BBC Focus 02.2020

CONVERSATION

[email protected]

BBC Science Focus, Eagle House, Colston

Avenue, Bristol, BS1 4ST

@sciencefocus

http://www.facebook.com/sciencefocus

@bbcsciencefocus

CONVERSATION

YOUR OPINIONS ON SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND BBC SCIENCE FOCUS

“Admiedly prey spot on

• if you told 12-year-old me
  that the Freya of today has
  never owned a TV, she’d
  wonder where I went
  wrong.”

Freya Whiteford

(@rooksoup), via Twier

“Customised travel data

isn’t at all a bad shout, but

in the real 2020 I just get

push notifications on my

phone about Glasgow

traic to me, noted

pedestrian.”

In the first issue of 2010,

we made predictions

about what life in 10 years’

time would be like. You

can read the article at

bit.ly/2020_world

Freya Whiteford was 12

when she stashed away a

copy of the magazine, and

in January 2020 she took

to Twier to reveal

how accurate we were.

eating period. Evidence suggests it’s

beer to have most of your calories

earlier in the day – he has dinner at

6pm, finishes eating by 6:30pm and

doesn’t eat again until 8:30am.

Dr Michael Mosley, BBC Science Focus

columnist

Universally speaking

In the December issue, physicist Fay

Dowker explained four-dimensional

space-time (p74). Has anyone ever

created an experiment where the

three physical directions are not

changing, only time? To do this you

would presumably have to be

compensating for the movement of

the Earth, the Solar System, the

Galaxy and, maybe, the expansion of

the Universe?

Tim Bates, via email

Cosmologically speaking, there is no

such thing as ‘staying still’. You can

only define something as moving

relative to something else, and in fact

this is fundamental to our

understanding of physics: many

physical laws rely on the idea that

there is no special point in the

Universe where you can stand and be

‘still’ with everything else moving

around you. So yes, you can create an

experiment that stays still but

changes in time, but only if you

accept that it won’t look still to

someone standing on the Moon.

Sara Rigby, BBC Science Focus online

assistant

Oops...

In the January issue (p87), we said

that 57,000 hermit crabs had been

killed. This should have been 570,000.

Old hat?

Reading ‘Why positivity is overrated’

(December, p77) I was suddenly

reminded of the poem IF by Rudyard

Kipling wrien in 1895. The second

verse goes: “If you can dream – and

not make dreams your master;

If you can think – and not make

thoughts your aim.” There you have, in

a couple of lines, what has taken Dr

Gabrielle Oeingen 20 years of

research to discover. Perhaps the good

doctor should read more poetry?

Kipling was well aware of this 125

years ago. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

George Ford, Durham, via email

Live fast

I’ve been reading Dr Michael Mosley’s

column for some time and find it

fascinating. I also recently read his

book, The Fast Diet, which blew my

mind. I’ve been following a Time

Restricted Eating (TRE) schedule for a

few months – six days only eating in a

four-hour window, and on the seventh

day I can eat whatever, whenever. I

was amused when I read in Michael’s

January column (p62) about the TRE

study published recently, which

involved a 10-hour window – “Man

up!” I thought ;)

My question is, what is the optimal

TRE schedule? In an ideal world,

should we eat a single meal per day?

Or one 14,000 calorie meal every

seven days with nothing in between?

Ben Jones, via email

When it comes to ‘optimal’, it’s a

maer of what you can stick to.

I asked Prof Satchin Panda, the

scientist at the Salk Institute, who has

done the pioneering science on TRE,

and he favours a 14-hour fast, 10-hour

LETTER OF THE MONTH

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WORTH

£370.