Letters archive

This year, at the age of 50 and having led a healthy life, I was diagnosed with signet ring cell cancer of the colon , which has spread. I have one to two years to live. Having been a New Scientist reader for 28 years, I turned to it for wisdom – and found it. …

I agree with much of the article on political biology by Jesse Graham and Sarah Estes (3 November, p 40) but I take issue with them in two areas. First, it is quite proper in a democracy for the government to avoid funding science that voters do not like. The science can still be done; …

In his letter on ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), Graham Cox suggests it could be used to fertilise surface waters with nutrient-rich deep water to promote plankton growth for carbon capture (1 December, p 31 ). However, there is a problem. Deep water often contains a lot of dissolved inorganic carbon from sinking organic matter …

In regard to your story on the impact of grapefruit on drugs (1 December, p 17) , I was aware of its effect in connection with statins, but not more broadly. Given that it interferes with an enzyme that breaks down several drugs, would it not be desirable to combine grapefruit or its active component …

Elon Musk says that "with a nuclear thermal rocket, you could definitely reach a tenth of the speed of light" (1 December, p 27) . Nonsense. The speed of light is 300,000 kilometres per second. The most heat-resistant material known (for the combustion chamber of such an engine) has a melting temperature of about 4300 …

If we wish to use the tax system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we need to avoid targeting industry, as happens in California and elsewhere (24 November, p 14) . Instead, we should tax consumers based on the carbon footprint of the goods or services they are buying. This would reduce the opportunity for companies …

Just in case there remain any doubts about NASA's bias towards the Red Planet at the expense of everything else, another Mars rover is announced at a cost of $1.5 billion ( 15 December, p 8 ). This is after $2.5 billion for Curiosity, $500 million for the yet-to-be-launched Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) …

When physicist Timothy Horbury says "everything we've seen is not what we expected to see", he appears to be referring to standard cosmological models and their predictions for what the transit from our solar system to interstellar space should be like ( newscientist.com , 4 December) . Those influential in the non-standard plasma cosmology field, …

The Japanese passenger train that is based on a roller-coaster is interesting. Since no motor is needed, it can be light and efficient, though it was noted that motorised vehicles can use regenerative braking and may be just as energy efficient (8 December, p 22) . However, it still operates as mass transport to many …

Even though Californians voted against mandatory labelling of genetically modified foods (17 November, p 28) , it is worth considering the details of a suitable system. For a long time everything humans ate was "natural" food. Then came agriculture and animal husbandry, and we started to "modify" food by selective breeding. Then we discovered how …

Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking concluded that the big bang must truly be the beginning. As you discussed, we are left to figure out how the big bang occurred ex nihilo, without prior substance (1 December, p 34) . The ancients wisely advised us to leave this line of inquiry to the Muses. Maybe we'd …

In your editorial on North Korea you said that "the regime may be atrocious, but what its people need above all else is humanitarian aid" (24 November, p 5) . At the risk of jeopardising my future invitation to Pyongyang to lecture on plain speaking, what they need above all else is drastic regime change.