Letters archive

Microgreens may have a high density of nutrients and vitamins, but does the body absorb them all? Maybe the extras end up in the waste stream. It would be good to know how their absorption compares with that of "normal" diced raw carrots, for instance ( 14 October, p 36 ).

On the subject of sea-farmed salmon, why do we farm carnivorous fish when, to produce 1 kilogram of them, we require a much greater weight of wild-caught fish? There is really no excuse, either environmental or economic, for doing so ( 21 October, p 20 ).

Further to Alex Wilkins's piece on how large language models (LLMs) are similar to codec compression algorithms like MP3: despite the knowledge that MP3 lowered audio quality, users flocked to it, resulting in the music streaming industry of today. Convenience trumped quality. It seems the same thing will happen with LLMs ( 7 October, p …

The comment from a local politician that most politicians are "people persons" and aren't versed in science is both condemnatory and horrifying. Science isn't some mystic process restricted to a gifted few. It ultimately comes down to rational, logical thought where decisions are based on real information, not gut feelings. If it is really the …

Your article reports research about nuts and raisins "dancing" in carbonated liquids. I taught school students to observe this phenomenon in the 1980s – I believe I found the experiment in the publications of the Nuffield Science Project ( 7 October, p 17 ). Your account of what happens doesn't mention the fact that when …

The article "Antimatter definitely doesn't fall up, physicists confirm" brings to mind the element upsidaisium from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons ( 7 October, p 16 ).

The only substance that falls up is upsidaisium, a metal found only in the floating Mount Flatten. The ill-intentioned Mr Big assigned his top agents to steal Mount Flatten. Happily, Rocky and Bullwinkle were able to protect the world's upsidaisium supply.

James Wong casts his habitual common sense on the issue of native and non-native garden plants. Yes, "alien" plants can be a disaster in unique ecosystems like the South African fynbos, but the UK's sparse flora has only 1625 native species compared with 1798 aliens established as unthreatening wildflowers ( 30 September, p 44 ). …

The story "Earliest evidence of wood buildings" ends by saying "we might need to rethink our labelling of the Stone Age", that it was maybe "more of a wood age" ( 30 September, p 14 ). My understanding is that the various ages (Stone, Bronze and Iron) were named for the most common material used …

I was a bit shocked to read Raymond Hickey's dismissal of the circle-writing by aliens that visit Earth in the movie Arrival . He says no animal "would use such a short-supply resource as their ink for primary communication". Why assume that it was even their own ink? Or maybe their own ink isn't, for …

As discussions about a possible Anthropocene Epoch continue, it occurs to me that these seem to ignore the fact that we may need to name a new geological "age" too. The Holocene has three: Greenlandian, Northgrippian and Meghalayan ( Letters, 30 September ). One proposal is that the Anthropocene began in around 1750, which is …