Replication & hawk moths

I read the article ‘Submarines, sonars and spooks’ [ FT355:14] with interest. The 1975 report by Skolnik is now available at www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/ u2/b228588.pdf. It is perhaps a little unfair to suggest that researchers “do not believe in submarine-generated UFOs”. Skolnik’s report suggests an acceptance of the reality of the phenomenon, and some possible mechanisms have been proposed. Fundamentally, however, if an effect is reproducible then it can be investigated with a view to elucidating its mechanism. If its mechanism is understood, then conditions can be contrived to reproduce the effect. If the mechanism is unknown and the effect is not reproducible, then what further avenues of investigation are available?

I don’t think the issue is a lack of belief so much as the lack of any clear way forward for investigating it. This strikes me as being a problem common to most fortean phenomena. There is also the issue that the lack of reproducibility in this case is probably due to it occurring as a result of the complex interaction of multiple environmental factors – which makes it almost impossible to model. It is a fact that defence spending in the Western world is fairly tightly constrained at the moment, so investigating phenomena that are very resistant to investigation is unlikely to be a priority.

• Anthony Riddell’s notion of a ‘hopping’ T-Rex [ FT359:73] is a wonderful mental image, but I suspect it falls foul of scaling laws – where volume (and thus mass), does not scale linearly – hence the fundamental differences in body design between elephants and insects. It is received wisdom that elephants cannot jump because of their size (in fact they can, but only at risk of injury). T-rex was double the mass of an elephant, so I can’t imagine it did a lot of jumping.

• Finally, I wonder if ‘Jim D’ and Rachel McDonald’s ‘fairies’ [ FT355:76, 359:75] might have been hummingbird hawk moths. I have seen these in the South of France, and they do look rather odd and out-of-place. I don’t think their presence in the UK has ever been confirmed, which would presumably make these observations of interest to entomologists. Ian I’Anson By email

I would like to posit a possible solution to Jim D’s ‘flying fairy’. The BBC news website recently printed an article, with video, of the hummingbird hawk moth, a very rare and highly unusual visitor to these shores. I was struck by the resemblance to Mr D’s drawing both in form and in angle of flight. It’s certainly something that I would have been unable to identify had it flown past me. www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/ uk-northern-ireland-42097984/ unusual-hummingbird-hawkmoth-defies-myths Gareth Young Frodsham, Cheshire