New Scientist - USA (2013-06-08)

30 | NewScientist | 8 June 2013

Martian holiday

From Brian Horton

In your look at how to build a

colony on Mars (18 May, p 8), it

was suggested that finding a

resource to trade with Earth

would be essential for its survival.

Yet Mars is unlikely to supply

unique goods, so any colony

should concentrate on tourism

instead. Some people would

pay any amount for six-star

accommodation, while

backpackers could work as cabin

crew en route, and then in the

proposed greenhouses picking

lettuces.

Of course, Mars would be in

competition with the moon,

which could offer much shorter –

and cheaper – holidays, but Mars

would have more interesting

weather.

West Launceston,

Tasmania, Australia

From Alwyne Kennedy

To my knowledge, all this talk

of colonising Mars has never

touched on one very possible

downside: war. Here on Earth,

even neighbouring countries with

the same ethnic and religious

mix will take up arms against one

another. How much more likely

would it be for populations

separated by millions of

kilometres to come to look upon

each other as foreign devils?

Very likely, especially if the

colony became self-sustaining,

with its population swelled

by Mars-born generations

wanting independence from

their imperial masters. Any

emerging independent Martian

government would seek military

superiority over its only known

neighbour: Earth.

London, UK

Crime network

From Chris James

A system that uses random

strangers sourced from the

twittersphere to deliver parcels

in relays (18 May, p 17) sounds like

a dream for terrorists and drug

smugglers. It won’t catch on.

Winchester, Hampshire, UK

Nuclear needs

From Bernard Ingham, secretary,

Supporters of Nuclear Energy

Jochen Flasbarth’s article

outlining a future free of nuclear

power (18 May, p 24) was as

hubristic about Germany’s energy

future as environmentalists are

hysterical about global warming.

Germany has far from proved it

can do without nuclear power.

We shall only know if it can when

(and if) its government kills the

industry stone dead, as is slated

to occur in 2022, and we see how

much nuclear energy Germany

then imports from its neighbours.

My understanding is that

German industry is, to say the

least, worried about the security

of its electricity supply as the

nation increasingly relies on wind

and solar power. The cost of power

is also a concern, and companies

are reportedly planning to

relocate to the US. German energy

policy, like that of other European

nations, could serve only to

de-industrialise the continent.

Purley, Surrey, UK

Red alert

From Keith Hiscock, associate

fellow at the Marine Biological

Association of the UK

Your editorial suggests it would

be better to rebuild damaged

ecosystems to incorporate human

activity, rather than rewind them

to how they were before we

started meddling (18 May, p 3).

But we shouldn’t yet throw in the

towel for most seabed ecosystems.

Many are close to their natural

state and those that are exploited

are not manipulated by humans

to the same degree as terrestrial

ecosystems. Many will rebound if

damaging pressures are removed.

For those that are damaged

or threatened, I fear we will end

up with a few well-studied ones

in the International Union for

the Conservation of Nature’s

proposed Red List of Ecosystems,

while most will fall into the

“data deficient” dustbin. As with

the Red List for species, policy

advisors and politicians will only

pay attention to ecosystems on

the list and not to those without

the requisite quantitative

information on rarity or decline.

Plymouth, Devon, UK

Cosmic compendium

From Alexander Middleton

Your recent look at string theory

addressed its potential to

overcome the problem of

Boltzmann brains – spontaneous

conscious entities that physicists

predict could form by chance in

our universe given a vast amount

of time (25 May, p 12). But if the

universe is destined to fill up

with something that the laws of

physics don’t rule out, it could be

anything, not just space brains.

I expect to see much less

complex (and so more probable)

things sooner, such as Penny

Black postage stamps or rubber

chickens. Or trillions of monkeys

with typewriters who will produce

not only the complete works of

Shakespeare, but a much fuller

version, featuring all the plays

and sonnets that Shakespeare

didn’t have time to write.

Moorooka, Queensland, Australia

Dark thoughts

From Maarten van Burgt

Sometimes I wonder what’s in a

name. Doesn’t the fact that there

is so much talk about dark energy

and dark matter (11 May, p 32)

imply that we have no idea what

is going on in the universe?

Maybe one answer will come

from gravitational tests with

antihydrogen atoms at CERN near

Geneva in Switzerland (Nature

Enigma Number 1752

OPINION LETTERS

WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct

answer opened on Wednesday 3 July. The Editor’s decision is final.

Please send entries to Enigma 1752, New Scientist, Lacon House,

84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected]

(please include your postal address).

Answer to 1746 Square in common: They both chose 3721

The winner Siu Loong Leong, New York, US

SUSAN DENHAM

I have drawn a circle, marked five

points around its circumference,

and joined each to the next by a

straight line in order to make a

pentagon. It turns out that the

centre of the circle is outside this

pentagon. I have then measured,

in degrees, the five interior angles

of the pentagon. The five numbers

are all different and all but the

smallest are perfect squares.

What is the smallest angle and

what are the angles on either side

of the smallest one?

Pentagon of squares

130608_Op_Letters.indd 30 31/5/13 16:12:47