Daily briefing: New evidence of the mysterious ‘glueballs’

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Physicists home in on mysterious ‘glueballs’

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

US vaccine order ‘not grounded in science’

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

Sea temperatures could hit all-time high

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

Features & opinion

The reality on the front lines of Ebola

In Rwampara, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the medical charity Alima runs a temporary hospital ward to treat people with Ebola, amid the outbreak rapidly spreading in the country. The centre has treated more than 700 people so far, 291 have died from their illness. Only infected people and health workers are allowed to step onto the ward, but the protective clothing that medical staff wear isn’t always enough to protect them from the virus. In July, there was a strike in Rwampara over unpaid wages that included health workers and support staff, leaving many patients without care for several days.

The New York Times | 5 min read

Fortune favours the fundable

How do you select a final grant proposal when the options all have pretty much the same score? You do what the ancient Greeks did when they couldn’t make a decision — trust in chance. This lottery system can help attract a more diverse pool of proposals and take the pressure off funders flooded with applications, proponents argue. But some critics think that using a lottery to select grants overlooks important context, such as how a proposal fits into the wider literature. Still, the idea isn’t as radical as it might seem. “It’s something that multiple cultures have used and that most people understand as intrinsically fair,” says statistician Adrian Barnett.

Nature | 13 min read

In pursuit of perfect chocolate

More than 175 years after it was first unveiled, there are still ways in which chocolate can be improved, say food scientists. Some are analysing the microbes involved in the fermentation of cocoa beans to determine which combinations might be responsible for flavour notes in the final product. Others are experimenting with ultrasound waves that alter the treat’s texture, or digging into the crystal structure of fat blooms — the white splotches that can appear on chocolate — to determine what causes them to form.

Knowable | 8 min read

Today I’m learning about Skagen’s Vippefyr, a historic lighthouse on the northernmost tip of Denmark. The lighthouse was constructed in 1747 to guide ships through the choppy waters of Skagen Odde.

I’m learning about this lighthouse because yesterday I mistook a picture of it for one of a trebuchet, which is, of course, a different thing entirely. Please accept my apologies for the confusion.

If there are any other lighthouses you think I should educate myself about, or you have any feedback on this newsletter, please let me know at briefing@nature.com.

Thanks for reading,

Jacob Smith, associate editor, Nature Briefing

With contributions by Gemma Conroy

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