Feedback is 麻豆传媒鈥檚 popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com
听
Advertisement
Even stranger things
In common, it seems, with a substantial fraction of the human species, Feedback spent part of our holiday watching the final episodes of Stranger Things. We laughed, we cried, we wondered if it would have even more endings than The Return of the King (it did).
As is almost inevitable these days, a group of fans vocally disliked the finale, and went so far as to create a conspiracy theory about it. According to (don鈥檛 blame us, we didn鈥檛 name it), the finale wasn鈥檛 the real finale 鈥� despite lasting more than 2 hours, costing an enormous amount of money and being shown in cinemas. No, a was going to air in January, which would reveal the true ending. The evidence for this principally consisted of some , all supposedly hints that everything we saw was an illusion created by the mind-controlling villain Vecna.
Feedback was confident that this was silly even before the supposed extra episode failed to emerge. Not least because the people critiquing the finale were making the wrong critiques. Who cares about the school鈥檚 graduation gowns being the wrong colour, when the show鈥檚 entire set-up defies physics?
For those who didn鈥檛 watch, Stranger Things is set in a town in Indiana, where a government lab has been doing dodgy experiments. This 鈥� and there are spoilers ahead, so consider this your warning 鈥� has opened gateways to 鈥渢he Upside Down鈥�, a sort of nasty parallel dimension where another version of the town exists, but everything is mouldy. It eventually transpires that the Upside Down is a wormhole: a gateway to yet another dimension called the Abyss.
So if the Upside Down is a wormhole, what is the red wibbly-wobbly swirly thing hovering in the sky? This gets described as a wormhole, and someone says it contains 鈥渆xotic matter鈥�, which is the hypothetical substance that would have to exist to stabilise a real wormhole (and which probably doesn鈥檛 exist). This is doubly odd, because the passage to the Abyss is in the sky of the Upside Down.
Feedback has been thinking about this for weeks and we cannot work out what the wibbly-wobbly swirly thing is doing there. We also cannot work out why shooting it with a gun causes all nearby matter to liquefy, but blowing it up with explosives destroys the entirety of the Upside Down. And we also cannot work out why destroying this huge wormhole doesn鈥檛 release enough energy to wipe out most of the eastern seaboard.
Perhaps the Conformity Gate theorists could turn their attention to solving the physics of the Upside Down. A Nobel prize, or at least an Ig Nobel, could be in the offing.
听
Sparkle sports
What could be more fun than going to a sports match: being part of a crowd, cheering your players along? Well, what if you were part of a crowd, cheering your players along, while drinking sparkling water? That might be more fun.
Reporter Alice Klein spotted a study about an experiment showing that spectators at a collegiate women鈥檚 basketball game enjoyed the game more, and felt greater 鈥減erceived unity鈥� with the crowd, if they had drunk some sparkling water, as opposed to still water. 鈥淐o-consuming sparkling water serves as an alcohol-free, low-burden ritual to enhance social connection during and after live sport events,鈥� the authors said.
Alice described this as 鈥渞idiculous鈥�, to which news editor Jacob Aron retorted: 鈥淭hey studied a whole 40 people, what more do you want?鈥� Readers can make their own judgement as to whether this evidence is convincing. However, Feedback does want to draw readers鈥� attention to the 鈥淐ompeting interests鈥� statement on the paper, on which we will make no comment whatsoever, and which reads as follows:
鈥淭his study was funded by the Asahi Soft Drinks Co., Ltd. W.K. and S.M. are employees of Asahi Soft Drinks Co., Ltd. The authors declare that this has not influenced the research design, methodology, analysis, or interpretation of the results of this study. The sponsor had no control over the interpretation, writing, or publication of this work.鈥�
听
Prime bloopers
Reader Peter Brooker wrote in to ask if Feedback could start a new section called 鈥淎I Bloopers鈥�. He was moved to suggest this after checking a puzzle entry on 鈥渁 popular search engine鈥�, only for its AI tool to confidently inform him that the first six prime numbers were 2, 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11.
Feedback feels that we have been running this section for some time already, just without an official title. In fact (and here we can give you a little glimpse behind the curtain), we have a recurring conversation with our editor about how often to feature AIs messing up like this. We could fill the whole column with AI bloopers every week, but we worry it would get repetitive.
Still, in the spirit of Peter鈥檚 request, we must tell you that the new chancellor of Ghent University, Petra De Sutter, used a in the role. It contained quotes from Albert Einstein, which the AI had hallucinated.
To quote The Brussels Times: 鈥淲hat鈥檚 striking is that De Sutter herself referred to the dangers of AI in her speech. She warned that we should 鈥榥ot blindly trust鈥� the output of AI tools and that AI-generated texts 鈥榓re not always easy to distinguish from original works.'鈥�
听
Got a story for Feedback?
You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week鈥檚 and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.
