https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/WrXJfghHUpMww4QxMxKja3-480-80.jpg 480w, Each week at Live Science we find the most interesting and informative articles we can. Along the way, we uncover some amazing and cool images. Here you'll discover the most incredible photos we found this week, and the remarkable stories behind them.
A giant squid, all washed-up
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Beachgoers in South Africa discovered one of nature's most elusive (and spookiest) creatures scattered among the seashells near Cape Town this week: Architeuthis dux, the fabled giant squid.
The squid was found remarkably in-tact, Adéle Grosse, the Cape Town woman who found the washed-up cephalopod told Live Science, and probably measured more than 13 feet (4 meters) long and weighed more than 660 lbs. (330 kilograms. Remarkably, that's actually on the shrimpier side for a giant squid; females of the species can reach up to 60 feet (18 m) long, according to a 2013 study.
Giant squid beach sightings only happen once every few years, and are even rarer underwater. These massive creatures (whose eyes are the largest in the animal kingdom) usually congregate about 2,000 to 3,200 feet (600 to 1,000 m) below the ocean's surface, and have only been filmed in their natural environment twice.
Read more: Stunningly intact giant squid washes ashore in South Africa
Ancient incest intrigue in Ireland
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A long-dead Irish king may be able to thank incest for his claim to power, a new study in the journal Nature suggests.
In the study, researchers examined the DNA of 42 people buried at Neolithic tombs across Ireland, dating from between 5,800 and 4,500 years ago. At a site called the Newgrange passage tomb — an elaborate, 5,000-year-old burial site north of Dublin (pictured above) and one of the earliest Stone Age monuments in Europe — the team discovered that "an individual buried in the most ornate recess… was an adult male whose parents could only be first-degree relatives," Live Science contributor Tom Metcalfe wrote.
That must mean that the man (likely a king or other person of high status) had parents who were brother and sister — or else parent and child, though that scenario is much rarer throughout history, Metcalfe wrote. The finding suggests that the rulers of Neolithic Ireland used incestuous marriage to hold onto power much like the pharaohs of ancient Egypt and some Inca royals in Mesoamerica did.
Read more: Famous Irish tomb yields a surprise — a king born of brother-sister incest
The cosmic butterfly spreads its wings
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Nebula NGC 6303, also known as the Butterfly Nebula, is one of space's most glorious examples of a stellar end-of-life crisis. As red giant stars run out of fuel and begin to fizzle, they eject enormous shells of bright gas and dust known as planetary nebulas — so named because they are often mistaken for planets at first glance. But when seen up-close and in wavelengths spanning the entire electromagnetic spectrum, as this incredible Hubble Space Telescope image is, those smudges of light resolve into incredible star-sculpted fireworks.
To capture this image of the Butterfly Nebula (located about 3,800 light-years away from Earth), NASA researchers used the Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 to record the nebula in every wavelength from near-ultraviolet to near-infrared light. The resulting portrait reveals the nebula's twin wings of gas in more stunning detail than ever before.
Read full news release on NASA.gov
The lone egg of Antarctica
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This shriveled, football-sized egg might look like a bad baked potato, but it's exceptional for several reasons. For one, it's 68 million years old. It's also the second-largest egg ever discovered on Earth, and the only fossil egg ever discovered in Antarctica. But, most excitingly to the authors of a new Nature study, the egg may have belonged to a long-extinct mosasaur — a reptilian sea monster that lived during the age of dinosaurs in what is now Antarctica.
If that's true, that makes this lumpy potato the first and only mosasaur egg on record, the authors said. Live Science Associate Editor Laura Geggel writes:
"Chilean researchers found the eggs-traordinary fossil in a seasonal stream in 2011, about 660 feet (200 meters) away from the remains of 33-foot-long (10 m) Kaikaifilu hervei, a large mosasaur unearthed on Seymour Island, Antarctica."
The researchers named the egg "The Thing," after the 1982 sci-fi movie based in Antarctica. While the species of the egg's mother is impossible to identify with the available clues, there aren't any known late Cretaceous Antarctic dinosaurs or pterosaurs large enough to have laid such a huge egg besides the mosasaur, the researchers said.
Read more: Ancient Antarctic sea monster may have laid this football-size egg
A hospital goes ape
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Nothing to see here, just a 463-pound gorilla being CT scanned.
Meet Makokou — 34-year-old male gorilla at the Johannesburg Zoo in South Africa, who recently developed breathing problems. A medical examination revealed that Makokou's nasal passages were being blocked by inflamed polyps, which need to be surgically removed. On June 6, the zoo's veterinarian team flew Makokou to a hospital 33 miles away to plan for the surgery with a CT scan of the great ape's head.
According to Adrian Tordiffe, a veterinary wildlife specialist from the University of Pretoria (UP), Makokou was sedated at the zoo before being flown by helicopter to a nearby hospital. Doctors scanned Makokou and saw him safely back to the zoo before he even woke up.
Read more: Amazing photos show 463-pound gorilla being CT scanned
Secret of the 100-year-old lungs
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When one ponders one's legacy, one's first thought is probably not that their diseased organs will sit around in a jar long enough to educate scientists 100 years in the future. (If this is your preoccupying thought, here are some mysteries of the universe to fixate on instead.)
In any case, at least one unfortunate person's measles-riddled lungs, removed and fixed in the preservative formalin in 1912, have given modern scientists a new view of the deadly (and ancient) virus. Live Science Staff Writer Nicoletta Lanese writes:
"[Researchers] managed to extract samples of the virus from the 108-year-old lung tissue and used the genetic material — the oldest measles genome ever sequenced — to learn more about the origins of the pathogen. In a new study, published June 18 in the journal Science, they estimate that measles could have diverged from its closest known relative, a now eradicated cattle virus, as early as 528 B.C."
The lungs in question belong to a collection of hundreds of other lung specimens stored in the basement of the Berlin Museum of Medical History. What other insights await in those formalin-filled jars? Time will only tell.
Read more: Person who had measles 100 years ago helps scientists trace origins of virus
Untouched Italy
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Archaeologists recently found a hidden temple in an underground Roman city without even touching shovel to Earth.
As part of a recent study in the journal Antiquity, researchers mapped a chunk of the town of Falerii Novi, founded north of Rome in 241 B.C., via ground-penetrating radar (GPR). Live Science Senior Writer Mindy Weisberger writes:
"The researchers deployed a grid of ground-penetrating radar antennae, fixed to a cart and towed over the site by an all-terrain vehicle. They bombarded the site with radio wave pulses, taking measurements every 2 inches (6 cm) and reflecting off objects underground to a depth of 6.5 feet (2 meters), according to the study. This showed Falerii Novi's buried structures in high resolution and in three dimensions."
The scans revealed previously unknown structures in the city, including a temple and a bathing complex. But beyond these tantalizing discoveries, the study also shows that GPR can be a powerful tool for uncovering the buried secrets of long-vanished cities.
Read more: Hidden temple in a buried Roman city discovered by ground-penetrating radar
The blobs at the center of the Earth
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Deep within Earth, where the solid mantle meets the molten outer core, strange continent-size blobs of hot rock jut out for hundreds of miles in every direction. Known as "large low-shear velocity provinces" (LLSVPs), or sometimes just "the blobs," two of these mysterious structures sit deep below the Pacific Ocean and Africa, accounting for nearly 10% of the entire mantle's mass. Now, new research suggests the blobs may be even bigger than previously thought.
In a study published June 12 in the journal Science, researchers analyzed thousands of seismic waves generated by earthquakes over nearly 30 years. As those waves traveled through the Pacific Ocean blob, they slowed down by up to 30%, painting an invisible picture of where the blob begins and ends. The researchers detected a massive, more-than-600-mile-long chunk of blob below the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific that had never been detected before, and showed that the blob deep below the Hawaiian Islands was much bigger than previous studies estimated.
Still, nobody knows what these strange mantle blobs are or how they impact Earth's geophysical processes — however, the study authors wrote, the fact that these huge sections of blob appear below known volcanic hotpots in the Pacific suggests they might have some part to play in Earth's volcanic history.
Read more: The monstrous 'blobs' near Earth's core may be even bigger than we thought
The Red Planet glows green
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When solar radiation hits oxygen atoms high in Earth's atmosphere, it produces a subtle but continuous green glow. This phenomenon, known as night glow, is almost impossible to see from our vantage point on Earth, but has been captured nicely by our friends aboard the International Space Station. Now, new research shows that Mars has an emerald-colored glow of its own.
Using the European Space Agency's Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), scientists scanned the Martian atmosphere at altitudes between 12 miles and 250 miles (20 to 400 kilometers). They found the green oxygen glow at all heights, though it was strongest around 50 miles (80 km) up and varied with the Red Planet's distance from the sun.
"One of the brightest emissions seen on Earth stems from night glow. More specifically, from oxygen atoms emitting a particular wavelength of light that has never been seen around another planet," study lead author Jean-Claude Gérard, of the Université de Liège in Belgium, said in a statement. "However, this emission has been predicted to exist at Mars for around 40 years — and, thanks to TGO, we’ve found it."
Read more: Weird green glow spotted in atmosphere of Mars
New name with a bang
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From the minds that brought you a research vessel named Boaty McBoatface (which is to say, the general public), here comes the newest park in Oregon to be named by public vote: "Exploding Whale Memorial Park." (Hooray, democracy!)
Citizens of Florence, Oregon picked the name from a list of 124 candidates to commemorate the site where, in 1970, local officials blew up a beached and rotting sperm whale measuring 45 feet (14 meters) long and weighing about 8 tons (7 metric tons). Mindy Weisberger writes:
"Local news stations filmed the spectacular explosion, which had the unfortunate aftermath of showering everything — and everyone — in the immediate vicinity with bits of dead whale."
Current Oregon state policy dictates that beached whales be buried, not blown up.
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