Jellyfish seem to sleep in ways strikingly similar to humans, despite not having a brain. Plus, US lawmakers have pushed back on proposed cuts to science and why cancer can come back years after successful treatment.
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Artist’s impression of a forming galaxy cluster in the early universe: radio jets from active galaxies are embedded in a hot intracluster atmosphere (red), illustrating a large thermal reservoir of gas in the nascent cluster. (Lingxiao Yuan)
The centre of a young galaxy cluster is hotter than the Sun — way hotter than predicted by current theories of how such clusters formed. Astronomers peered into deep space (and thus far back into the early Universe) using the ALMA telescope in Chile to observe the cluster, SPT2349-56, about 1.4 billion years after the big bang. “From our conservative calculation, it is 5 to 10 times hotter than expected based on simulations,” says study co-author Dazhi Zhou. “That is very surprising because this kind of hot gas was expected to exist only billions of years later.”
New Scientist | 3 min read
Reference: Nature paper
Lawmakers in the United States have put forward a slate of bills that would keep funding for some major science agencies close to current levels, declining proposals by President Donald Trump to slash science budgets. The three bills, which cover the National Science Foundation, NASA and Department of Energy research programmes, must still be approved by Congress and signed into law by the president. Bills covering other areas, such as the health department that funds the National Institutes of Health, are still to come.
Science | 5 min read
Features & opinion
Even when a person’s tumour is successfully treated, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re cancer-free for life. Some cancer cells can go dormant — hidden from the immune system and not actively dividing — and reawaken later to form new tumours. Over the past decade, a flurry of efforts have attempted to understand what induces dormancy and how to stop it — questions that have attracted more and more researchers to the field. Now, a handful of clinical trials are underway to test potential therapies to eliminate these cells and so reduce the risk of cancer recurrence.
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