Letters archive

I am curious to know what will happen if my mind is melded to that of a bat, a prospect raised in Rowan Hooper's latest imagined history of future inventions. Will I fall in love with its mate, crave insects and become nocturnal and fearful of owls? Will I get motion sickness when its senses …

Since the effects of an illness are easily compounded by the psychosomatic pain of thinking it is worse than it actually is, there may be a reasonable explanation for finding that a placebo works even if you know you are taking it. Maybe just knowing a doctor thinks you are well enough to take a …

Graham Lawton's piece on the failure of governments and corporations to support climate action was sad, but unsurprising, reading. Perhaps the best way to encourage private individuals to take practical action is to lead by example: the people telling us what we should be doing could be seen to do those things. When will we …

I read "Time for a new model of the universe", which reported findings on dark matter that throw our current cosmological model into doubt. Last year, I was at a meeting at the Royal Society. In summary, it found serious discrepancies in the theory of dark energy. This was a top-level meeting with many leading …

Brandon Jutras's hoped-for trial of the antibiotic piperacillin for human Lyme disease may rely on finding a sufficient cohort of people who get an early diagnosis. Many don't, leaving them at risk of an incomplete treatment response. Moreover, it is concerning that the antibiotic primarily used now, doxycycline, could have been replaced with a superior, …

I enjoyed David Robson's advice to the reader who worried about being gullible. He is right to point out that we are generally unable to tell if someone is lying in casual conversation. The reader might also be reassured by research showing that even those whom we might expect to be better at this, like …

I share no glee in the story of a Peruvian farmer suing a fossil fuel firm. The logic of suing such companies for climate change damage is the same as going after arms manufacturers for deaths caused by their weapons. The person who pulls the trigger causing a death is the principal offender. The average …

Your report on the effect of air quality on school attendance highlights the possible impact of particulate matter on children's health. Another factor to consider is the carbon dioxide level in the classroom. Research indicates cognitive abilities can decrease by 15 per cent at 1000 ppm of CO 2 and potentially 50 per cent at …

Martin Edwardes's letter, about "laggy" communications in space, got me thinking. Is anyone working on using instantaneous quantum entanglement for this? Mars can be up to 22 light minutes away – a disaster for real-time exchange( Letters, 3 May ).

Apparently all living things emit an eerie glow that is snuffed out upon death. Presumably this also applies to deep-sea creatures that otherwise live in total darkness( 17 May, p 11 ). The question is, can this faint light be perceived by predators at that depth, to help them find prey?