The problem of misinformation isn’t going away – and may be getting worse, in the wake of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Internet platforms like Facebook and X have taken some steps to curb its spread and say they are working on doing more. But no method yet introduced has been completely successful at removing all misleading content from social media. The best defense, then, is self-defense.Misleading or outright false information – broadly called “misinform ...read more

Blue whales are the Earth’s largest species and can stretch beyond 100 feet in size — even their young measure at above 20 feet on average. Great white sharks, meanwhile are quick, powerful, and highly efficient predators. What happens when these two face off and do great white sharks actually pose a threat to these true titans of the ocean? The short answer, says Chandra Salgado Kent, marine ecologist and associate professor at Edith Cowan University, in most cases, likely not. Fit adult bl ...read more

In the wild, animals fight over mating, food, territory, and to protect their young. Even when living in the same environment, not all animals fight each other. We couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if these animals interacted on the battlefield. Let’s look at how some formidable animals in the wild might do in a matchup based on their skills and strengths.1. Tiger vs. Lion(Credit: Volodymyr Burdiak/Shutterstock) Tigers are found in Asia, while most lions primarily live in Africa. Wh ...read more

During the summer of 1998, shifting sands on a beach on the east coast of England exposed an ancient monument. Fifty-five oak posts had been situated in a 15-foot-wide circle, and an upturned tree stump was planted in the middle.Scientists were able to date the monument to 2050 B.C.E. during the Bronze Age. While the monument has been nicknamed Seahenge, scholars referred to it as Holme I, named after the location where it was found.“It is not a henge, neither is Stonehenge for that matter, a ...read more

As a science communication scholar, I’ve always supported vaccination and trusted medical experts – and I still do. As a new mom, however, I’ve been confronting new-to-me emotions and concerns while weighing decisions about my son’s health.Vaccines are incredibly effective and have minimal risks of side effects. But I began to see why some parents may hesitate because of the flood of content, especially online, about potential vaccine risks.Part of what makes vaccine misinformation persu ...read more

Sometimes it looks as if Therizinosaurus couldn’t have been real — as if Dr. Frankenstein sewed together parts from a hump-backed giraffe, a giant ground sloth and the X-Men character Wolverine to make one of the weirder dinosaurs of the Late Cretaceous.“It’s really hard to picture how they made a living,” says James Kirkland, a state paleontologist with the Utah Geological Survey who studies these creatures.But they did exist, for millions of years in the Cretaceous, and they were rat ...read more

Storm-chasing for science can be exciting and stressful – we know, because we do it. It has also been essential for developing today’s understanding of how tornadoes form and how they behave.In 1996 the movie “Twister” brought storm-chasing into the public imagination as scientists played by Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton raced ahead of tornadoes to deploy their sensors and occasionally got too close. That movie inspired a generation of atmospheric scientists.With the new movie “Twisters� ...read more

If evolution happens gradually as genetic changes are passed from one generation to the next, you’d expect the fossil record to show the transitional forms along the way. But it doesn’t always do that. In some cases, the fossil record clearly shows a pattern of gradual change from ancestor to descendent. But more often, it seems to show jumps from one species to another with no transitional forms in between. “It's quite rare to actually have examples in the fossil record where something ...read more

Strange as it may seem, early germ theorists could tell us a lot about today’s attitudes toward climate change.While researching for a new book about the history of emerging infections, I found many similarities between early debates over the existence of microbes and current debates over the existence of global warming.Both controversies reveal the struggles of perceiving an unseen threat. Both reveal the influence of economic interests that benefit from the status quo. But most importantly, ...read more

As La Niña continues to stir in the tropical Pacific Ocean, the latest analysis shows there’s a 70 percent chance it will develop between August­ and October.The climate phenomenon shifts the world's atmospheric circulation, changing weather patterns around the globe. Characterized by cooler-than-average sea surface waters in large swaths of the tropical Pacific, it also usually takes the edge off human-caused heating of the planet, albeit temporarily.But even taking that likely cooling eff ...read more