Michelle Starr
ScienceAlert
Sydney, NSW, Australia
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Recent articles by Michelle:
Mass Extinction in The Human Gut Revealed by Fossil Remains of 2,000-Year-Old Feces
The microbes living in our gut are way less diverse than they were 2,000 years ago. → Read More
Mysterious Wobbles in Saturn's Rings Reveal Clues About Its 'Fuzzy' Interior
What's in a gas giant? → Read More
Incredible Images Reveal a Single Moment on Jupiter in Different Wavelengths of Light
Jupiter: king of the planets, protector of the inner Solar System. We all know what the gas giant looks like, with its vanilla and butterscotch ice-cream bands of counter-rotating cloud, and the iconic red storm raging in the southern hemisphere. → Read More
First-of-Its-Kind Video Shows Giant Squid Hunt Their Prey Deep in The Ocean
In the permanent twilight of the mesopelagic, a silent predator hunts. → Read More
These 5 Tatooine-Style Star Systems Might Actually Be Able to Support Life
We have precisely one data point against which to measure exoplanets for habitability: Earth. As far as we know, life has evolved only on this one pale blue dot, orbiting a single star in the middle of a spiral arm of an otherwise unremarkable galaxy → Read More
Voyager 1 Is Detecting a 'Hum' of Plasma Waves in The Void of Interstellar Space
Voyager 1, having spent over 43 years zooming away from Earth since its 1977 launch, is now a very long way away indeed. → Read More
'Living Fossil' Thought Extinct For 273 Million Years Found Thriving on Ocean Floor
A symbiotic relationship between two marine lifeforms has just been discovered thriving at the bottom of the ocean, after disappearing from the fossil record for hundreds of millions of years. → Read More
There's Evidence Volcanoes Are Active on Mars, Raising Chances of Recent Habitability
Evidence seems to be mounting for a geologically and volcanically active Mars. → Read More
Powerful Magnetic Fields in Space Have Been Seen Bending Black Hole Jets
In a galaxy cluster called Abell 3376, some 600 million light-years from Earth, one galaxy has an active supermassive black hole, gobbling up matter at a furious rate – a process that blasts powerful jets of plasma hundreds of thousands, sometime → Read More
Saturn Has a Weirdly Neat, Symmetrical Magnetic Field. We May Finally Know Why
Saturn really stands out among the Solar System planets, and not just because of its glorious system of rings. Its magnetic field is also peculiar; unlike other planets, with their off-axis fields, Saturn's magnetic field is almost perfectly symmet → Read More
Oldest Known Deliberate Human Burial Uncovered in African Cave
Around 78,000 years ago, in what is now Kenya, a three-year-old child died. → Read More
Venus Flyby Reveals Low-Frequency Radio Signal Detected in The Planet's Atmosphere
During a close flyby of the planet Venus in July 2020, NASA's Parker Solar Probe detected something odd. → Read More
The Mystery of White Dwarfs With Intense Magnetic Fields Could Finally Be Solved
There's a lot we don't understand about white dwarf stars, but one mystery may finally have a solution: how do some of these cosmic objects end up having insanely powerful magnetic fields? → Read More
The Worst Year to Be Alive in Human History Is Probably Not The One You Think
If someone asked you what the worst year in human history was, what would you guess? 1347 CE was pretty bad. That's the year the Black Death seriously hit Europe. Any of the years of the Holocaust, between 1941 and 1945. Or 1918, the year of the st → Read More
Sea Level Rise From Antarctic Melt Could Be 30% Higher Than We Thought
The Antarctic ice sheet contains a global disaster waiting to happen. → Read More
This Bizarre Sea Worm Branches Like a Tree, And Each Segment Has Its Own Butt
Nature is so weird. You can have worms living in the deep sea that are completely butt-free… while in reef-dwelling segmented worms whose bodies branch like a tree from its head, each branch ends in a separate butt. → Read More
A Pregnant Ancient Egyptian Mummy Has Been Discovered in a Shocking World First
At first, archaeologists thought they were scanning the mummy of an ancient Egyptian priest named Hor-Djehuty. Then, in the body's abdomen, images revealed what appeared to be the bones of a tiny foot. → Read More
1 Billion-Year-Old Fossil Could Be The Oldest Multicellular Animal on Record
A teeny tiny fossil found in the Scottish Highlands could be a missing link in the evolutionary history of animals. → Read More
Astronomers Detect Another Mysterious Ghostly Circle in Extragalactic Space
The discovery of a giant, ghostly circle in extragalactic space is bringing us closer to understanding what these mysterious structures actually are. → Read More
There Could Be 14 Antimatter Objects Lurking Out There in The Milky Way
In a map of the gamma-ray sky - the highest energy electromagnetic radiation streaming through our Universe - 14 objects could be hiding a big secret. → Read More