Letters to the Editor: Responses to Scientific American’s May 2026 Issue

The useful part

Readers respond to the May 2026 issue | Scientific American Explore Swiss Science & Innovation. Enter your email I agree my information will be processed in accordance with the Scientific American Inc. By providing your email address, you also consent to having the email address shared with third parties for those purposes.

How it works

• 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?
• In describing how we make tailored, as opposed to automatic, facial expressions, he gives the example that "we've all...
• to lead the world in research to advance technology and for the betterment of the health of humankind.
• 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.
• "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...

What to take from it

WINET" VIA DISCUSSIONS BEING GREEN In " Something in the Water " [April], Cody Cottier discusses mountain lakes that are turning green because of algal blooms. We leverage third party services to both verify and deliver email. Sign Up 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.

Example or evidence

• 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.
• 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.
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Details worth keeping

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. At that time, the entire cosmos, including space itself, burst into being.

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