Antarctic toll
The pursuit of science in Antarctica has continued to come at a cost to lives ever since Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his companions died on their return from the South Pole still hauling 15 kilograms of rock samples (14 January, p 24). From the time the British established a permanent research presence in Antarctica in 1943, 29 Britons engaged in scientific exploration have died on the continent.
Last year a memorial “to all those who lost their lives in Antarctica in the pursuit of science” was dedicated in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, and a monumental sculpture was installed in the grounds of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge. As Julian Dowdeswell, director of the institute, said: “It is fitting that there should be a public monument for those who died, unknown names to the outside world, but who have helped to create the enviable polar reputation that the UK enjoys.”
Paper power
The strength of compressed paper balls mentioned in your feature (24/31 December 2011, p 78) is probably produced by various polyhedra created during enforced folding. Tetrahedra are the strongest regular solids, and we could expect these to be formed last, at the centre of the ball.
The earlier stages of compression will contain folded spaces with the internal angles of octahedra, cubes and so on, with the effect that the outer layer, being roughly spherical and the weakest shape, is being supported by these successively more acute-angled polyhedra.
It should be possible to soak a sheet with a monomer that does not affect the paper’s strength, crush it and then use a curing system to polymerise the monomer and harden the ball. It could then be sliced and each surface recorded to model the folds in three dimensions.
Creation problem
Physicist Stephen Hawking, responding to suggestions that there may be no avoiding a creation event in cosmological theories, said that “a point of creation would be a place where science broke down” and that “one would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God” (14 January, p 6).
This sounds too much like a “god of the gaps” argument to me. It’s OK to admit we don’t know – and might never know – how the universe began. Saying “God did it” doesn’t answer anything.
From Michael Dowling
So the point of creation of the universe is presently, and perhaps permanently, beyond the grasp of science. Perhaps it is best left to the philosophers.
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Global collapse
I found Debora MacKenzie’s survey of the state of thinking 40 years after the 1972 book The Limits to Growth very useful (7 January, p 38).
Any talk of relying on continual innovation to avert global collapse smacks of the growth orientation that is the very problem. What is needed is a move away from the possessive market society to a fair, sustainable and cooperative society. Radical, but not impossible. We do not have to cling to the old ways, nor look for solely technical solutions.
From David Comerford
Your article states that economists’ objections to the models in The Limits to Growth were that future innovation was not included. This is misrepresenting economists’ concerns to an extent: what is missing are prices and incentives.
A continuously rising price may spur innovation, but if it doesn’t then it will instead restrict demand. Rising prices incentivise innovation, substitution or a smooth contraction in activity. Because of this, it is quite hard to construct an economic model that displays overshoot and collapse.
Conversely, real systems can and do overshoot and collapse. The ideal model would contain prices and incentives, but its agents would be less than perfectly informed or rational.
Edinburgh, UK
Debora Mackenzie writes:
• The Limits to Growth is criticised for not including economic feedbacks, like price increases, which trigger adaptation to limits. In fact some model runs did include feedbacks with similar effects. But the book mainly explored what would happen if some limiting resources could not be replaced at any price, in time to meet increasing demand. Only stopping that increasing demand prevented collapse.
The message is that such situations can be so catastrophic, they shouldn’t be dismissed just because they don’t emerge from economic models that assume optimal outcomes.
Anonymity's upside
If the internet user recognition technology being developed by firms such as BlueCava (29 October 2011, p 50) had been available to the dictators involved in the Arab Spring, those who kept the world and their fellow freedom fighters informed might well have “disappeared”, and Colonel Gaddafi might still be in power.
What price anonymity? While to most of us it may be an amusing luxury, to those forced to fight for freedom and truth, it is often a matter of life and death. In our enthusiasm to tackle cybercrime, we should be careful not to inadvertently make the world more dangerous for others.
Hot foot
Arturo Casadevall neatly explains why fungi colonise the cooler outside of our bodies (3 December 2011, p 50) – hence athlete’s foot, not athlete’s tongue. This suggests a new treatment for the condition: thicker socks.
Last supper
The story on Ötzi the iceman’s last meal (10 December 2011, p 10) provides a chance to correct an error that was also perpetuated in a recent film on the subject.
Both sources implied that the stomach empties in 30 to 60 minutes. This is incorrect. It half-empties in that time, varying from 30 minutes to more than 60. The stomach still contains about one-sixth of its last meal after 2 hours, and is completely empty after about 3 hours. Fat slows gastric emptying.
Ötzi had a meal that appeared to contain a reasonable amount of fat, so his death could have happened up to 4 hours after he consumed it, based on the fact that his stomach was not empty.
Dark hope
Although I enjoyed Stuart Clark’s look at dark matter (7 January, p 30), I couldn’t help being struck by the somewhat blinkered conclusions.
All is not lost if elementary particles do not make up dark matter. Only a few months before, 91av carried a carefully worded feature by Marcus Chown about my own research that makes the case for primordial black holes as dark matter (20 August 2011, p 38).
Turtles all the way
Regarding your ultimate guide to the multiverse (26 November 2011, p 42), it looks like Terry Pratchett was right: somewhere in the multiverse there is Discworld, supported on the backs of four elephants, standing on a giant turtle swimming through space.
Why the rush?
Why, in times of austerity, are scientists around the world rushing to solve the mysteries of the cosmos (7 January, p 8)? If an answer is not found for 200 years it does not matter.
Gaia almighty
Can you please stop using the phrase “save the planet” (17 December 2011, p 28). There is no way the human race can destroy this planet, though this planet can destroy the human race, no problem. In this case, what you meant was “save the human race”, or civilisation, as the story later made clear.
Ice with a twist
Your look at icicles (24/31 December 2011, p 60) reminded me of a spiral form I spotted. It had made one-and-a-half turns by the time I saw it. Water dripped down from an overhang onto a sprig of heather. This was next to a remote lane at a bend where the wind blew constantly, making the heather swirl continually.
It was in Banagher Glen in Londonderry, UK, during the long winter freeze of 1961-1962. I had never seen one before or since, nor indeed have any of my friends. Can writer Michael Brooks confirm the rarity of the spiral icicle?
The editor writes:
• Yes, he can.
From Alan Buckle
Your article mentioned the unexpected ripples on icicles formed from relatively pure tap water, and their absence on those made from distilled water. Wouldn’t this difference be due to the segregation and increasing concentration of dissolved solids as the freeze front advances, the unfrozen liquid having, of course, a lower freezing point due to the presence of this contamination?
Maria Ellend, Austria
The editor writes:
• The researchers think it has something to do with that, yes, but even knowing that, it is not obvious how you would incorporate such an idea into the shape/ripple theory.
A tall tale
The cartoon with the letter “Grounded chimps” in your end-of-year issue (24/31 December 2011, p 43) depicts apes sleeping on the ground, but I sincerely doubt that this progenitor of humans actually had a tail.
After all, neither Lucy, the 3-million-year-old hominid fossil, nor present day chimpanzees, have a tail.
Enigma Number 1682
My niece has been showing me her collection of model ANIMALS. She says that some have CLAWS, some have PAWS, though she does not like their JAWS, and the monkey, like the letter Q, has a tail.
In the box, replace the 10 letters in the four words and one letter that I have written in capitals by numbers, according to alphabetic order a=1, c=3, q=17 etc. The box represents numbers 1 to 25 in some order in a magic square, where each row, column and main diagonal have the same sum.
What numbers represent the letters making up MONKEY?
WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Wednesday 29 February. The Editor’s decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1682, 91av, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to enigma@newscientist.com (please include your postal address).
Answer to 1675 Reversing the square: The five-digit perfect square is 39204
The winner Ian Fletcher of Saxmundham, Suffolk, UK