WORD FREQUENCY
“Discerning Chicks,” by Cody Cottier [Advances], describes the so-called bouba-kiki effect, in which people around the world think “bouba” sounds round and “kiki” sounds spiky. The effect may be less about language than about simple spatial frequency perception for the visual system and acoustic frequency for hearing. Spiky images have more high-frequency information than rounded ones, and “kiki” has more high-frequency audio content than “bouba.” Both visual and auditory systems have frequency-mapped neurons.
ROBERT I. MASTA ANN ARBOR, MICH.
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STARTING SPACE
“In Search of the Most Distant Galaxy,” by Phil Plait [The Universe; April], got me thinking: if objects that are farther and farther away are older and older (as surmised from their redshift), then we must be getting closer to finding the beginning of the universe. I’ve always envisioned the big bang as a singularity that occurred at an actual point in space from which the universe then expanded. If so, wouldn’t the oldest objects in the sky all converge to a single location, thus showing us the center of the universe, or at least where the big bang originated?
RALPH LUNN CASTLEGAR, BRITISH COLUMBIA
PLAIT REPLIES: This is a common question, but it relies on a misconception that’s hard to break: People often think of the big bang as an explosion in space. Yet it was actually an explosion of space. At that time, the entire cosmos, including space itself, burst into being. That means the big bang happened everywhere. That’s a difficult concept to grasp, even for cosmologists. But it means the universe can expand without expanding into anything and didn’t have an origin point in space. So we see distant galaxies in every direction we look in the sky, not just in one direction, and that same observation is true for every galaxy in the universe. The big bang was everywhere, so there’s no one place you can point to and say, “It happened thataway.” It happened allaway.
FUELING UNCERTAINTY
“War’s New Fuel,” by Sarah Scoles [The Science of War; April], suggests a new way to recover valuable elements from spent nuclear reactor fuel. The article left me wanting. Fuel reprocessing is a highly complex and nuanced field that raises myriad issues involving contamination, proliferation hazards, material flows and ultimate disposal. The article makes it seem like someone flourishes a wand and all this goes away, leaving only plutonium “chemically trapped in a messy soup.” But what happens to that soup as a waste stream, and could the plutonium be extracted from it later?
DAVID BERWALD TEANECK, N.J.
ORCHESTRAL RUN
In “Lost in the Music” [Advances; April], Jesse Greenspan describes how music with a strong, rapid beat generates vigorous up-and-down movements, whereas more gentle music causes sideways swaying movements. This brings to mind my experiences a few decades ago when I skied while listening to music with one of the rather primitive wearable cassette-tape players that had just hit the market.
I would ski a steep slope at a wild maximum to the energy of the orchestral piece “Sabre Dance,” flying from one mogul to the next, and I discovered that the music seemed to have the effect of detaching my conscious thoughts somewhat, relaxing my tension, so my body could work from “muscle memory.” This both smoothed my style and improved my accuracy in landing each time on the next mogul.
DAVID WILLIAM BROWN VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA
FLUSH WITH ENVY
I have to disagree with one point in Cody Cottier’s story “Making Faces” [Advances; April]. In describing how we make tailored, as opposed to automatic, facial expressions, he gives the example that “we’ve all ... tried not to smile while holding a royal flush.” I doubt we’ve all had that experience: either Cottier has an incredible amount of good luck, or he plays much more poker than I do.
BRAD DIBBLE MIDHURST, ONTARIO
POLITICAL SCIENCE
Inspired by “State of American Science,” by Adam Rogers [Young American Scientists; July/August], our online Discussions space asked readers, “What role do you think government should play in science?” The following responses were edited for space and clarity.
The U.S. government should return fully in its support for scientific research. Since World War II the U.S. government has supported scientific research through a thorough grant process, and it must return to its previous partnership with research institutions, both private and public. It is vital for the U.S. to lead the world in research to advance technology and for the betterment of the health of humankind.
ROBERT MONTEMURNO VIA DISCUSSIONS
Your question is too short-term and ignores the underlying cause of our predicament. The lay public is the ultimate arbiter of government policy. During the past 30 years, it has steadily decreased its trust of academic scientists because they have become so politicized that they have been viewed more as preachers than as honest brokers of data. The phrase “settled science” is a key symptom of the preaching arrogance. To members of the working class, university elitists are more interested in ideologies than their everyday struggles to live even a shred of the American dream.
“PROF. H. WINET” VIA DISCUSSIONS
BEING GREEN
In “Something in the Water” [April], Cody Cottier discusses mountain lakes that are turning green because of algal blooms. Norway also has green lakes but for a different reason: fine-grained sediment from glacial deposits creates a deep-green look when seen from above. Consider the well-known Lake Gjende. Nearby Lake Bessvatnet, which does not receive such deposits, is deep blue.
ERIK MØNNESS RENA, NORWAY
ERRATA
In “Aurora Poetry,” by Jacek Krywko [Advances; July/August], the caption for the image of a hand-copied version of the diary Meigetsuki should have specified that the copy dated to the Edo period. The diary was originally written in the Heian and Kamakura periods.
“Spying on the Universe,” by Jonathan O’Callaghan [September], should have said that results published in 2024 by astronomers working with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument suggest that dark energy might be weakening.