New Scientist - 29.02.2020

30 | New Scientist | 29 February 2020

Editor’s pick

You simply couldn’t build

enough nuclear reactors

8 February, p 20

From Paul Dorfman, University

College London Energy Institute, UK;

Tom Burke, E3G; Steve Thomas,

University of Greenwich, UK; Jonathan

Porritt, environmental campaigner;

and David Lowry, Institute for

Resource and Security Studies,

Cambridge, Massachusetts, US

Reporting the decline of nuclear

power generation, you quote

Michael Shellenberger’s view

that nuclear power is necessary

to prevent climate change. This

view is truly dangerous.

Climate change poses a number

of unique challenges to humanity.

One of the most difficult is that the

world not only needs to get to a

specific place – a carbon-neutral

global energy system – but also

must get there by a specific time –

the middle of the century. Otherwise 

the policy fails.

You simply couldn’t build enough

nuclear reactors fast enough, even

to replace the existing reactors that

will reach the end of their life by

2050, let alone to replace fossil

fuels in the existing electricity

system or in the more electricity-

intensive global economy we are

currently building.

This would be true even if we

were willing and able to overcome

all the other unsolved problems that

nuclear reactors face. These include

their affordability, accidents, waste

management, nuclear weapons

proliferation, the scarcity of talent

and system inflexibility.

Some reasons not to take

up alphabetic writing

8 February, p 34

From Jan Willem Nienhuys,

Waalre, Netherlands

Colin Barras reports that official

scribes seem not to have taken up

a phonetic alphabet. The reason

for this may be that dialect

speakers may not recognise the

phonetic writing of speakers of

other dialects. The greater the

empire you administer, the more

serious this problem is. China kept

a multi-lingual country together

using an ideographic script.

From Beverley Charles Rowe,

London, UK

Systems with one symbol per

word can, in principle, be used

without knowing the language

for which they were originally

developed. This enables all the

members of a community,

whatever language they speak,

to use the same written script,

as in China today.

Something like this is 

happening now. Digital messages

are used by speakers of thousands

of languages, who are developing

a universal collection of emojis,

the only significant hieroglyphic

system invented for thousands

of years.

From Linda Phillips,

Narrogin, Western Australia

Your article on the invention of the

alphabet brings to mind a modern

conundrum. Why do we still teach

the Latin alphabet as “A, B, C, D...”?

This series isn’t particularly

useful. We could consider

changing the teaching order to

“Q , W, E, R, T, Y...” This at least has

relevance for children learning to

type rather than write by hand.

Law is needed to manage

the new industrial frontier

8 February, p 14

From Robert Willis, Nanaimo,

British Columbia, Canada

You report that legal action could

be used to stop Starlink satellites

affecting telescope images. Two

dead satellites – the Infrared

Astronomical Satellite, launched

in 1983, and GGSE-4, an

experimental US Air Force satellite

launched in 1967 – had a near miss

in late January. This emphasises

the need for greater international

oversight of the space above Earth.

You have reported on the risks

of satellite collisions (30 March

2019, p 26) and calls for rules of the

road in space (14 September 2019,

p 15). I recall little discussion of

the responsibility of the owners

of objects orbiting our planet.

With abandoned oil wells,

mines and manufacturing plants,

the cost of cleaning up has

eventually fallen on taxpayers.

Governments have adopted

legislation on legal responsibility

for disposal of manufactured

goods, such as the US Resource

Conservation and Recovery Act

and EU directives implementing

Extended Producer Responsibility.

They need to apply the same

principles to commercialisation

and industrialisation of space.

Had the two objects actually

collided in January and the

resulting debris caused significant

damage or harm, who would

be liable? The space above us

is becoming so crowded that,

eventually, there will be a collision

that will either directly cause

significant harm or will result in

a pin-balling of damaged objects.

Astronomers, geophysicists

and others in related disciplines

need to become more vocal in

demanding the development of

appropriate global policies.

The evolution of sexuality

and the blind date model

8 February, p 23

From Peter Mendenhall,

Nottingham, UK

Andrew Barron mentions a study

that showed that same-sex

attraction could be a polygenic

trait rather than a monogenic one.

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