary, Tam Dalyell comments that soybeans cannot be grown in the UK (3 July, p 47). But sells organic certified, UK-grown soybeans, so perhaps you meant soybeans aren’t grown by mainstream farmers for profit?
Whacked
So, the truth is now revealed! Feedback is actually a closet googlewhackblattophobe intent on ridding the web of all googlewhackblatts 鈥� single words that produce just one hit in a Google search (17 July).
By hinting at the setting up of a googlewhackblatt registration site, Feedback obviously expects someone to do this, with the immediate consequence of disqualifying any googlewhackblatt referred to the site 鈥� because that will mean two instances of the word, the original and the listed.
Already, those whacks submitted to Feedback and published in the column, should they be fed through to the New 杏吧原创 site, will have ceased to be one-hit wonders. Googlewhackblattophiles of the world unite, and keep your discoveries secret.
Letter
Alapacoid, and I suspect all the others, now return two results 鈥� one of which is the New 杏吧原创 Feedback page.
Cartridge con
So, the world’s smallest fuel cell could be recharged with cartridges (3 July, p 22)? Looks to me like the great ink-jet cartridge rip-off all over again.
Hopefully it wouldn’t be long before cheap refill kits became available to top up the cell from a bottle of meths.
For the record
鈥� Our article about the speed of light (3 July, p 6) placed Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. LANL is, rather obviously, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, a 100-kilometre drive away.
Why the taboo?
I have always thought that the really interesting question about cannibalism is not why did people do it, but why we generally don’t do it (10 July, p 31). After all, other mammals will eat each other if they can and the meat of your own species can be an excellent source of protein.
We certainly have no very strong taboos against killing other humans, particularly if they belong to a different tribe that we happen to be at war with. So where did our powerful taboo against eating them afterwards come from?
It is possible that prion diseases provide the answer. If ancient people made the connection between eating human meat and contracting some fast-acting lethal disease like BSE, then the practice would become associated with ill-luck and provoking the wrath of the gods. That is how you get a taboo.
We may also still carry the prions involved. I’ve often wondered if such illnesses as Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis were originally prion diseases that found other routes of transmission when we stopped eating each other.
Keep them calm
The article by James Kingsland raises serious issues about the use of antidepressants but not necessarily the issues he implies (3 July, p 36).
When I was training in psychiatry in the late 1960s, it was well accepted that all antidepressants could cause agitation in the early stages of treatment and the standard practice was to prescribe them along with some form of tranquilliser. Indeed there were several antidepressant preparations that included a tranquilliser, such as Mutabon and Parstelin.
This old strategy has largely fallen into disuse in recent years, probably because with the newer antidepressants agitation has been less of a problem in practical terms. There is unlikely to be any opportunity now to undertake controlled trials in this, but doctors should reconsider the old strategy, even though academics have generally discouraged polypharmacy.
Letter
One of the common symptoms of depression is psychomotor retardation. The patient’s ability to decide on acts of will and carry them out is impaired. If this is severe, the patient may appear comatose. Psychomotor retardation also impairs the ability to plan and carry out acts of self-harm, including suicide.
Before there were specific treatments for depression it was well known that there was a dangerous time when a patient’s psychomotor retardation lifted before their depressive mood. The patient might then be able to plan and carry out acts of self-harm. Early discharge because the patient appeared better was often associated with unexpected suicide.
When electro-convulsive therapy was introduced the same effects were seen. Retardation lifted before the mood, with a greater risk of self-harm at that point in the therapy. The same phenomenon occurred with the old-fashioned or tricyclic antidepressants.
It should come as no surprise that treatment with modern drugs such as the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) can have a similar result. I am puzzled that neither the drug companies making SSRIs nor those who later prescribed those antidepressants anticipated the problem.
The risk of precipitating suicidal behaviour at the start of treatment for depression may also apply to psychological or behavioural treatments.
Nuclear's true cost
Nearly 40 years ago, on a PR trip to Windscale nuclear power station, we were assured that within the next few years a permanent solution would be found for waste disposal. I’m still waiting to hear the details. This is one of the reasons I was absolutely flabbergasted by your graph claiming nuclear to be the cheapest method for electricity generation (17 July, p 6).
The apparent discrepancy is presumably justified by the sentence, “Many economists argue that the environmental costs of fossil fuels and nuclear energy should be factored into their price, but there is no agreed way to do this.” That’s OK then. Let’s just ignore the true cost of all the future problems, some of which are touched on in the same issue (plutonium on page 12, and those for coal on page 16).
When you’ve finished with a wind turbine, you can dismantle it and send it to the scrapyard. That’s it. How can that possibly be more expensive than storing high-level nuclear waste and monitoring the integrity of that storage for the 100,000 years it will take to make it safe? What arrogance to even contemplate engineering designs to last over this sort of timescale.
Oh yes, the argument goes that you’d have to cover the UK with wind farms to generate enough electricity. But just about every household is happy to sprout an ugly TV satellite dish. Why not add a domestic turbine for free electricity and for good measure stick some pipes under the lawn for free heating? Perhaps then we wouldn’t need an ever expanding central electricity generating capacity.
Sorry, no change
Two recent articles repeat the common fallacy that a varying speed of light heralds new physics (26 June, p 15 and 3 July, p 6).
The speed of light, c, is a dimensional number that changes from one set of units to the next (miles per hour, metres per second, light years per year). Consequently it can take on any value you please and has no operational significance. Similar remarks apply to Planck’s constant, h, and the charge of an electron, e.
The physically significant quantities measured by experiment are dimensionless numbers, such as the fine-structure constant alpha, which are the same in any units. If confirmed, a time-varying alpha would indeed be important. But asking whether c has changed over cosmic history is like asking whether the number of litres to the gallon has changed. It is entirely a matter of human convention.
For example, in units where time is measured in years and distance in light years, c=1 for ever and ever, whether alpha is varying or not.
It is not just nit-picking to question this failure to tell the difference between changing units and changing physics. I am reminded of the old lady who, when asked by the TV interviewer whether she believed in global warming, responded, “If you ask me, it’s all this changing from fahrenheit to centigrade that is causing it.”
Civilised old age
Rachel Caspari assumes that more surviving grandparents led to more successful and civilised societies (10 July, p 14). But is it not equally likely that only successful societies were able to spare the resources to keep grandparents alive into old age?
Two sides, same coin
Recent correspondence about processes versus particles as the fundamental phenomena of the universe rather misses the point (3 July, p 31, and 17 July, p 24). It is the same argument that has been going for at least 2500 years since the days of the Taoist sage Lao Tzu.
Whether we choose to model a particular phenomenon as an object or a process is purely subjective. Quantum wave-particle duality is an up-to-date example of this. A wave is essentially a process, while a particle is essentially an object. An electron has some attributes of each, and yet is neither. We choose the aspect which happens to be useful to us at the time.
The not-very-related issue as to who made God may be resolved similarly. As scientists, we note that there is no logical distinction between the phenomena produced by God and those produced by the universe 鈥� anything which comes from the one also comes from the other.
Formal logicians would say that this implies a logical identity of God and the universe. In simpler language, they are just two aspects of the same thing, and to ask which made the other is as meaningless as to ask whether an electron is a wave or a particle.
Home-made phones
Your article on software defined radio makes the startling claim that it may be possible one day for me to build my own cellphone and connect it to a network without permission (10 July, p 24). I’ve been able to build a mobile phone for a long time because, for example, the GSM standard that phones use to communicate is open to the public.
But, as any customer who fails to pay a bill knows, the network operators such as Vodafone, T-mobile, or Orange have complete control over which subscribers can gain access and when. The code in your SIM card identifies your phone and the network can choose to block your handset if it so wishes. Using the network without express permission would involve either borrowing or stealing valid SIM card details and using them in my home-made phone, or hacking into the network itself 鈥� not an easy task.
Software defined radio may well make it easier and cheaper in the long run to build multimode handsets 鈥� but on its own won’t make it possible to make calls on a cellular network without the network’s permission.