CONVERSATION

YOUR OPINIONS ON SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND BBC SCIENCE FOCUS

Your letters, emails and tweets.

Rooster tooter

In response to a reader’s question ‘Do birds fart?’ (bit.ly/birds-fart) Charlotte Corney wrote that there is no known evidence of birds farting. Obviously, chicken owners weren’t included in the research. Our chickens fart a lot, sometimes wet, sometimes dry. Either way they are not subtle in sound nor smell! William Cowan

Cycle fast

Dr Michael Mosley has previously written of the benefits of time-restricted eating (TRE). I’ve been on a TRE regime for some time now, giving myself a four-hour eating window per day.

Next year I’ll be cycling from Land’s End to John o’Groats, and I’m wondering if there have been any studies done on TRE and endurance events like this? I know the general advice seems to be a steady intake of food (for example, a banana every 30 minutes) but I wondered if there was a different (and better) way with TRE? Ben, via email

“SLIME MOULDS ILLUSTRATE THAT SIMPLE ORGANISMS CAN EXHIBIT BEHAVIOURS USUALLY ENCOUNTERED IN ANIMALS WITH BRAINS. THEY ENCOURAGE US TO TAKE ANOTHER LOOK AT SINGLECELLED ORGANISMS”

DR AUDREY DUSSUTOUR, p52

There have not been a huge number of studies on this. One review article looked at the impact of Ramadan intermittent fasting on athletic performance, and concludes that “athletes who maintain their total energy and macronutrient intake, training load, body composition, and sleep length and quality are unlikely to suffer any substantial decrements in performance during Ramadan.”

Dr Michael Mosley, BBC Science Focus columnist

The (Martian) origin of species

Mars lost its magnetic field, and solar winds stripped it of its atmosphere four billion years ago (August, p80). This is around the time that microorganisms started growing on Earth. Is this a coincidence, or could the first life forms on Earth have been ‘blown’ here from Mars? Are we all actually Martians? Mark Belbin, Wiltshire

‘Panspermia’ is the idea that life on Earth was ‘seeded’ by microorganisms from elsewhere in the cosmos, carried here by asteroids and comets. Mars is an unlikely source, though – the solar winds would quite rapidly kill off any resident organisms, without a magnetic field to protect them.

Sara Rigby, online assistant, BBC Science Focus

Eco-anxiety

Much as I appreciated your comprehensive coverage of climate change (July, p86) I believe that in answering the question ‘How bad will it get?’ the author avoided what is, I believe, the scientific community’s consensus view – if we continue on our present path, climate change will lead to an Earth not able to support human life. Okay, she skipped around the issue by saying that “plant and animal species will be driven to extinction”, but for some reason fell short of the blatant truth that we will go along with other animals. As a sufferer of eco-anxiety and a supporter of Extinction

Rebellion, I believe that facing up to the truth, although painful, spurs me into action. This is a view endorsed by Caroline Hickman of the Climate Psychology Alliance, who says that by acknowledging our eco-anxiety as a mature, rational and necessary response to the environmental crisis we face, we will be able to bring about changes in our lives and join others in taking action.

Eileen Peck, Essex

Be rid of memorials

Reading the article on the de-naming of UCL’s Galton Lecture Theatre (Summer, p34) made me wonder if there should be any memorials at all. For example, not only did the science of Albert Einstein make the atomic bomb a possibility, but he even wrote a letter to President Roosevelt urging him to develop the weapon of mass destruction, which was used twice on Japan. Perhaps we should remove all memorials to Einstein because he enabled the deaths of about 150,000 Japanese people?

There will probably always be some flaw in anyone’s personal history, if only realised long after the person’s death. Perhaps people in the future will consider today’s practices of eating meat or using fossil fuels to be unforgivable, which will produce a long list of flawed people. So, I think it’s probably best to have no memorials at all.

John Bradbury, Norfolk