Scientific American
Letters to the editor from the January 2021 issue of
Scientific American
BIG OLD GALAXIES
Arianna S. Long s “Too Big for the Universe” describes ancient galaxy clusters that are surprisingly massive for their early age. Could this observation be related to how supermassive black holes in the centers of some galaxies have grown so big so quickly that their size is also difficult to explain?
K. CYRUS ROBINSON
Tampa, Fla.
While I was reading Long s article, I happened to be twirling a glass of iced tea and noticed that the bubbles on top had centered in a cluster that looked very much like the image of the Distant Red Core protocluster in the accompanying graphic. I wonder if there might be more of an influence from dark matter on the gases involved. What if the dark matter is also spinning while the gases are forming galaxy clusters?
An amazing secret to aging well
People seem to say “70 is 60 new” or “60 is 50 new”, ions and so on now for ions. Today’s 70s could be as long as 30 per hour. Hundreds of clicks on milestone birthdays and the gentle serenity seem to be empty, but scientific research shows that all of this is really [
insert age] it is new [
insert age] Speak. So what’s the secret to aging well? To live longer and live well?
Well, we know we should all be there sports sunscreen throughout the year, drinking lots of water and fulfilling our Fitbit requests. Then the gene lottery is good. Perhaps the secret of what new generations outnumber older people in the older department is much more fundamental. At least that’s the writer Claudia Wallis, the health columnist
Scientific American
COVID Showed How Trials for New Drugs Could Be Faster and Better
The pandemic has spotlighted ways to make clinical trials easier on patients and better for science, a heart drug researcher says
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A dozen years and a billion or more dollars that is what it typically takes to bring a new drug from the lab to your medicine cabinet. Testing medications on patients has become a slow, arduous process. People, even those who are desperate to participate, often have to travel long distances to a study site and make the trip over and over again. For scientists, coordinating the paperwork among a large number of research centers can be extremely laborious and time-consuming.
Scientific American
Pandemic highlights for the week
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In a 2/19/21 newsletter for The New York Times, David Leonhardt writes that some cautionary public health messages about COVID-19 vaccines, such as messages about risks, uncertainties, caveats and side effects all of which he calls “vaccine alarmism” are “fundamentally misleading.” Some researchers and journalists are “instinctively skeptical and cautious,” he writes, which has led to public health messages that “emphasize uncertainty and potential future bad news.” For example, the risk of a vaccinated person becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2 and passing it on to someone else who then got severe COVID-19 is very small, evidence suggests, Leonhardt writes. “You wouldn’t know that from much of the public discussion,” he writes. Ambiguity like that and all the news about variants has fueled vaccine hesitancy, according to Dr. Rebecca Wur