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The ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz has seen energy prices soar, but thanks to solar panels and a home battery, Alice Klein pays just A$25 (£13) a month for her electricity, even when charging an electric car or running an air conditioner

“Chiropractors are my kind of people.” RFK Jr. to Chiropractors Not certain who was more insulted, although it appears both sides considered it a compliment. He went on to say, The people who are drawn to this field are people who do critical thinking, who are willing to question orthodoxies and have the courage to stand up against these orthodoxies. Well, critical […]

The post Not Mine first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A revolutionary cancer treatment is now being applied to a wide range of autoimmune disorders. Columnist Michael Le Page finds it is proving to be even more effective than expected

Space travel has taught us valuable lessons for living and working in outer space, specifically regarding how microgravity (often mistakenly called zero-gravity) impacts the human body during short- and long-term spaceflight. This includes decreased muscle and bone mass, fluid shifts, reduced heart rate, psychological health, compromised immune system, and radiation exposure. But with agencies like NASA aspiring to build a lunar base and establish a long-term presence on the Moon, and eventually Mars, how could space travel impact potentially having babies in space?

The Milky Way has a sizable retinue of dwarf galaxies, and they may hold important clues about conditions in the early Universe. However, they're difficult to observe because many of them are so faint. The tiniest ones are called Ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, and a new simulation aimed at how they form is showing how these faint collections of stars and gas mirror the conditions of the early Universe.

These images, released on April 14, 2026, show two open star clusters, Trumpler 3 (left) and NGC 2353 (right). They represent a recent study from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory that shows how young Sun-like stars are dimmer in X-rays than previously thought. This latest study looked at eight clusters of stars between the ages of […]

Scientists were shocked to find that the Houtman Abrolhos Islands’ coral reefs survived a prolonged extreme heatwave in 2025 virtually unharmed, which may reveal how to protect corals elsewhere

You may think of the high-fat, low-carb eating plan as a faddish way to lose weight. But the keto diet is now being used to tackle conditions from severe depression to bipolar disorder and anorexia, with transformative results

A team of scientists at the University of Virginia is using a telescope in Arizona to study cosmic structure and the result is the largest 3D map of the Universe ever created. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) at Kitt Peak National Observatory is their tool, and the ultimate goal is to get a handle on the mystery of dark energy by charting the positions of galaxies.

A group of undergraduate students pulled off something remarkable: they built their own dark matter detector and used it to probe one of physics’ biggest mysteries. Working with limited resources but plenty of creativity, they designed a stripped-down experiment to hunt for axions — hypothetical particles that could make up dark matter.

A group of undergraduate students pulled off something remarkable: they built their own dark matter detector and used it to probe one of physics’ biggest mysteries. Working with limited resources but plenty of creativity, they designed a stripped-down experiment to hunt for axions — hypothetical particles that could make up dark matter.

In a breakthrough experiment, scientists directly imaged how particles pair up in a system that mimics superconductors. Instead of behaving independently, the pairs moved in a synchronized, dance-like pattern—something never predicted before. This suggests a major gap in the classic theory of superconductivity.

In a breakthrough experiment, scientists directly imaged how particles pair up in a system that mimics superconductors. Instead of behaving independently, the pairs moved in a synchronized, dance-like pattern—something never predicted before. This suggests a major gap in the classic theory of superconductivity.

It’s an iconic image – a giant cephalopod with its tentacles wrapped around a sailing ship, tearing it apart as the crew panic. Eventually it drags the splintered remains down into the deep. Meanwhile, the largest living octopus is the Giant Pacific octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini), averaging about 16 feet long, however an exceptionally large specimen about 30 feet long weighing 600 pounds was found. The largest squid is the Colossal Squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni), reaching roughly 1,500 pounds (490–500 kg) and lengths up to 46 feet (14 m). That’s huge – but it’s no Kraken.

What about in the past? Everything was bigger in the past, right? That’s obviously a trope, but there is some truth to it, in that there have been ages of gigantism in the evolutionary past. In some periods and locations there are rich resources allowing for the evolution of larger body size, which comes with a number of survival advantages. This can set off an arms race of size, with prey becoming larger to avoid predation, and predators becoming larger to hunt bigger prey. The age of the dinosaurs is the most iconic example of this. But that, of course, does not mean that all lineages were necessarily larger in the past. Whales are a good example – the largest whales (and animals) to have ever lived are extant. So what about cephalopods? Are the largest ones living now, like with whales, or were there even larger ones in the past?

A new study examines the fossil remains of 12 giant octopuses that lived 100-72 million years ago. These were discovered and examined through grinding digital mining techniques at Hokkaido University in Japan. This method grinds very thin (25-50 micrometers) layers from a rock specimen, then takes a high resolution full color image of each layer. This method completely destroys the specimen, but results in a high resolution 3D image of any fossils within the rock. It uses AI models to reconstruct the fossils. The technique is used in cases where the fossils are too soft to X-ray (they are invisible to X-rays), cannot be chemically separated from the surrounding rock, and are too fragile for ordinary extraction. All of these are true for the soft beaks of octopuses.

Cephalopods are soft-bodied invertebrates, and so they rarely fossilize well. However, they do have chitinous jaws or beaks they use for eating. These are like the exoskeletons of insects or shell fish, but with some structural differences. Crustacean exoskeletons are mineralized to make them hard, so they serve well as armor. The octopus jaws are not mineralized but rather are reinforced with specialized proteins. The edges are hard to form a cutting edge, and become less hard but stronger as you move away from the edge. This way the jaws don’t crack under strain. These are evolved to be predatory crushing instruments. But they are also too soft for traditional fossil extraction methods, which is why the new technique was needed.

What did the paleontologists learn from examining these new specimens? They were able to infer the size of the creatures, which they estimate were up to 19 meters long – that is enormous. OK, it’s not quite Kraken size, but we are getting close. The wear patterns on the jaws also indicates that they were used to crush bones. What this could mean is that these cephalopods (Vampyronassa rhodanica) were definitely predators, and given their size they may have even been top predators. That is an incredible claim, given that they shared the Cretaceous oceans with plesiosaurs and mosasaurs. Mosasaurs were giant reptilian (but not dinosaurs) sea-dwelling predators up to 18 meters long. Could one of these invertebrate giants have taken on a mosasaur? Probably not, unless they were a baby.

As a point of clarification – the mosasaur was an apex predator, which means they they had no natural predators. The researchers are arguing that Vampyronassa rhodanica was a top predator, which means it occupied the top tier of the food chain, but could also have been prey itself. In a cage match between a mosasaur and a Vampyronassa rhodanica, my money is on the mosasaur.

But still, this means that there were cephalopods around 100 million years ago that were among the top predators of the ocean, competing with giant sharks and aquatic reptiles. This is the first invertebrate to join this group of top predators.

The researchers point out one more detail from the fossils – they had an asymmetric wear pattern, meaning that one side was significantly more worn than the other. This may not sound like much, but it suggests they had a preference for one side over the other. This likely reflects what is known as lateralization – that there were functional differences between the left and right side of their central nervous systems. This phenomenon tends to be seen only in species that have fairly complex central nervous systems, and the authors put this forward as evidence for this in this species. We know that modern cephalopods are highly intelligent, and this evidence suggests that these early cephalopods may have already evolved CNS sophistication. But this is, overall, a rather weak line of inference. Lateralization is not an iron-clad sign of intelligence, and is context dependent, but in this case it is a reasonable inference given that we know cephalopods eventually do evolve in this direction.

Overall this is a pretty interesting study, using a new technique to get a window into ancient cephalopods that was not previously possible. As a result we have gained new insight into this branch of the tree of life. I do have mixed feelings about the new technique, grinding digital mining, because it is completely destructive. It does seem like these fossils would otherwise not be usable, however. But – we do not know if we will eventually develop a non-destructive technique to examine such fossils, maybe even ones that can yield more or better information. The researchers and the field are aware of these tradeoffs. Destructive techniques are therefore used sparingly and only when the scientific information gained outweighs the loss of physical evidence, which they thought was justified in this case. Still, I hope this technique becomes obsolete quickly.

 

The post Release the Kraken first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Coincident with the rise of the dinosaurs, a large landmass filled most of the Arctic circle, potentially contributing to global cooling that advantaged the famous reptiles

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has been searching for exoplanets since its launch in 2018, and it turns out it may have found plenty more of them than we had thought

Smartwatches commonly use heart rate variability to monitor stress. Columnist Helen Thomson explores what this metric actually tells us, and whether it could also predict and diagnose depression – and help improve your mental health more generally

It's been a long time since I've written about the deceptive narratives around placebos promoted by supporters of alternative medicine. Unfortunately, a new article claiming placebos can work as well as "real medicine" is making the rounds on social media. Here we go again.

The post The myth of the magically powerful placebo returns first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Physicists have long assumed that the universe is uniform at very large scales, but evidence is emerging this is wrong and suggests a way to resolve some of the biggest cosmological mysteries

The planet Uranus is a weird place. Not only does it roll around the Sun on its side once every 84.3 Earth years, it also sports a spindly set of rings corralled in some places by strange little moons. Two of those rings, the μ (mu) and ν (nu) rings are incredibly faint, which makes them challenging to study.