Letters archive

Fear of snakes really is hardwired, as your look at our fascination with monsters highlights. At a social meeting, I had an involuntary startle reaction, thinking I had seen a python out of the corner of my eye – a friend was wearing brown trainers with a pale buff "eye stripe" either side. The feeling …

I and many others have argued that goblins, elves, pixies etc. are folk memories of other Homo or hominin species, which we know coexisted with our species. Now, I am going to take this one stage further in relation to "monsters". The mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous apparently wiped out 100 per …

Thanks for the intriguing article, "Reality's comeback", which discussed Robert Spekkens's approach to reconciling the quantum and macroscopic worlds. His perspective seems to align closely with the principles of process physics, which posits a real world emerging from systems of interacting processes rather than the physical interactions of elementary particles ( 7 September, p 32 …

Considering what a hotchpotch of substances are released from crude oil when it is "cooked" in a refinery, would it not be possible to use the vaporised plastic bottles and bags you describe as a refinery side-feed? Then, you could repurpose those molecules any way you wanted while using an existing process. Unless, that is, …

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's column made me think that if ever there were a project worth saving with a crowdfunding campaign, it would be the Chandra X-ray Observatory. There are millions of scientists, science students and astronomy aficionados around the world who would, I believe, contribute to this worthy cause to save it from the threat of …

There was a mention of the classic trolley problem in your look at a new book on morality. This left me wondering whether – rather than choose to push an innocent bystander into the path of the imaginary, out-of-control tram to save five people – you could, were you a paragon of virtue, instead throw …

John Hedger's letter on feeding coffee pulp to animals and the necessity of getting out in the field to find out why they weren't thriving made me chuckle ( Letters, 14 September ). In a similar vein, as a duty engineer many years ago, I was called into the control room of a large multinational …

I have to agree that astrology can only be regarded as nonsense. How can the behaviour of any particular one-twelfth of the world's population be governed by the position of the stars at birth( 24 August, p 10 )? However, please consider the following: it is a fact that a mother's behaviour, living conditions, diet …

Tom Gauld's delightful cartoon featuring gingerbread men raises an interesting possibility. If what one gingerbread man says is true, namely that you can "run, run as fast as you can! You can't catch me...", then the only conclusion is that gingerbread men are able to travel at the speed of light. From this, you can …