CONVERSATION
YOUR OPINIONS ON SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND BBC SCIENCE FOCUS
LETTER OF THE MONTH
New fan
If you had asked me six months ago to read BBC Science Focus magazine, I would have laughed, politely, but with genuine hilarity at the idea!
But for my father, in his late 70s, this magazine has offered him a lifeline of stimulating and challenging reading to keep his ‘little grey cells’ active.
Having passed the magazines on to me for months, I finally picked them up and struggle to put them down! So now, as Dad and I meet for our weekly lunches, I am able to meet his enthusiasm for the latest discoveries with equal awe and wonder.
As a visual learner, I really appreciate the accessibility of the information, recently described by reader Dr Ron Barnes in April’s issue as “trendy units”.
Please don’t lose these comparative measures, think of those of us who are less academic! Not because I’m ‘trendy’ – heaven forbid – I’m just perfectly able to imagine the vastness of lakes and colossal entities as football pitches and elephants.
WRITE IN AND WIN!
The writer of next issue’s Letter Of The Month wins a GameSir X2 Bluetooth Wireless Mobile Game Controller. Both iOS and Android devices are supported: simply lock your phone into the controller to transform your mobile gaming into a more traditional handheld experience.
Happiness from music
In the April issue, one article stated that listening to music can make you feel happy, whereas the following article said that a fabric is being researched that is so sensitive that it could be used for hearing.
Hearing aids just amplify sounds and tones, making some music, especially classical, so awful as to make it not worth listening to.
Hopefully this new fabric – by using an entirely different approach to loss of hearing – will give those with this disability a better alternative.
Treasures on the Moon
I was surprised to read in your article ‘The race for the Moon’ (April issue) that the metals known as rare earths are so-called because of their scarcity, especially given that a 2014 BBC article was headlined ‘Rare earths: neither rare nor earths’. This kind of sloppy and unchecked reporting debases the whole concept of what should be a reliable review of scientific activity.
Although fairly abundant, it’s getting hold of rare earth metals that is tricky. In many ores, concentration levels of rare earths are so low, and so unevenly distributed throughout the crust, that to extract and process them is expensive, time-consuming and damaging to the environment. Once processed, only tiny amounts are needed. So, as you quite correctly pointed out, the BBC News article from 2014 is correct, and the term ‘rare earth’ is somewhat of a misnomer, although they are scarce in pure form and the name arises from the rarity of the minerals from which they were isolated.
Star or sphere?
In your article about the signs of alien life (February issue), your author made a mistake.
Tabby’s Star dims due to an uneven ring of dust orbiting the star, not due to dust in our Solar System, as was stated in the article. Excess dimming in ultraviolet (UV) compared to infrared (IR) suggests that dust is responsible (fine dust preferentially blocks UV over IR).
I’ve been following developments on Tabby’s Star, as for a while it looked like the most likely candidate for a partial Dyson sphere or other large structure in orbit around the star. Plus, as an F-type main sequence star, it is a prime candidate for having developed a stable set of planets and an alien civilisation.
You are correct. The most likely location of dust responsible for the dimming of Tabby’s Star is in orbit around the star itself. It is also true that it is difficult to explain all the details of the complex pattern of stellar dimming with any dust model so far proposed. The instinct of all astronomers, however, is to exhaust all possible natural explanations for an anomaly before accepting an ET explanation.
Oops!
Well, this is embarrassing. A few of you noticed that in the April issue, one of our Eye Openers said that blue light has a longer wavelength than red and orange light. This should have read as: “Sunlight is scattered by molecules in the atmosphere, and short-wavelength blue light is scattered most strongly. When there is dust in the air, there’s more scattering of blue light, which means that more of the longer wavelength red and orange light makes it through.”
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