We seem to be having a little trouble with our geography… the Matterhorn is of course on the Swiss-Italian border (1 May, p 17). Issaquah is in Washington, US (1 May, p 25). The US deserts we mention in our article on leaf shape are in the West, not the Midwest (8 May, p 6). [...]
We incorrectly used the word “homocentric” when what we meant was “male-centred” (27 February, p 36). Link Report an error
We lost our sense of proportion when stating how many people there are in the world without access to banking services who could benefit from mobile money technology. It is of course around a billion people, not a million as we stated (20 February, p 20). Report an error
We lamented that some skiers fail to pull a “chord” to inflate their avalanche airbag systems, a circumstance that could be explained by their being tone-deaf, we suppose (16 January, p 15). Link Report an error
We mistakenly suggested that greater gender inequality increases the instance of female mathematicians in a country. Of course that should have been gender equality (6 June, p 7). Link Report an error
Let’s be clear: the rate at which sunlight delivers energy to the Earth’s surface should be expressed in terawatts. Our “For the record” of 25 April (p 25) not only contained a nonsense of its own (suggesting that a terawatt is different from a terajoule per second), but also failed to address our original blooper, [...]
In “Surviving in a warmer world” (28 February, p 28) we said that “9 million people would need 18,000 square kilometres of land to live on”. That figure should, of course, have been 9 billion people, and the area of land 180,000 square kilometres. Link Report an error
Our review of two books on Islamic science wrongly described Copernicus’s solar system as geocentric, rather than heliocentric (21 February, p 46) – a confusion that might have saved Galileo a great deal of trouble. Link Report an error
We said that in 1709 “from Czechoslovakia in the east… everything turned to ice” (7 February, p 46). No such country existed in 1709. It was founded in 1918 and split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. Link Report an error
We accidentally referred to a “stellar sea lion” (29 November, p 6). The featured mammal is a Steller’s sea lion. Link Report an error
We mistakenly reported that all 59 people who received a new treatment for their inoperable brain cancer had died (4 October, p 16). We are pleased to report that several patients in the trial by Transmolecular of Cambridge, Massachusetts, are still alive. Link Report an error
A diagram on our Technology page claimed: “The US has more than twice as many wireless internet hotspots as any other country” (17 May, p 25). This was unfounded. The figures on which it was based were for hotspots registered with one commercial organisation, which isn’t going to get a free ad out of us. [...]
Feedback said that Darren Wright, of the project to beam biscuit adverts to aliens, is an astronomer (5 July). He is a lecturer in radio and space plasma physics who lists his research interests as “Things”. Link Report an error
We said that Australian companies “forecast spending $800 between 2002 and 2013 on geothermal exploration” (19 July, p 24). That should have been $800 million. Link Report an error
In the article “Alps are no go without snow” we said the measurement stations are between 200 and 1800 metres above snow level: that should have been above sea level. The study counted snow days, not snowfall; and the 60 per cent decline was for the Swiss plateau between Zurich, Bern and Basel, and not [...]
Our apologies to Yianna Lambrou of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization for referring to her as “he”. Link Report an error
The UK Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment found no excess cancers within 25 kilometres of nuclear plants. Because of an editing mistake, our story “Nuke-plant leukaemia link?” conveyed exactly the opposite. Link Report an error
We described Weta Digital as “giving Gollum a voice that sounded human”. Gollum’s words were spoken by the human actor Andy Serkis. Link Report an error
The “record-breaking crust” we mentioned in Greenland is 3.8 billion years old – not 1000 times younger, as we stated. Link Report an error
