- Email: [email protected]
Silver lining
OPINION LETTERS Misplaced faith From Roger Taylor Emanuel Derman’s discussion of the perils of economic modelling was splendid and timely (22 October, p 32). But a “dark love of inappropriate scientific elegance and scientism” is not just a worm at the heart of economics; it has chewed away the brains of the gullible politicians and lazy journalists who blithely accept the “will of the markets” as reflected in various stockexchange indices. To say, as Derman does, that “no model… can tell how any… share price will perform” is a euphemism for “these fools think that there is software that will foretell the future”. Modern traders are gamblers and every bit as foolish as alchemists and astrologers, yet they are given almost Delphic credence. Meols, Wirral, UK
No conspiracy From Matt Carmichael I was delighted to discover an authoritative analysis of exactly
who the “markets” are that we are all so beholden to (22 October, p 8). However, as someone who has been involved in many gatherings of so-called anti-capitalists, it was a shame the story resorted to clichéd caricature by suggesting such protesters believe in a corporate “conspiracy to rule the world”. In my experience, demonstrators at these protests are far better informed. The anarchists have read Kropotkin, the Marxists have a touching faith in every line Marx wrote and a good many, such as the Keynesians and the steady-staters, are not anti-capitalist at all, but seek a radical revision of capitalism. It is precisely because the economic flaws are structural, and not the result of cheating or even secretly playing the system, that we need a new structure. Leeds, UK
Peace is with us From Ernest Ager Steven Pinker is correct in his assessment that violence has reduced through the ages
attraction factor” – the number of others with whom an individual can closely bond – and the “socialcompetition factor”, or the number of others from whom an individual can tolerate competition. Boulder, Colorado, US
(15 October, p 30). He is also correct in regarding the human toll of the second world war as a historical “outlier”. A major reason why so many were killed was the introduction of technology that made it possible. Does anyone seriously think that if Genghis Khan had had machine guns, heavy bombers, or atomic bombs, he would not have used them? The decline in violence is best seen as a genuine reduction in the propensity to inflict violence. We live in a less violent world because fewer people wish to settle things by violence, and if violence occurs there is an ever greater revulsion to it. Exmouth, Devon, UK
Enigma Number 1672
Wolf smarts
Heptagony
From Marc Bekoff, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado A recent model of how wolves might hunt is misleading, and adds little to what is known (22 October, p 11). It suggests that cooperation is not needed for successful hunting, but is based on faulty assumptions: that wolves hunt with other wolves at some set distance from prey; and that they don’t communicate while hunting. Also, there is nothing new about the additional conclusion that pack size is not related to communal hunting. More than 40 years ago, L. David Mech, in his book The Wolf, reported that pack size is limited by the “social-
ADRIAN SOMERFIELD I was surfing the internet recently, and found a reference to polygonal numbers. These are series such as the triangular numbers, pentagonal numbers and others, including the series of heptagonal numbers, which starts 1, 7, 18, 34… I asked my nephew to tell me the next member of this series, which he said was 55. Later he told me that he had found a set of five consecutive heptagonal numbers, all less than two million, where the difference between the first and last was divisible by all of the digits 1 to 9. One of the intermediate heptagonal numbers in this set was divisible by just four of these digits. What was this heptagonal number? WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Wednesday 14 December. The Editor’s decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1672, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected] (please include your postal address). Answer to 1666 Siblings to infinity: Monday is 257149 The winner Susan Llewellyn of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK
The editor writes: n The research we reported did not so much assume that communication is not required, but showed, by simulating packs of various sizes, that it is not a necessary assumption.
Silver lining? From John Crowhurst Michael Le Page’s report on climate change (22 October, p 36) was informative. However, like many such synopses and books on the subject, little was said about cloud formation, intensity and feedback effects with respect to temperature. It has always seemed reasonable to me that if average temperatures increase, so too does ocean evaporation. Therefore in temperate regions at least, and probably also in the tropics, more water vapour in the air would mean more clouds, which would shade them from further solar heating. What then will happen to cloud formation and cover with climate change? Adelaide, South Australia The editor writes: n A wetter atmosphere does not necessarily mean more clouds, since clouds are less likely to form in warmer air. And depending on the time of day, their height and so on, clouds can either have a cooling effect or a warming effect. Much uncertainty remains about these effects and how they will change as the planet warms. However, since the planet has warmed whenever greenhouse gas levels have risen in the past, a strong negative feedback (cooling effect) can be ruled out. Recent 12 November 2011 | NewScientist | 35
OPINION LETTERS studies and modelling suggest there is in fact a strong positive feedback effect (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.325_376).
The smog clears From Edward Jones So climate-change modellers have realised the pre-industrial atmosphere was cleaner (22 October, p 16). In modern parlance: Duh! Newton Longville, Buckinghamshire, UK
Fax us up, Scotty From Allan French It used to be that teleportation meant transferring an object from one place to another: Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, for example. Now, it seems it is copying information describing one object onto a similar object in another place. Marcus Chown, in his look at time travel, writes that: “For years now, quantum physicists have been ‘teleporting’ particles by copying the information that describes a particle and pasting it onto another, distant one” (8 October, p 50). Isn’t that what fax machines do? Redmond, Washington, US From Martin Savage Marcus Chown is wrong when he says the door to time travel is still firmly open. The examples he gives are not really time travel, but sideways travel in time. According to Einstein’s theory, when you take the elevator from your penthouse down to the lobby you don’t go backwards in time, but to a place where time is passing, relatively, more slowly. Pattaya, Thailand
(22 October, p 34) because the present is infinitesimal. If that were so, then much of modern mathematics would have to go. Newton had to bypass that proposal to create the infinitesimal calculus. An infinite number of infinitesimals has existence, even if one of them doesn’t. Bendigo, Victoria, Australia
The enemy within? From Sara Pascoe I was interested to read Saranya Srinivasan’s findings about accidental shootings of children in the US (22 October, p 6). It has long intrigued me that such facts do not change the American electorate’s blind love of guns. There have been considerably more firearm suicides than firearm homicides in the US every year for decades. So this would seem to mean that when we Americans bang on about our “right to own guns”, we are statistically arguing for the right to kill ourselves. Bournemouth, Dorset, UK
Big Ben From Ralph Hancock I was surprised that none of Feedback’s correspondents realised the meaning of “bigger than Ben-Hur” (29 October). It does not refer to the size of the production or the budget, but to the poster for the film, in which the letters BEN-HUR are formed
To join the debate, visit newscientist.com/letters
into a mountain-sized block of stone: see bit.ly/ben-hur. London, UK
Pasta maths From Tom Radford I was struck by the similarities between the pasta shapes shown in Richard Webb’s article on their mathematical interpretation (15 October, p 48) and some shells of foraminifera, a type of single-celled marine planktonic animal. It has always seemed that the latter are constrained not only by environmental conditions but also by mathematical equations. Foraminifera are a boon to palaeontologists as identifiers of geological strata and ancient environments. I would have expected that one would be able to measure a fossil shell and match it to a set of equations from which critical parameters could be calculated. Then the species can immediately be identified and its environment deduced. Currently, this is done by the trained eye of a palaeontologist. If the mathematical relationships could be outlined, it would be of critical value to science. Esher, Surrey, UK
Price points From Keith Steer Jeff Hecht correctly says the $4000 cellphone used by Gordon Gekko dates the movie Wall Street – it now looks so unwieldy (15 October, p 39). I am curious to know how much the entire truckload of components you list for a “1980s iPhone” would have cost. Plymouth, Devon, UK
Infinitesimal present
Fighting the flab
From Michael Grounds Time doesn’t exist, according to a letter from Bill Summers
From Justine Cook Is a “fat tax” and government regulation of food corporations
36 | NewScientist | 12 November 2011
enough to combat global obesity (22 October, p 30)? Neither attacks the heart of the problem – the attitude of the consumer. People need to be educated if we are to prevent the alarming levels of obesity forecast. For example, in the UK 60 per cent of men, 50 per cent of women and 25 per cent of children are predicted to be obese by 2050.
Starting such education at school could transform unhealthy attitudes. The question of whether people would listen to such advice is, of course, another matter. Canterbury, Kent, UK
For the record n When we referred to “environmental lobbyists… based in Ottawa, Canadia” (8 October, p 7) we should really have used the country’s real name, which is Canada. n We inexplicably wrote “100 miles per gallon (85 kilometres per litre)” (15 October, p 23). A hundred miles per imperial gallon is best expressed as 2.8 litres per 100 km (which is 35 km/litre). n Feedback misspelled the name of the conjoined twins Rital and Ritag Gaboura (22 October). Sorry. Letters should be sent to: Letters to the Editor, New Scientist, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 Email: [email protected] Include your full postal address and telephone number, and a reference (issue, page number, title) to articles. We reserve the right to edit letters. Reed Business Information reserves the right to use any submissions sent to the letters column of New Scientist magazine, in any other format.
No conspiracy From Matt Carmichael I was delighted to discover an authoritative analysis of exactly
who the “markets” are that we are all so beholden to (22 October, p 8). However, as someone who has been involved in many gatherings of so-called anti-capitalists, it was a shame the story resorted to clichéd caricature by suggesting such protesters believe in a corporate “conspiracy to rule the world”. In my experience, demonstrators at these protests are far better informed. The anarchists have read Kropotkin, the Marxists have a touching faith in every line Marx wrote and a good many, such as the Keynesians and the steady-staters, are not anti-capitalist at all, but seek a radical revision of capitalism. It is precisely because the economic flaws are structural, and not the result of cheating or even secretly playing the system, that we need a new structure. Leeds, UK
Peace is with us From Ernest Ager Steven Pinker is correct in his assessment that violence has reduced through the ages
attraction factor” – the number of others with whom an individual can closely bond – and the “socialcompetition factor”, or the number of others from whom an individual can tolerate competition. Boulder, Colorado, US
(15 October, p 30). He is also correct in regarding the human toll of the second world war as a historical “outlier”. A major reason why so many were killed was the introduction of technology that made it possible. Does anyone seriously think that if Genghis Khan had had machine guns, heavy bombers, or atomic bombs, he would not have used them? The decline in violence is best seen as a genuine reduction in the propensity to inflict violence. We live in a less violent world because fewer people wish to settle things by violence, and if violence occurs there is an ever greater revulsion to it. Exmouth, Devon, UK
Enigma Number 1672
Wolf smarts
Heptagony
From Marc Bekoff, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado A recent model of how wolves might hunt is misleading, and adds little to what is known (22 October, p 11). It suggests that cooperation is not needed for successful hunting, but is based on faulty assumptions: that wolves hunt with other wolves at some set distance from prey; and that they don’t communicate while hunting. Also, there is nothing new about the additional conclusion that pack size is not related to communal hunting. More than 40 years ago, L. David Mech, in his book The Wolf, reported that pack size is limited by the “social-
ADRIAN SOMERFIELD I was surfing the internet recently, and found a reference to polygonal numbers. These are series such as the triangular numbers, pentagonal numbers and others, including the series of heptagonal numbers, which starts 1, 7, 18, 34… I asked my nephew to tell me the next member of this series, which he said was 55. Later he told me that he had found a set of five consecutive heptagonal numbers, all less than two million, where the difference between the first and last was divisible by all of the digits 1 to 9. One of the intermediate heptagonal numbers in this set was divisible by just four of these digits. What was this heptagonal number? WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Wednesday 14 December. The Editor’s decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1672, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected] (please include your postal address). Answer to 1666 Siblings to infinity: Monday is 257149 The winner Susan Llewellyn of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK
The editor writes: n The research we reported did not so much assume that communication is not required, but showed, by simulating packs of various sizes, that it is not a necessary assumption.
Silver lining? From John Crowhurst Michael Le Page’s report on climate change (22 October, p 36) was informative. However, like many such synopses and books on the subject, little was said about cloud formation, intensity and feedback effects with respect to temperature. It has always seemed reasonable to me that if average temperatures increase, so too does ocean evaporation. Therefore in temperate regions at least, and probably also in the tropics, more water vapour in the air would mean more clouds, which would shade them from further solar heating. What then will happen to cloud formation and cover with climate change? Adelaide, South Australia The editor writes: n A wetter atmosphere does not necessarily mean more clouds, since clouds are less likely to form in warmer air. And depending on the time of day, their height and so on, clouds can either have a cooling effect or a warming effect. Much uncertainty remains about these effects and how they will change as the planet warms. However, since the planet has warmed whenever greenhouse gas levels have risen in the past, a strong negative feedback (cooling effect) can be ruled out. Recent 12 November 2011 | NewScientist | 35
OPINION LETTERS studies and modelling suggest there is in fact a strong positive feedback effect (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.325_376).
The smog clears From Edward Jones So climate-change modellers have realised the pre-industrial atmosphere was cleaner (22 October, p 16). In modern parlance: Duh! Newton Longville, Buckinghamshire, UK
Fax us up, Scotty From Allan French It used to be that teleportation meant transferring an object from one place to another: Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, for example. Now, it seems it is copying information describing one object onto a similar object in another place. Marcus Chown, in his look at time travel, writes that: “For years now, quantum physicists have been ‘teleporting’ particles by copying the information that describes a particle and pasting it onto another, distant one” (8 October, p 50). Isn’t that what fax machines do? Redmond, Washington, US From Martin Savage Marcus Chown is wrong when he says the door to time travel is still firmly open. The examples he gives are not really time travel, but sideways travel in time. According to Einstein’s theory, when you take the elevator from your penthouse down to the lobby you don’t go backwards in time, but to a place where time is passing, relatively, more slowly. Pattaya, Thailand
(22 October, p 34) because the present is infinitesimal. If that were so, then much of modern mathematics would have to go. Newton had to bypass that proposal to create the infinitesimal calculus. An infinite number of infinitesimals has existence, even if one of them doesn’t. Bendigo, Victoria, Australia
The enemy within? From Sara Pascoe I was interested to read Saranya Srinivasan’s findings about accidental shootings of children in the US (22 October, p 6). It has long intrigued me that such facts do not change the American electorate’s blind love of guns. There have been considerably more firearm suicides than firearm homicides in the US every year for decades. So this would seem to mean that when we Americans bang on about our “right to own guns”, we are statistically arguing for the right to kill ourselves. Bournemouth, Dorset, UK
Big Ben From Ralph Hancock I was surprised that none of Feedback’s correspondents realised the meaning of “bigger than Ben-Hur” (29 October). It does not refer to the size of the production or the budget, but to the poster for the film, in which the letters BEN-HUR are formed
To join the debate, visit newscientist.com/letters
into a mountain-sized block of stone: see bit.ly/ben-hur. London, UK
Pasta maths From Tom Radford I was struck by the similarities between the pasta shapes shown in Richard Webb’s article on their mathematical interpretation (15 October, p 48) and some shells of foraminifera, a type of single-celled marine planktonic animal. It has always seemed that the latter are constrained not only by environmental conditions but also by mathematical equations. Foraminifera are a boon to palaeontologists as identifiers of geological strata and ancient environments. I would have expected that one would be able to measure a fossil shell and match it to a set of equations from which critical parameters could be calculated. Then the species can immediately be identified and its environment deduced. Currently, this is done by the trained eye of a palaeontologist. If the mathematical relationships could be outlined, it would be of critical value to science. Esher, Surrey, UK
Price points From Keith Steer Jeff Hecht correctly says the $4000 cellphone used by Gordon Gekko dates the movie Wall Street – it now looks so unwieldy (15 October, p 39). I am curious to know how much the entire truckload of components you list for a “1980s iPhone” would have cost. Plymouth, Devon, UK
Infinitesimal present
Fighting the flab
From Michael Grounds Time doesn’t exist, according to a letter from Bill Summers
From Justine Cook Is a “fat tax” and government regulation of food corporations
36 | NewScientist | 12 November 2011
enough to combat global obesity (22 October, p 30)? Neither attacks the heart of the problem – the attitude of the consumer. People need to be educated if we are to prevent the alarming levels of obesity forecast. For example, in the UK 60 per cent of men, 50 per cent of women and 25 per cent of children are predicted to be obese by 2050.
Starting such education at school could transform unhealthy attitudes. The question of whether people would listen to such advice is, of course, another matter. Canterbury, Kent, UK
For the record n When we referred to “environmental lobbyists… based in Ottawa, Canadia” (8 October, p 7) we should really have used the country’s real name, which is Canada. n We inexplicably wrote “100 miles per gallon (85 kilometres per litre)” (15 October, p 23). A hundred miles per imperial gallon is best expressed as 2.8 litres per 100 km (which is 35 km/litre). n Feedback misspelled the name of the conjoined twins Rital and Ritag Gaboura (22 October). Sorry. Letters should be sent to: Letters to the Editor, New Scientist, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 Email: [email protected] Include your full postal address and telephone number, and a reference (issue, page number, title) to articles. We reserve the right to edit letters. Reed Business Information reserves the right to use any submissions sent to the letters column of New Scientist magazine, in any other format.