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Anil Seth breaking a bottle of champagne over the bow of his attempt to explain the physical processes of consciousness and calling it "the real problem" will not make it so ( 4 September, p 44 ). The difference between life and consciousness is that when you take life apart, there turns out to be …

The development of a new coal mine in the UK for coking fuel for steel-making would constitute an embarrassing step in the wrong direction ( 11 September, p 11 ). The possible use of green hydrogen in steel furnaces has been mooted for some time and is soon to be a commercial reality, albeit – …

The UK may not need a new coal mine or even an oil field, as Mark Peplow's comment makes clear ( 4 September, p 17 ), but it may have no option. The Petroleum Act , as amended in 2015, requires the UK to make the maximum profits from fossil fuel deposits in its territory. …

There is an explanation for how a Japanese marketing gimmick came to be the source of the idea that taking 10,000 steps each day is good for you ( 11 September, p 38 ). It may be that 10,000 is an "easy number to remember", but in most European languages, it is no more so …

I read Coline Monchanin and Mathieu Lihoreau's article on heavy metal pollution affecting insects with great interest ( 11 September, p 25 ). Our intestinal microbiome is effectively an enclosed bioreactor susceptible to such substances. Lead residue build-up from leaded petrol would have been worst in inner-city areas during the 1960s and 1970s, and it …

The story "Monkeys navigate using mental maps just like us" states that most animals don't possess mental maps of their surroundings ( 21 August, p 22 ). I beg to differ. We had a dog who had a highly developed mental map of our house and garden: whatever window I threw his ball out of, …

Alice Klein's article shows that a large-scale experiment to capture atmospheric carbon dioxide by seeding part of an ocean with iron to make phytoplankton grow has now, inadvertently, been carried out for us by Australian wildfires, thanks to iron-rich ash seeding the water there ( 18 September, p 8 ). Now, why should we hesitate …

I have to agree with fellow reader Sam Edge ( Letters, 4 September ). It was with some dismay that I watched Great Britain, China, the US, Japan and the Russian Olympic Committee claim medal after medal in the summer Olympics in Tokyo. I even wondered whether any other countries were competing. The games were …

Much of the puzzle of quantum weirdness resolves if we notice that, for example, "collapse of the wave function" is a metaphor (and, I think, an unfortunate one – waves don't collapse, they break on shores and slap into sea walls) ( 28 August, p 34 ). This mean that asking what collapses when the …

I am somewhat worried that I am contributing to climate change since I am apparently farting seven times more on a plant-based diet ( 11 September, p 14 ). Please tell me that my vegetarian lifestyle will, to some extent, offset the damage from my noxious fumes.