Letters archive
Join the conversation in Âé¶¹´«Ã½'s Letters section, where readers can share their thoughts and opinions on articles and see responses from experts and enthusiasts across a range of science topics. To submit a letter, please see our terms and email letters@newscientist.com
29 May 2019
From Jon Stone, Amanda Payne, Jamie Lacelle and Mark Edwards, Edinburgh, UK
Your recent article on functional neurological disorder shed welcome light on a common, disabling and distressing condition ( 6 April, p 28 ). But, as patients and health professionals who participated in the article, we felt let down and upset by the choice of titles in the printed version: "Mind over matter – How you …
29 May 2019
From Hans Christensen, Copenhagen, Denmark
You discuss big questions that we still must answer after making the first image of a black hole system ( 20 April, p 6 ). One of the mysteries, for me, is how the shadow of the black hole appears. I realise that the halo of radiation around the black hole itself is asymmetrical because …
5 June 2019
From Iain Climie, Whitchurch, Hampshire, UK
Population growth poses problems, but the solutions are far from simple ( 25 May, p 24 ). For example, China's one child policy has misfired because of a preference for boys, and its population is now disproportionately elderly. Even if we were to halt world population at its current level, it may not help much …
5 June 2019
From Mary Z. Fuka, Gainesville, Florida, US
Adam Vaughan's article implies that older people use more energy, but the study quoted only looks at residential energy consumption ( 25 May, p 9 ). This doesn't include energy consumed outside the home – at work, school, while commuting, shopping or during any other activity that many people in the US under 60 engage …
5 June 2019
From Sam Edge, Ringwood, Hampshire, UK
Yvaine Ye reports on doctors in China using 5G internet to do surgery from afar ( 13 April, p 8 ). A video data stream delivered by a mobile phone signal will still have travelled most of the way between the cities of Guangzhou and Gaozhou over conventional, land-based copper and optical fibre cables. No …
5 June 2019
From Dave Holtum, Bath, UK
Richard Webb's comment that "Apollo missions were launched on little more computing power than is found inside a smartphone" somewhat underestimates progress in computing speed since 1969 ( 18 May, p 25 ). Smartphones are more than 100 million times faster than an IBM 360 mainframe, which was probably the fastest computer that NASA had. …
5 June 2019
From Perry Bebbington, Kimberley, Nottinghamshire, UK
The graph accompanying your report on renewable energy illustrates how far we are from having enough storage capacity to cover times when there is little or no wind or solar generation ( 18 May, p 15 ). There is a big dip to almost zero between 6 and 7 May, with consumption at about 25 …
5 June 2019
From Graham Hodgson, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, UK
You report "a recently discovered group of ultra small bacteria" ( 13 April, p 28 ). One of my tutors at the University of Birmingham, UK, in the mid-60s was Phyllis Pease, who was researching pleuropneumonia-like organisms, spheroplasts and L-forms, which later became known as cell wall-deficient organisms. These are typically parasitic, with reduced genomes …
5 June 2019
From David Grimaldi, New York, US
Graham Lawton unveils a monstrous situation surrounding the mining and sale of amber in Myanmar ( 4 May, p 38 ). If amber sales are funding bloodshed there, then a strict boycott of Burmese amber is absolutely necessary.
5 June 2019
From Martin Gregorie, Harlow, Essex, UK
You describe proposals for a space-wide web and mention the problem of space junk in orbit ( 4 May, p 44 ). But won't adding more than 15,000 satellites to low Earth orbit, used in crewed space flight and traversed by other launches, cause problems by making the selection of safe launch windows much more …