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Some believe religion promises immortality. Others trust their descendants to provide it, and a few hope their works of art will earn it. However, the existence of a non-physical "soul" is fraught with problems, while physical descendants and creations can take you only so far( 21 June, p 32 ). However, according to Florian Neukart's …

Neukart writes about his idea, quantum memory matrix (QMM), and his "suspicion that the whole of cosmic history is, in some sense, baked into space" as "we know information cannot be destroyed". Could this idea perhaps ultimately lead to a "scientific" explanation of phenomena that, up to now, have been considered supernatural? We should recall …

Whether Neukart's wider idea has any validity or not, just because some mathematical framework works for qubits in a computer, it doesn't go any way to proving that space-time itself consists of a completely different type of qubit.

I couldn't help but notice the similarities between the QMM idea and the concept of the Akashic record: a compendium of all things, present and future, held on a non-physical plane, proposed in connection with the religious movement of theosophy in the late 19th century. I wonder if the proponents of QMM have already realised …

If Gou Young Koh and his colleagues want to find out if massaging the faces of people helps flush waste from their brains, as they found it does in mice, they could look for differences between the brains of deceased men who shaved every day and those who had well-grown beards. While the results would …

In light of the findings of the study you mention that found 15 per cent of the global population have Lyme antibodies, it is perhaps no surprise to read that Lyme disease bacteria can persist in the body. The high seroprevalence indicates that asymptomatic people also have these antibodies. An unknown number of them won't …

One of the most pleasant smells in my life is your magazine! I look forward to its scent immensely and get to sniffing it as soon as the freshly printed pages arrive. I hope this counts as the smell therapy you wrote about, and that I am staving off dementia by doing so( 24 May, …

The goal of incorporating symbiosis machinery in the roots of non-legume crop plants is worth the investment, but we can never "get rid of chemical fertilisers" totally. Even if we establish bacterial symbiosis in grass crops, for example, and then apply composted animal and human manure, to be able to produce enough food to feed …

Here is another idea about how language arose. As pitch-based communication is widespread among non-human animals, could language have developed from similar-pitched Tarzan-like calls specific to a tribe, by which they could identify its members? As we became more complex, a wider repertoire of melodic vocalisations was needed. Pitched sounds could then have been differentiated …

Regarding "AI doesn't understand the word 'no' ". The AI-generated summary of trail users' comments for a particular trail in a popular hiking app said that there were ticks. But when I read through the comments myself, the only mention of ticks was that there were no ticks( 31 May, p 16 ). This result …