Letters

Scientific American is interesting to read because it occasionally brings out disagreements in the scientific community. For example, in “Long-Distance Call” [Advances], Daniel Oberhaus reports on a team led by Jonathan H. Jiang of the nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory that designed a new potential message intended for extraterrestrials. Oberhaus says that “Jiang and his colleagues propose aiming the message toward a dense ring of stars near the Milky Way’s center that are likely to host promising planets.”

On the other hand, the September 2018 article “Alone in the Milky Way,” by John Gribbin, points out that “stars are packed more densely toward the center, so there are many supernovae, which produce energetic radiation—x-rays and charged particles known as cosmic rays—that is harmful to planets of nearby stars. The galactic center also is home to a very large black hole, Sagittarius A*, which produces intense outbursts of radiation from time to time.” Gribbin also mentions gamma-ray bursts that could sterilize the core of the Milky Way and are more common in the inner regions of galaxies.

Let’s hope this conflict will be sorted out before time and money are expended. Frank Ierardi Gaithersburg, Md.

In “Constructing the World from Inside Out,” by György Buzsáki, the opening illustration should have been credited to Stefania Infante, not Islenia Milien.

“Skin Cancer around the World,” by Clara Moskowitz [Graphic Science], should have said that Earth’s elliptical orbit, not its tilt, is what causes the Southern Hemisphere to be closer to the sun during its summer than the north is during its summer. And it should have clarified that there are additional reasons New Zealand has stronger ultraviolet radiation than corresponding latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere.

“Discrimination Is Heartbreaking,” by Jyoti Madhusoodanan [Innovations In: Health Equity], incorrectly said that Shivani Patel’s work has focused on tribal communities in rural India for the past two decades. Her work focuses on community health issues across the country.

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