The rarest whale in the world is the spade-toothed whale (Mesoplodon traversii), with only seven confirmed specimens to date since first reported in the 1800s, and nobody’s ever seen one alive. All but one of them have been reported in the seas around New Zealand. Last December saw the first-ever dissection of one after it washed ashore on New Zealand’s …
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Astronomers think they have detected an extremely rare type of “missing link” black hole chowing down on a helpless star at the edge of a distant galaxy — and they’ve shared a stunning animation showing what this superbright stellar massacre may have looked like. Black holes come in a range of sizes, from primordial singularities smaller than the sun to …
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There’s a meme that’s been floating around on social media recently, offering encouragement to turn our everyday perspective upside down. “In the entire Universe, wood is rarer and more valuable than diamonds.” Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn While diamonds are surprisingly common in the Universe – being made from (very abundant) carbon crystallised in the high pressures of asteroid collisions and gas …
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Motty remains the only confirmed hybrid between an African elephant (Loxodonta africana) and an Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). Although the calf tragically died just days after birth, his unique descent earned him the rare distinction of being named the “world’s rarest elephant” by Guinness World Records. Motty was born on July 11, 1978, at Chester Zoo in the UK and …
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The Athletic has live coverage of England vs. Italy semifinal at the 2025 UEFA Women’s Euros. There are a couple of paradoxes in international women’s football in Europe at the moment. The first is that, while the overall quality of the game is steadily improving year on year, it is difficult to make a case that any individual side has …
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A dusty envelope misplaced in a government archive has rewritten a chapter of mineral history. That 1949 letter, discovered during a 2023 digitization project in Bavaria, pointed curators toward a shoebox of lemon‑yellow fragments that had sat unnoticed for decades. Roland Eichhorn of the Bavarian State Office for the Environment (LfU) led the modern hunt that followed, and his team …
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