GoKawiilPhysicists have found evidence of a particle made entirely of force-carrying gluons. Plus, what changes to US vaccine recommendations mean for children and the ways food scientists are improving chocolate.
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Glueballs are made of gluons, which bind quarks to form protons and neutrons.Credit: Sefa kart/Getty
A team of physicists says it has observed strong evidence of a mysterious ‘glueball’, a particle made up of force-carrying gluons. The team says that a particle known as X(2370) is mostly made up of these glueballs — clusters of the gluons that bind quarks to form protons and neutrons and hold them inside the nucleus of an atom. There is no single smoking gun that proves that this particle is made of glueballs, says particle physicist Bruce Yabsley. But the findings are “quite persuasive”, he says. The group presented their results at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Natal, Brazil, last week.
Nature | 5 min read
An executive order signed by US President Donald Trump this week calls for children in the United States to be vaccinated against fewer diseases, and recommends that combination shots be split into individual jabs that are spread out over time — starting with the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The order is “not in any sense grounded in science”, says viral immunologist Paul Offit. The order instructs the country’s top health officials to adopt its recommendations, but it does not have any inherent legal power. Implementing the recommendations would require vaccine companies to manufacture jabs that target each illness individually, which could take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Nature | 6 min read
The world’s oceans are on the brink of setting an all-time heat record, reaching temperatures that could roil marine ecosystems and sap the ocean’s ability to take up carbon dioxide from the air. Sea surface temperatures have already broken records for the past two months — boosted by human-induced climate change and a powerful El Niño event growing in the Pacific Ocean. The average surface temperature is now hovering just a few hundredths of a degree below the current record from March 2024. “It just spells trouble for the planet,” says climate scientist Kristina Dahl.
Nature | 5 min read
Source: Copernicus Climate Change Service/European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
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