1 June 2019 | New Scientist | 27Getting rid of small change
is a step to surveillance
11 May, p 21
From Hillary J. Shaw,
Newport, Shropshire, UK
You mark the UK down for
keeping small coins that may carry
antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But
this is a step towards a cashless
society. This would harm older
people, poor people and those
without bank accounts and would
move us closer to total state-
monitoring of our transactions,
with the potential for forced
arbitrary taxation.
The exciting future of
ageing research
27 April, p 26
From Keith Hollins,
London, UK
Graham Lawton, discussing ways
to mitigate the effects of ageing,
mentions the effect of young
blood. There must be many older
people who have received total or
near-total blood transfusions of
younger blood as a result of life-
saving treatment. Do they show
signs of significant rejuvenation?
From Jessica Roberts,
Brighouse, West Yorkshire, UK
It isn’t often that I find myself
purchasing a publication based
solely on a particular article. Your
piece on a cure for ageing was an
exception. One day, “old age” will
be vitally different to our current
perceptions of it. It was nice to see
big names in the field mentioned,
but I was a tad disappointed to see
no reference to Aubrey de Grey,
author of Ending Ageing. It was
still a great piece that will spread
awareness that curing ageing is
no longer just about charlatans
and snake oil.From Howard Bobry,
Nehalem, Oregon, US
My wife Valerie saw your cover
announcement of “a cure for
ageing” and said “yeah: die!”
Perhaps her scepticism is
rooted in her years of work in
the pharmaceutical industry.These batteries are not as
shocking as all that
How to be a maker, 11 May
From Francis Banks,
Nassau, New Providence, Bahamas
I applaud your series on
becoming a maker. We are in
danger of forgetting the basics.
But to imply that you can get a
painful shock from a 9-volt battery
is absurd – unless you connect it to
your teeth, or have a coil with large
inductance in the circuit. And you
won’t get much heat or damage
from shorting a 9-volt battery,
you’ll just run it down fast.Hannah Joshua writes:
Yes, shorting a 9-volt alkaline
battery is not that bad, but doing
the same to a lithium battery, for
instance, could be dangerous.
And it is important that everyone
understands not to make
themselves part of the circuit.
When they make bigger things, it
could be a lot more unpleasant. ❚For the record
❚ David Grimaldi says he bought
75 kilograms of raw amber, not
the 3600 kilograms reported by
the mining company (4 May, p 38).
❚ In our puzzle about numbers in
alphabetic order, the second-last
is two trillion two thousand two
hundred and two (Puzzles, 11 May).Views From the archives
25 years ago, New Scientist
looked at a daring plan to stitch
up the world’s ozone holeIN 1994, you would have
been hard-pressed to find
anyone talking about plastic
pollution, and concern about
climate change was still the
preserve of a fringe few. The
hole in the ozone layer above
the Antarctic, however – now
that was a burning issue.
The Montreal Protocol,
which aimed to phase out ozone-depleting substances
such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), had only come into
effect in 1989. It was too early to know whether it was
making any difference, so we found one physicist’s
suggestion to geoengineer a solution “grandiose”.
“Alfred Wong, from the University of California
at Los Angeles, would like to hoist giant electronic
‘curtains’ into the stratosphere” to carry out renovation
work on the hole, we reported. Admittedly, “his ideas
have met with scepticism from atmospheric scientists”.
Essentially, the concept consisted of suspending
sheets of negative charge from platforms held aloft
by helium balloons. These charges would ionise highly
reactive ozone-eating chlorine atoms, rendering them
harmless. Perhaps it was all just an excuse to run an
article with the title “Is it curtains for the ozone hole?”.
But Wong had credentials as co-director of UCLA’s
plasma physics laboratory, and the idea had been
published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Wong later fleshed out his plan, calling for
25 platforms floating 40 kilometres above each
pole. “The first [platform] will cost $35 million, and
thereafter each one will cost $15 million,” he told
UCLA student newspaper the Daily Bruin in 1996.
Glittering airships never did draw gigantic
curtains majestically above the poles. The
Montreal Protocol – now often held up as a model of
international cooperation – does seem to have helped
the ozone layer turn the corner. Even so, its recovery is
an achingly slow process that will take until at least
the middle of this century. Recently, the decline in
CFC emissions has slowed, with illegal emissions from
factories in China identified as the culprit just last week.
Things didn’t end so well for Wong. As the Daily
Bruin reported in 2013, the then retired professor
was fined $1.7 million and sentenced to six months
of home detention for submitting fraudulent invoices
in connection with a contract for the US government.
Whether it was to save the ozone layer, the reports
don’t say. Simon IngsTo find more from the archives, visit
newscientist.com/old-scientistWant to get in touch?
Send letters to New Scientist, 25 Bedford Street, London
WC2E 9ES or [email protected]; see terms at
newscientist.com/letters