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I was both pleased and horrified by the article on Q-Day ( 25 April, p 10 ). Pleased, because the coverage and comparison with Y2K was accurate and measured, unlike some who declared it a hoax when, after the event, not that much went publicly wrong. I know it wasn't fake because, like many software …

Leah Crane quotes Catherine Heymans, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, as being "very happy" to hear that the idea of a cyclical universe is currently receiving some increasing acceptance. I share the feeling, because I simply cannot get my head around the ideas of infinity and infinitesimal, in the form demanded by other theories ( …

Roger Penrose's conjecture is that the universe will perhaps end in a state of extreme emptiness. Another proposition is that the end will occur because of the weakening of dark energy resulting in a big crunch. The possibility that our universe will go on forever is dismissed, thankfully; I cannot imagine holding a very long …

Using electric cars as a back-up for the grid is a great idea, but I doubt that EV owners could sell electricity at a premium, as Alec Luhn presumes. At the moment, in the Netherlands, you pay to put your surplus (solar) energy into the grid when the sun shines brightly. I don't see electric …

In countries like Australia, EV batteries can be charged from solar panels and also supply power to the owner's home during peak evening times. This also requires the purchasers to choose an EV that is originally adapted to that role or pay for a conversion. It would be more economical for all if it came …

I'm afraid that Colin Nicholson is mistaken in thinking AI understands the consequences of nuclear war. Large language models (LLMs) don't understand anything. They just produce sequences of words that are statistically plausible. What he has probably come up against is a human-imposed guard rail that tries to stop the LLM from giving out dangerous …

I enjoyed reading Jacklin Kwan's piece about John Pendry and his invisibility cloak. As the discussion talked about the way that the structure of metamaterials can interact with electromagnetic radiation (light), some questions entered my mind. Does empty space, with all of the virtual particles within it, have a structure? Is empty space a temporal …

Have I got this right: some physicists and philosophers seem to think that reality cannot be separated from consciousness – human consciousness at that? I hope we can all agree that consciousness (not just human) is a biological phenomenon and one that arose later rather than earlier during the evolution of life. As for philosophising …

Maybe metal in scorpions' claws and stingers inspired ancient Greek myths about creatures with metallic claws and beaks. It is possible that chemists (who were thought of as magicians at the time) came up with chemical tests for metals and found traces in scorpions' claws and stingers. In Greek mythology, the Stymphalian birds had bronze …

I was completely prepared to hate Jacob Aron's column about AI, since I have been dismally disappointed by the motivations of the companies that have trained models like ChatGPT with distressing biases towards "popular" answers that may decrease their accuracy. Aron clearly explained why AI models do this, and how he was able to focus …