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18 July 2018
From Paul Dolphin, Melbourne, Australia
Consciousness is, and always has been, a territory littered with shape-shifting concepts. Your article ( 23 June, p 28 ) illustrates this. Consciousness is acknowledged to be an " emergent " property of more fundamental processes: so the discussion is like trying to define the shape of smoke – a major problem is where to …
18 July 2018
From Oliver Iglesia Victorio, London, UK
The wager between David Chalmers and Christof Koch on finding a specific signature of consciousness in the brain by 2023, as described by Per Snaprud , was over before it began. The entire endeavour of searching for neural correlates of consciousness is predicated on a reductionist methodological assumption that rules out in advance the very …
18 July 2018
From Anita Richards, Kermincham, Cheshire, UK
You discuss the risks and benefits of screening for breast and cervical cancer and note that false positive results lead to emotional distress, unnecessary surgery and debilitating side effects (Leader, 2 June ). Over decades, I have seen women becoming increasingly well-informed and comfortable in discussing issues openly, thanks to publicity from the National Health …
18 July 2018
Did anyone think human evolution was a linear series? It's a marvellous rat's nest. Marjorie Meldrum responds to our report of bizarre fossils from China rewriting the story of human evolution ( 7 July, p 28 )
18 July 2018
From Gordon Brimble, Mitcham, South Australia
Alice Klein says that all Australian satellites were launched from other countries ( 30 June, p 25 ). In fact, Australia was third to launch a satellite from its own territory, after the Soviet Union and US. WRESAT was launched from the Woomera Rocket Range on 29 November 1967 atop a US Redstone rocket. It …
18 July 2018
From Elaine Cochrane, Greensborough, Victoria, Australia
Klein says Australia "has lots of empty space for launch sites". It is possible that the traditional owners may be prepared to negotiate such a use of their lands, but invoking the colonial conceit that this is "nobody's land" – a terra nullius – is not a good place to start discussions.
18 July 2018
From Brian Horton, West Launceston, Tasmania, Australia
Your articles on "How to think about..." were all fascinating. But the piece on the multiverse claimed that it is not a hypothesis but is "forced upon us" ( 30 June, p 29 ). There is no evidence for a multiverse. It seems very much like the idea that the sun revolves around Earth: it …
18 July 2018
From Philip Cunliffe, Bristol, UK
Daniel Cossins discusses two kinds of multiverse : inflationary and quantum. Both seem to assume that everything started with our one solitary big bang. That seems parochial, akin to this Earth being unique and at the centre of all things. Is it not more conceivable that many big bangs have created many universes? Or, indeed, …
18 July 2018
From Eric Kvaalen, Les Essarts-le-Roi, France
Frédéric Marin and Camille Beluffi find that a crew of 98 might be all that is needed for humanity to reach Proxima Centauri in 6300 years at 700,000 kilometres per hour ( 23 June, p 4 ). In their paper , they say this is the speed of the Parker Solar Probe. But it will …
18 July 2018
• Divers get the bends when they ascend ( 30 June, p 41 ). • Strewth! Australia occupies less than one-ninth of Earth's circumference at its latitude, but aerials there can "see" one-third of a satellite's orbit ( 30 June, p 25 ).
