Editor's pick: Reasons to be fracky, part one
Michael Le Page argues the UK has no good reason to approve fracking (15 October, p 21). One good reason is that domestic production from the North Sea (which provides 43 per cent of our gas) is almost certain to decline.
Another is that the devaluation of the pound makes imported gas more expensive. Yet another reason is that Russia, which supplies 33 per cent of Europe's gas, is engaged in a strategy to destabilise Europe. This is succeeding, for example by increasing the flow of refugees and other migrants from the Middle East.
Russia's leverage on Europe is increased by our dependence on Russian gas. No responsible European government can ignore this strategy.
An increase in domestic production is a prudent step. There is no reason why it should increase our overall gas use. Compared with other fossil fuel extraction, fracking has a small impact on the environment.
Although it is important to reduce our use of fossil fuels, reducing gas use is problematic. This is partly because so many households rely on it for heating.
Cracking methane past and present
Jon Cartwright suggests cracking methane into hydrogen and carbon soot might make it economical to continue to use fossil fuels without causing carbon dioxide emissions (8 October, p 28). This is unlikely to change the world. Expending energy on cracking methane and then using the hydrogen, while disposing of the soot and its energy content, is poor energy efficiency.
Cartwright also asserts that renewables are unreliable and production of hydrogen by electrolysis of water is too costly. The at in Germany is designed to ensure a more even energy supply by converting surplus electricity from wind farms to hydrogen.
Other relevant innovations include long-distance high-voltage direct current electricity transmission and cost-effective salt-based batteries.
One obvious use for the hydrogen produced in Mainz is to react it with carbon dioxide into synthetic methane, to be used as gas or processed further into liquid hydrocarbon compounds.
Cracking methane past and present
The story of methane-cracking reminded me of an experiment I carried out when I spent six months at the in Sheffield in about 1970. North Sea oil and gas were new and exciting.
I was tasked with designing and building apparatus to pass methane gas through molten iron to increase the metal's carbon content for production of steel. The fun part was turning on the methane flow and seeing the quartz viewport window turn instantly black from the clouds of carbon released.
In another iteration of the experiment, we used a bundle of 6-metre gas tubes. Four or five of us would hold it on our shoulders and feed it into to an electric arc furnace, watching the furious reaction. As the tubes melted we walked closer until the last of us had to move away as their lab coat scorched.
What a pity we were focused so much on the carbon and did not consider what could be done with the hydrogen.
First class post
So, not only are they terrorising me, they're also eavesdropping too.
Sarah Moore to news that spiders can hear her walking and talking from across the room (22 October, p 16).
Spinal repair is a worthy goal
Talk of so-called head transplants seems premature (24 September, p 8). The real news is that we may be nearing the point where it is possible to repair a damaged spinal cord, giving movement to people we previously thought were paralysed for life. That would be one of the biggest medical breakthroughs of all time: but as you report, the evidence is very much in doubt.
Given this, transplanting a whole body onto someone's head is little more than speculation at present. It is interesting, but really warrants just a sentence about potential future applications once spinal cord repair is achieved.
Utopia doesn't have to be a city
All the definitions of a utopian society that Philip Ball describes assume a structure similar to European societies of the past 3000 years or so (17 September, p 44). People live in houses, work and grow their food.
That work is always going to be a source of conflict. The division of labour is a self-destructive part of the definition. No one seems to consider hunter-gatherer societies, such as those of Australia before the arrival of the first fleet of British convicts in 1788. Nature provided food without much or any work. They kept their numbers low: estimates vary from 1 to 2 million on the continent for something like 40,000 years.
We might just get another chance at utopia if we manage to develop robots to work for us…
Testing hypotheses and being human
Diana Kwon discusses our brains making predictions to test against incoming data (1 October, p 30). This reminded me of a chat with the late, great neuropsychologist .
He believed that the survival of our proto-human ancestors depended on their drive to abandon the constraints of “instinct” in which sense data drive behaviour directly. Volitional behaviour was more energetically efficient. So humans must construct falsifiable hypotheses, in order that testing them can resolve the ambiguity inherent in our perceptions. Non-human animals, he believed, experience no such ambiguity.
Contributing to brain research
Congratulations on a truly revealing story about brains donated to science (24 September, p 46). In 2002, we donated my husband's brain to 's research at the University of Bristol. I was told that he had had Alzheimer's disease, but had no idea of the process – until now. Everyone who wants to do something positive for brain research should read this.
Friends in the eye of the beholder
So unattractive friends may make you more fanciable (8 October, p 7). Back in the 1970s, when we went to dances, I always went with the same “less good-looking” friend. I recently confessed this to a mutual acquaintance, feeling a twinge of guilt about it. He said: “Don't feel too bad, he always said he went with you for exactly the same reason.”
Synthetic bacteria in horror fiction
I was interested to read Ricard Solé's proposal to use synthetic bacteria to perform various environmental tasks for us (1 October, p 36). They could be used to deal with our mountains of waste plastic – a desirable aim.
I find myself, however, thinking back to of the UK television series Doomwatch, and the 1971 book by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis. Both explore the unexpected consequences of such a synthetic bacterium mutating to consume plastics other than those against which it was targeted.
The film (reviewed ) borrowed the trope of a plane falling out of the sky as the plastic on board dissolved. I feel these must be mandatory reading and viewing for anyone proposing to engineer and release such a microorganism.
Why have a robot take you walkies?
Brian Horton suggests a CareBot for the elderly that follows you when you go for a walk and guides you home when you get lost (Letters, 24 September).
Isn't that what dogs are for?
Self-citation and other-citation
Feedback recalls a study in the early 1970s finding that the more citations an academic's papers received, the higher he or she got on the academic ladder, but that the correlation disappeared when self-citations were ignored (10 September).
My 1970s thesis for American University looked at 100 consecutive issues of the American Journal of Physiology. It showed that self-citers were significantly more often cited by others than those who avoided this self-promotion.
There is a possible simple cause for this. Self-citers typically had published more citable papers than had those who didn't cite themselves.
Santa is coming to town, and going
Donald Windsor suggests that like Schrödinger's famous cat, God simultaneously exists and does not exist (Letters, 8 October). The day before reading this I was thinking about the reasons we tell lies. The name of Father Christmas came up – when do you tell your child he doesn't really exist?
Do we then have an early opportunity to talk with children about Schrödinger's cat?
How many speak Hebrew first?
There may be 9 million people who can speak Hebrew to some extent, but not as their first language (8 October, p 5). There are only for whom Hebrew is their native tongue, and very few others for whom that is the case.
For the record
• Sundrop Farm produces 15,000 tonnes of tomatoes a year using a solar tower 127 metres high to desalinate water piped 5.5 kilometres from the sea (15 October, p 5).
• The assertion by Soviet botanist that “biological synthesis is becoming as much a reality as chemical” was his own (15 October, p 44).