Michelle Starr
ScienceAlert
Sydney, NSW, Australia
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Recent articles by Michelle:
85 Incredibly Detailed Dinosaur Prints Have Suddenly Emerged in England
Coastal erosion is a slow force, but a powerful one, over millennia carving new shapes into the edges of land. And it can also reveal secrets hidden for millions of years - such as a new discovery on the coast of England. → Read More
Jaw-Dropping Sound Wave Trick Can Levitate Particles in Different Directions at Once
Acoustic levitation - using the pressure generated by sound waves to levitate a single tiny particle - has been around a long time. Manipulating the particle and moving it through space is only a relatively recent development. → Read More
Scientists Are Excited Over These 'Weird' Feathers Preserved in 100-Million-Year-Old Amber
Feathers found in Burmese amber dating back 100 million years are so exquisitely preserved that palaeontologists have been able to make a detailed study of their structure - and they're like nothing seen in living birds today. → Read More
New Evidence Shows Tornadoes Don't Form The Way Scientists Have Always Thought
Historically, tornadoes have been thought to originate in the clouds, reaching turbulent fingers down to Earth. But now a team of climatologists has demonstrated that this 'top-down' model of tornadogenesis might actually be wrong. → Read More
This Breathtaking Image Is a Real Photo of Two Stars Destroying Each Other
The death of a binary star can be a spectacularly violent thing. → Read More
An Incredible New Ecosystem Has Been Discovered at The Bottom of The Ocean
Deep under the ocean, in the dark, dark depths, marine scientists have discovered a new field of hydrothermal vents, hosting an ecosystem unlike any other - with a plethora of species that have never been seen before. → Read More
We Just Got The Closest-Ever Picture Taken of The Sun's Atmosphere
NASA's Parker Solar Probe, the first human-made object to fly into the Sun's corona, completed its first solar flyby on November 11, collecting a wealth of unprecedented data about the workings of our magnificent home star. And now, weeks later, th → Read More
Astronomers Have Detected a Planet That's Actually Evaporating Away at Record Speed
There's a kind of exoplanet out there that is suspiciously rare. We call them "hot Neptunes", and only a few have been discovered among the 3,869 confirmed exoplanets. → Read More
Stunning Drone Video Has Captured Wild Orcas Playing With a Human Swimmer
It's something most of us can only ever dream of. You're swimming in the ocean, minding your own business, when suddenly a family of sleek marine mammals materialises, joining you as you glide through the water. → Read More
Physicists Just Smashed Another Record For High-Temperature Superconductivity
Scientists in Germany say they have hit a new superconductivity milestone. According to their paper, they achieved resistance-free electrical current at the highest temperature yet: just 250 Kelvin, or -23 degrees Celsius (-9.4 degrees Fahrenheit). → Read More
We Just Got a Surprising New Answer For What May Have Killed The Giant Megalodon
Throughout Earth's history, one question rises, again and again: what were the factors that killed off a species or a population of animals? → Read More
We Finally Know What Killed Sea Life in The Deadliest Mass Extinction in History
Around 252 million years ago, Earth experienced catastrophic devastation - an extinction event so severe that it wiped out almost all of the life on Earth. → Read More
A Man Was Using a 4,000 Year Old Indus Valley Pot to Hold Toothbrushes
When Karl Martin of Derbyshire, England picked up a pair of pots for £4 (US$5) at a car boot sale, all he wanted was a nice jar to put his toothbrush in. And for five years, that's precisely what he had. → Read More
MIT Scientists Have Turned Wasp Venom Into a Potential Antibiotic
Wasps are dangerous little insects. They're aggressive as heck, and being stung can be on a spectrum from incredibly painful to fatal. → Read More
You'd Better Watch Out, The Christmas Comet Is Coming to Town
Every 5.4 years, the comet 46P/Wirtanen orbits the Sun, swinging through Earth's skies on its way. This year, its visit is in December, and we're going to be able to see it - in fact, it's visible in the sky now if you have binoculars or a telescope. → Read More
A Man Coughed Up This Perfectly Shaped Blood Clot, Stunning His Doctors
If someone showed you the above picture without context, you'd probably think it was an intact blood vessel. Readers, it is not. It is a perfect cast of the branching air passages in the right lung of a man dying of heart failure, formed from coagu → Read More
Scientists Just Found The Oldest Evidence of Plague, in The Bones of a Neolithic Woman
A new discovery has pushed the timeline of the plague in Europe back even earlier than we had previously thought. A new strain of the Yersinia pestis bacterium has been identified in 4,900-year-old bones in a Neolithic burial site in Sweden. → Read More
Scientists Have Captured a Giant, 'Mythical' Siren Species in Florida
Salamanders are, by their very nature, slippery creatures. Perhaps none so slippery as the mysterious 'leopard eel' - an amphibian spotted intermittently in the waters of Florida over the last few decades that somehow managed to elude scientific st → Read More
Schizophrenia Is Linked to Lack of Vitamin D in The Womb, Claims New Study
The causes of schizophrenia have long been a mystery, but new research has just revealed an intriguing clue. A long-term study of 2,602 individuals has confirmed a link between vitamin D deficiency at birth and developing schizophrenia later in life. → Read More
Medieval Skeleton Pulled From Thames, Still Wearing Thigh-High Leather Boots
In the mud of London's Thames river, a strange skeleton that lay hidden for 500 years has finally seen the light of day. Face-down, one arm upflung, the only remnants of his clothing a pair of half-rotted, thigh-high black leather boots. → Read More