Letters archive

You say that extending cognition to plants would mean a seismic shift in our view of humanity's uniqueness ( Leader, 27 August ). No doubt it would to New Scientist readers. But in a world where the Amazon rainforest continues to be felled, would it make any practical difference? We are still far from preventing …

Aha! So the endless contemplation of consciousness has extended to plants! There is an important distinction to be made between consciousness and correlates of consciousness. My consciousness is something I alone experience, and whose explanation I regard as intractable. There are things (correlates) I do that clearly arise from my consciousness. That I observe such …

Personalised care for those going through the menopause is a lovely idea, but at the moment I can only think of it as a pipe dream ( 3 September, p 38 ). Right now, I can't get a doctor's appointment to talk about menopause care. This isn't official policy, just the result of having to …

Vlatko Vedral's article about rethinking quantum theory offers the chance of "a route back in time" mediated by the possibility that the "younger and older versions of particle are simply entangled in time" ( 27 August, p 46 ). Of course, this could never be applied to an entire human body, but the theory that …

Once a projectile is fired, where it lands seems already determined. Does that mean the landing spot is entangled with the projectile when it was fired from the gun? Is the projectile in the past entangled with itself when it hits the landing spot in the future? Am I, as an older man, entangled with …

You described a herculean, reductionist analysis assessing foods' environmental impact ( 13 August, p 13 ). There is another green metric: price. It generally reflects energy and resource inputs. Even if pollution costs are externalised, price can act as an approximate green metric. The challenge is to add externalised costs, such as pollution, to the …

I read the article about ignition in a nuclear fusion experiment with dismay ( 20 August, p 12 ). The experiment produced enough energy to sustain itself – theoretically. However, it lasted just "100 trillionths of a second" and couldn't be reproduced. And this is just heat energy. Before it can be truly useful, heat …

Can a nuclear physicist please explain why we are spending so much on the seemingly hopeless quest for a fusion reactor when there is a highly reliable, cost-free one in the sky delivering more than enough fusion power for the entire planet?

Maureen Clayson asks whether AI could be used to crack the ancient script known as Linear A ( Letters, 20 August ). The answer is not yet, and probably never, because we have too few texts and they are written in an unknown language. Insufficient data, in other words.

The area modelled to assess earthquake risk in California was about 1 million square kilometres (27 August, p 8). We incorrectly stated that isopropanol was an extract of black cohosh. Isopropanol shouldn't be ingested. Extracts of the plant black cohosh have been used to treat menopausal symptoms ( 3 September, p 38 ).