Michelle Starr
ScienceAlert
Sydney, NSW, Australia
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Recent articles by Michelle:
Biologists Get Morbidly Excited Over Discovering a Rare 'Whale Fall'
The sea wastes nothing. → Read More
This Incredible Image Looks Biological But Is Actually a Strange, Exploded Star
In November 1572, a star exploded. It brightened in the night sky, until it was visible to the naked eye - a jaw-dropping phenomenon observed and documented by astronomers around the world, none more extensively than Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, → Read More
Half a Billion Years Ago, Trilobites Died in Strange, Orderly Lines. Now We May Know Why
In the lower Ordovician period, 480 million years ago, many trilobites died strangely on the seafloor. → Read More
Astronomers Find Remarkable Evidence The Guts of Some Exoplanets Are Similar to Earth's
Exoplanets. They're very small, and very far away. We usually have to detect them by indirect means. Direct images are rare, and not very detailed. Even working out what's in their atmosphere is difficult. So you'd think trying to analyse their int → Read More
World's Fastest Ant Has Just Been Clocked at a Breathtaking 855 Millimetres Per Second
When you think of fast animals, it's probably something like cheetahs, or greyhounds. But when measuring in body lengths per second, the arthropod world is unmatched. And now we have a new record-holder - the fastest speed ever measured in an ant. → Read More
NASA Engineer Claims 'Helical Engine' Concept Could Travel 99% The Speed of Light
When it comes to space, there's a problem with our human drive to go all the places and see all the things. A big problem. It's, well, space. It's way too big. Even travelling at the maximum speed the Universe allows, it would take us years to reac → Read More
Incredible, Rare Underwater Footage Shows Whales Using Bubble 'Nets' to Hunt
Did you know some cetaceans use "nets" to catch their food? Like humpback whales. They'll dive down and swim in a ring around their prey, blowing out bubbles as they go. → Read More
Astronomers Observe in Incredible Detail a Black Hole Flickering in Our Own Galaxy
A black hole flickering in the Milky Way galaxy has been filmed in unprecedented detail, with a new high frame-rate technique that is helping us understand the wild dynamics of these most enigmatic objects. → Read More
The First Peer-Reviewed Paper on Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov Has Just Been Published
We've been hearing a lot about interstellar comet 2I/Borisov after its amazing discovery on 30 August 2019. Now the first analysis has hit peer-reviewed publication, landing a description of the comet in the prestigious pages of Nature Astronomy. → Read More
Scientists Have Successfully Kept Mouse Brain Tissue Alive in The Lab For Weeks
We've seen pig brains reanimated post-mortem and kept alive for hours. Now scientists from Japan have taken tiny slivers of mouse brain tissue, and kept it alive and viable for 25 days, isolated in a culture. → Read More
Devastating Solar Storms Could Be Much More Frequent Than We Realised
In early September 1859, something world-changing occurred. Earth was wracked by a monumental solar storm, which lashed our magnetosphere with a coronal mass ejection, the like of which had never before occurred in recorded history. → Read More
Scientists Have Figured Out How to Extract Oxygen From Moon Dirt
The Moon is a pretty inhospitable place for humans. It's all dry and dusty, and there's no atmosphere for us to breathe. But there is a bunch of oxygen: The lunar regolith - the crumbly top layer of dirt and rubble on the Moon's surface - is loaded → Read More
A Diamond With a Whole Other Diamond Inside It Was Discovered in Siberia
Humans have been mining diamonds for a long time, but a new stone hauled from the belly of the Earth could very well be a first. The diamond itself is hollow - and inside is another diamond, freely moving around. → Read More
The Woolly Mammoth Made Its Last Stand Marooned on an Isolated Arctic Island
When the last of Earth's woolly mammoths expired, they were isolated on Wrangel Island in the frigid Arctic Ocean, north of Russia. We've known of the species' last resting place for years; now, we finally know more about their survival and ul → Read More
Something in The Centre of Our Galaxy Colossally Erupted 3.5 Million Years Ago
The centre of the Milky Way galaxy is a relatively calm place now (compared to other galactic centres), but that hasn't always been the case. In fact, just 3.5 million years ago, it was positively riotous - expelling a burst of energy that eventual → Read More
Astronomers Have Traced a Single Neutrino to a Collision 3.8 Billion Light-Years Away
When a single neutrino was detected by a neutrino detector in Antarctica in September 2017, it was the start of something amazing. It was to become the first-ever high-energy neutrino that astronomers could trace back to an origin - a blazar galaxy → Read More
We Just Learned Plants Under Attack Evolve a Universal 'Scream' to Warn Others
They may not have the muscles and reflexes of the animal kingdom, but that doesn't mean plants just passively sit around when something starts chewing them up. → Read More
Nearly 100 Mysterious Amphorae Have Been Recovered From an Ancient Roman Shipwreck
Archaeologists have recovered a rare and tantalising treasure off the coast of Mallorca in Spain. Not gold or jewels, but 93 jug-like terracotta vessels called amphorae from a Roman ship that sank 1,700 years ago. → Read More
The Andromeda Has Eaten at Least Two Other Galaxies in Its Cannibalistic Past
Our next-door neighbour is a cannibal. In its distant past, the Andromeda galaxy has devoured at least two other galaxies, subsuming their stars into its galactic halo. And now, for the first time, astronomers have identified those stars, tracking th → Read More
An Eerie Egyptian Burial Has Been Found, With Nonsense Hieroglyphs on The Coffin
When ancient burials are discovered in the sands of Egypt, the stories we hear are usually similar. High-ranking officials and nobles buried with rich grave goods, elaborate coffins, and often cartouches naming the deceased, so we know who they were → Read More