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Michael Marshall's article about forgotten art and culture from ancient times was fascinating. Even more forgotten is the input of women. They tended to work on textiles, but these rarely survive compared with metals or wood ( 16/23 December 2023, p 28 ). In August 2023, I saw a woman demonstrating weaving. She was using …

Given the disappearance of ice from polar regions due to global warming, how can anyone justify towing icebergs away? ( 16/23 December 2023, p 54 )

You report that having children earlier in life is genetically linked to dying younger. Perhaps this makes more sense if we say that having children later in life is genetically linked to dying older ( 16/23 December 2023, p 9 ). Establishing a career before committing to family life is the preferred choice for some, …

Tom Reimchen says we shouldn't claim the human brain is "the most complicated structure in the known universe". I agree, if it is put like that. It would seem very reasonable, however, to claim that it is "the most complicated known structure in the universe" ( Letters, 16/23 December 2023 ).

S8 can be measured via gravitational weak lensing ( 16/23 December 2023, p 8 ). In our look at an animal milk bank ( 16/23 December 2023, p 58 ), Vlad the two-toed sloth was a faecal donor, while rhinos have a fibrous diet.

Recent correspondence has focused on transport options, such as encouraging more walking, free local buses and so on, as ways to cut car use. To this end, I would like to propose that every UK household is given a shopping trolley ( Letters, 30 December 2023 ). My trolley has been a companion since 1991, …

Stuart Farrimond, in his look at the science of "food bridging", seems to have rediscovered the classic Mayan/Aztec dish turkey mole , also familiar as the variant "chocolate chicken". The peanut bridging ingredient originated in Central America before becoming more widely known ( 16/23 December 2023, p 70 ).

The survivability of bacteria under extreme conditions, as highlighted in "What's living in your kitchen?", surely gives support to the theory of panspermia. This proposes that life such as bacteria may travel the universe via a suitable object and seed hospitable planets ( 16/23 December 2023, p 64 ). Perhaps bacteria can't survive in a …

Regarding detection of planets that seem to have survived the death of their star, there seems to be an assumption that a planet in orbit close to a white dwarf was always in that orbit ( 16/23 December 2023, p 60 ). Consider a planet that was far out prior to star death. When the …

In searching for extraterrestrial life, we need to think about what we mean by life. It could be organic, based on carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur. Or it could be completely different ( 25 November 2023, p 40 ). For example, we can imagine machines becoming a second form of life on Earth, …