In 2013, scientists were left perplexed when billions of starfish started to turn into goo, but now, there’s an answer behind the mystery.
The ocean can be a terrifying place if all those videos of people dropping their GoPros into the sea are anything to go by.
But what’s more scary than a mystery that hasn’t been solved?
According to NOAA, only 5 per cent of the ocean has been explored, so something like a ‘woman’s voice’ or a ‘faceless fish’ is bound to cause some concern.
And 12 years ago, starfish across the US were mysteriously turning into goo on the ocean floor, in an epidemic which remained a mystery – until now, that is.
What happened as billions of starfish turned into goo?
Billions of sea stars were wiped out (Luis Boza/VIEWpress via Getty Images)
The epidemic resulted in the mass death of several starfish species, with Associated Press reporting that more than 20 species were affected, even today.
It was so bad, in fact, that the sunflower sea star was placed on the critically endangered list, losing 90 per cent of its population in the first five years.
The outbreak was later named the sea star wasting disease (SSWD), which symptoms include abnormally twisted arms, white lesions, deflation of arms and body, arm loss, and body disintegration (via National Park Service).
Where did it happen?
The epidemic swept across the Pacific Coast of North America, resulting in billions of sea stars living between Mexico and Alaska meeting their demise.
In a matter of days, the dismantled bodies of sea stars were spotted on beaches across the Pacific Coast, as their very being was literally melted away by the mystery plague.
What did scientists find?
After 12 years of studying, scientists think they have an answer (Getty Stock)
While scientists were pretty confident that the culprit causing the epidemic was from the Vibrio species, which also causes cholera in humans, they had a harder time identifying exactly which species caused it.
After years of laboratory experiments and field sampling of tissue extracts from infected starfish, a new study, published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, was recently able to identify it as Vibrio pectenicida, a species with unusual characteristics that have allowed it to remain entirely undetected since the epidemic first struck.
And scientists reckon that things could get far worse with this pathogen present, as it is said to thrive in the warmer waters that have been brought about via climate change.
However, identifying the pathogen is a crucial first step towards the long-term goal of eliminating it from our oceans, allowing sea stars to thrive on the ocean floor.
The development of a diagnostic test to detect the pathogen’s genetic sequence is the researcher’s main priority, and co-author of the study, Melaine Prentice, from the Hakai Institute, also said that healthy sea stars could now be tested to see whether they need to be relocated, or bred in captivity in a conservation effort, before being added back into affected areas.
There’s a lot going on in the Taylor Swift fandom right now. Though the pop star has been keeping out of the spotlight in recent months, the internet is swimming with theories that she’s about to make her comeback — and she just might make the big announcement on boyfriend Travis Kelce‘s podcast.
It all started Monday morning (Aug. 11), when New Heights — the podcast hosted by the Kansas City Chiefs tight end and his brother, retired Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce — posted an image on X teasing its special guest for this week’s episode. In the photo, the two NFL stars smile on either side of a blacked-out silhouette, which Swifties think happens to look a lot like a certain 14-time Grammy winner.
“92%ers, we’re coming back early for a special episode with a VERY special guest,” reads the photo’s caption, which notes that the episode will drop on Aug. 13, coinciding with Swift’s favorite number.
The New Heights teaser image also features a glittery orange background, aligning with long-held fan theories that Swift’s next album will have an orange theme. Plus, Jason appears to be wearing an Eras Tour T-shirt.
But if those apparent Easter eggs weren’t enough to get Swifties riled up, the message Taylor Nation posted just 12 minutes later definitely was. Sharing four images of the musician on stage at past Eras shows, wearing the color — you guessed it — orange in each one, the official fan account wrote, “Thinking about when she said ‘See you next era…’”
Fueling the fire, Taylor Nation quickly followed that post up with two additional batches of four orange-themed Eras outfits in the replies, amounting to 12 pictures total. (Following 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department, Swift’s next album would be the 12th in her discography.)
With all of that in mind, Swifties are absolutely losing their minds at the possibility that the singer has new music coming soon. “glittery orange background, taylor nation posted 12 minutes after new heights, the silhouette is shaped like taylor, Jason in eras merch, a ‘VERY’ special guest…… what if she announces ts12 on Wednesday the 13th ON NEW HEIGHTS…..,” one person wrote on X.
“TS12 IS ACTUALLY COMING THIS IS NOT A DRILL WHATS THE PROCEDURE!!” another excited fan posted.
“travis looking to his left with his Taylor Smile, jason wearing merch, i can see the bangs from a mile away……but most importantly, the background…, added a third Swiftie. “ts12 confirmed to be orange alert the troops.”
Billboard has reached out to Swift’s rep for comment.
Fans have been waiting to see what the musician will do next ever since the Eras Tour wrapped in December, tying a glittery bow on Swift’s first two decades making music. Pulling in more than $2 billion in worldwide grosses, the trek went down in history as the highest earning tour of all time.
And though Swift has never had trouble outdoing herself, her past few projects have left expectations quite high. Her 2022 album, Midnights, won album of the year at the Grammys — making the hitmaker the first artist to ever win the prize four times — while Tortured Poets spent 17 weeks atop the Billboard 200, the third-longest No. 1 run of any album in chart history.
Netflix has “extended its creative partnership” with Archewell Productions, Prince Harry and Meghan’s — the Duke and Duchess of Sussex — media company, with a multiyear, first-look deal for all of Archewell’s film and television projects. In practice, it is a downgrade from the 2020 overall deal that birthed Harry & Meghan, Polo and With Love, Meghan, among other projects.
The overall-to-first-look extension mirrors the move Netflix made recently with the Obamas — as well as others — for their Higher Ground banner. In both cases, the exclusivity carried by their respective, splashy original deals has been removed.
As part of the new deal, Netflix is also now partnering with Markle’s “As ever” lifestyle brand.
“We’re proud to extend our partnership with Netflix and expand our work together to include the As ever brand,” Markle said in a statement. “My husband and I feel inspired by our partners who work closely with us and our Archewell Productions team to create thoughtful content across genres that resonates globally, and celebrates our shared vision.“
“Harry and Meghan are influential voices whose stories resonate with audiences everywhere. The response to their work speaks for itself — Harry & Meghan gave viewers an intimate look into their lives and quickly became one of our most-watched documentary series,” Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria said. “More recently, fans have been inspired by With Love, Meghan, with products from the new As ever line consistently selling out in record time. We’re excited to continue our partnership with Archewell Productions and to entertain our members together.”
Harry & Meghan debuted on Netflix in December of 2022 with a total of 23.4 million views over just its first four days. It ranks as Netflix’s fifth most-popular documentary series of all time.
Season two of With Love, Meghan will premiere later this month, and a new holiday special will stream this December.
Archewell’s current projects set up at Netflix also include feature film Meet Me at the Lake, an adaptation of the bestselling novel of the same name by Carley Fortune. Plus, there’s the documentary short Masaka Kids, A Rhythm Within — a partnership between Archewell and Campfire Studios in association with Wontanara Productions.
“In the heart of Uganda’s Masaka region, where the shadows of the HIV/AIDS crisis linger, a small orphanage becomes a beacon of hope,” the logline reads. “Masaka Kids, A Rhythm Within goes beyond the viral videos to reveal a vibrant, one-of-a-kind community where orphaned children transform hardship into joy, dancing their way toward healing, belonging, and the promise of a brighter future.”
Apple still hasn’t brought wireless charging to the iPad, but Kuxiu’s new charger brings similar functionality and convenience to the iPad Pro and iPad Air. Like wireless chargers for the iPhone, the M30 magnetically attaches to the back of supported iPad models, but instead of transferring power through wire coils and induction, it uses the same Smart Connector pins that iPad accessories like the Magic Keyboard rely on.
The M30 Magnetic Smart Connector Charger is available now through Kuxiu’s website for $39.99 and is compatible with iPad models that feature, and can charge through, the Smart Connector on the back. These include the M4 iPad Pros as well as many versions of the 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro, plus the M3 and M2-powered 11-inch iPad Air and 4th and 5th-gen versions of the 10.9-inch Air.
In addition to potentially being easier to pop on and off the iPad than plugging in a USB cable, the M30 charger also frees up the tablet’s lone USB-C port. When traveling, I frequently connect an iPad Pro to a hotel TV over USB-C to watch Netflix and Disney Plus, but that typically requires the use of a hub for connecting both an HDMI cable and power cord to the iPad’s USB-C port at the same time. The M30 removes the need for a hub, assuming you just need to connect a single accessory, like an external drive.
The M30 will also charge certain iPad models faster than even the new Qi2.2 wireless charging standard can. Supported iPad models using Apple’s M2 and M3 chips will charge at up to 18W, but those with an M4 chip can charge at 35W speeds. For comparison, the iPhone 16 lineup can be wirelessly charged at up to 25W speeds using the new version of the MagSafe charging puck that Apple introduced in September.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have extended their Netflix partnership with a multi-year, first-look deal via their banner Archewell Productions.
The couple first inked a deal with the streamer in 2020 and have since collaborated on projects including “Polo,” “Harry & Meghan,” “Heart of Invcitus” and “Live to Lead.” Most recently, Markle debuted her lifestyle series “With Love, Meghan,” the second season of which premieres later this month. Along with the series, she launched the brand As Ever, which will continue to grow in partnership with Netflix.
It was also revealed that a special episode of “With Love, Meghan” titled “Holiday Celebration” will premiere this December. “Join Meghan in Montecito for a magical holiday celebration,” the logline reads. “Together, friends and family deck the halls, create holiday feasts, craft heartfelt gifts, and share lots of laughs — with simple how-tos to follow at home. It’s a holiday wonder with warmth, tradition and a generous dose of joy.”
Other projects Harry and Meghan are producing at Netflix include the documentary short “Masaka Kids, A Rhythm Within,” which is set to release later this year. “In the heart of Uganda’s Masaka region, where the shadows of the HIV/AIDS crisis linger, a small orphanage becomes a beacon of hope,” the short’s synopsis reads. “‘Masaka Kids, A Rhythm Within’ goes beyond the viral videos to reveal a vibrant, one-of-a-kind community where orphaned children transform hardship into joy, dancing their way toward healing, belonging and the promise of a brighter future.” The couple is also developing a feature adaptation of Carley Fortune’s bestselling romantic drama book “Meet Me at the Lake.”
“We’re proud to extend our partnership with Netflix and expand our work together to include the As Ever brand,” Markle said in a statement. “My husband and I feel inspired by our partners who work closely with us and our Archewell Productions team to create thoughtful content across genres that resonates globally, and celebrates our shared vision.”
Added Bela Bajaria, Netflix chief content officer: “Harry and Meghan are influential voices whose stories resonate with audiences everywhere. The response to their work speaks for itself — ‘Harry & Meghan’ gave viewers an intimate look into their lives and quickly became one of our most-watched documentary series. More recently, fans have been inspired by ‘With Love, Meghan,’ with products from the new As Ever line consistently selling out in record time. We’re excited to continue our partnership with Archewell Productions and to entertain our members together.”
EXCLUSIVE: The K-drama craze continues around the world, with Rakuten Viki snapping up a soon-to-launch drama starring Song Joong-ki (Reborn Rich) and Chun Woo-hee (The Wailing) for multiple territories.
The Asian entertainment-focused streaming has acquired rights to My Youth in the U.S., Latin America and Europe. It will launch on streaming service Viki in September.
Directed by Lee Sang-yeop (Yumi’s Cells) and written by Park Si-hyeon, the series follows Sun Woo-hae (Song) and his first love, Sung Je-yeon (Chun), who reconnect after a decade apart. Sun has found comfort and satisfaction in his work as a novelist and florist after a difficult childhood in the entertainment industry, while Sung is driven to reach the highest echelons of career success as a team leader at Feel Entertainment, having seen her wealthy family lose everything. Their reunion forces them to confront the past and their present selves.
“My Youth features incredible storytelling, as well as wonderful talent both behind and in front of the camera,” said Jaehee Hong, SVP of Content at Rakuten Viki. “The series makes an excellent addition to our line-up of rich K-content meant to appeal both to fans of k-drama as well as anyone looking to immerse themselves in a riveting drama.”
SLL and High-Zium Studio made the series, which is due to launch on JTBC in Korea on September 5.
For Rakuten Viki, the deal comes after it announced My Girlfriend is The Man!, a co-production with Studio N, in May. Other recent deals have included the acquisition of Toronto-premiered coming-of-age film Love in the Big City and the release of Yumi’s Cells: The Movie in July 2024 and an agreement with China’s Bilibili for a pair of animated series.
Rakuten Viki, part of e-commerce giant Rakuten Group, has over 100 million registered users in 190+ countries, and sits alongside k-entertainment news site Soompi.
In an interview with Deadline last year, Rakuten Viki revealed around than 75% of the streamer’s viewers were of non-Asian descent, and that k-content such as True Beauty, What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim, My Lovely Liar and Perfect Marriage Revenge were among its biggest hits. Other top-performing shows included Chinese titles Love Like the Galaxy and Only For Love, and Thailand’s F4 Thailand: Boys Over Flowers and Japan’s An Incurable Case of Love.
Auxy Studio is one of our favourite music-making apps for iOS. Launched in 2014, it offered users a simple, uncluttered interface that made sequencing its onboard sounds quick and intuitive, and it’s since been updated with a host of useful features including MIDI support and DAW export.
The app has now officially launched a desktop version that brings Auxy to macOS for the first time. Available now in the App Store, Auxy Max offers all the same sounds and features as the iOS version. A free version is available with a limit of four instruments per project, but more can be had if you upgrade to the paid-for tier at $59.99.
In other Auxy news, the company has teased the release of its debut hardware product. While we’re not entirely sure what form this will take, Auxy has shared an image that gives us a glimpse of an off-white corner, complete with a wooden end-cheek and the company logo. (It looks likely to be a keyboard equipped with Auxy’s sound library.)
(Image credit: Auxy)
“Alongside improving our apps and adding more sounds, we’ve been working on something different: a hardware product that we plan to launch later this fall,” reads a statement from Auxy. “Our goal is to build a playable instrument, based on the same philosophy as our apps: beautiful, simple, and made to inspire creativity. We’re excited to share more soon. Stay tuned!”
Auxy Max is available now, but you’ll have to wait a few more months to get your hands on the company’s mysterious hardware instrument. In the meantime, here’s a video of Japanese artist Voboku performing a head-banging live set with nothing more than an iPhone and a copy of Auxy.
Auxy Max is compatible with macOS 13.5 or later. Download Auxy Max from the App Store.
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An artistic rendering of an evening approximately 252 million years ago during the late Permian in the Luangwa Basin of Zambia. The scene includes several saber-toothed gorgonopsians and beaked dicynodonts.Gabriel Ugueto
An international team of paleontologists has spent more than 15 years excavating and studying fossils from Africa to expand our understanding of the Permian, a period of Earth’s history that began 299 million years ago and ended 252 million years ago with our planet’s largest and most devastating mass extinction. Led by researchers at the University of Washington and the Field Museum of Natural History, the team is identifying the animals that thrived in southern Pangea — the planet’s single supercontinent at the time — just before the so-called “Great Dying” wiped out about 70% of terrestrial species, and an even larger fraction of marine ones.
“This mass extinction was nothing short of a cataclysm for life on Earth, and changed the course of evolution,” said Christian Sidor, a UW professor of biology and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the UW Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture. “But we lack a comprehensive view of which species survived, which didn’t, and why. The fossils we have collected in Tanzania and Zambia will give us a more global perspective on this unprecedented period in our planet’s natural history.”
Sidor and Kenneth Angielczyk, curator of paleomammalogy at the Field Museum, are co-editors of a 14-article series published Aug. 7 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology featuring the team’s recent discoveries about the myriad of animals that made Permian Africa their home. These include saber-toothed predators, burrowing foragers and a large, salamander-like creature.
All these finds were excavated in three basins across southern Africa: the Ruhuhu Basin in southern Tanzania, the Luangwa Basin in eastern Zambia and the Mid-Zambezi Basin in southern Zambia. Most were discovered by team members on multiple, month-long excavation trips to the region over the past 17 years. Others were analyses of specimens dug up decades prior that had been stored in museum collections.
“These parts of Zambia and Tanzania contain absolutely beautiful fossils from the Permian,” said Sidor. “They are giving us an unprecedented view of life on land leading up to the mass extinction.”
Jacqueline Lungmus, an assistant professor of geosciences at the University of Oklahoma and UW undergraduate alum; Kenneth Angielczyk, curator of paleomammology at the Field Museum; and Brandon Peecook, associate professor of biological sciences at Idaho State University and a UW doctoral alum, excavate a fossilized dicynodont from the Permian of Zambia.Roger Smith/University of the Witwatersrand
Starting in 2007, Sidor and his team, including UW students and postdoctoral researchers, made five trips to the Ruhuhu Basin and four to the Mid-Zambezi and Luangwa basins, all in cooperation with the Tanzanian and Zambian governments. The researchers trekked between field sites miles apart to collect fossils. They stayed in villages or camped in the open — once waking during the night to the ground-quaking stomps of a nearby elephant herd. All fossils collected by the team will be returned to Tanzania and Zambia after researchers have completed their analyses.
The Permian is the endpoint of what paleontologists call the Paleozoic Era. During this time, animal life — which evolved first in Earth’s oceans — began to colonize land and complex terrestrial ecosystems developed. By the Permian, a diverse array of amphibian and reptile-like creatures roamed environments ranging from early forests to arid valleys. The end-Permian mass extinction — whose precise cause scientists are still debating — obliterated many of these ecosystems and ushered in the Mesozoic Era, which saw the evolution of dinosaurs, as well as the first birds, flowering plants and mammals.
For decades, scientists’ best understanding of the Permian, the Great Dying and the start of the Mesozoic came from the Karoo Basin in South Africa, which contains a near-complete fossil record of periods before and after the mass extinction. But beginning in the 1930s, paleontologists realized that basins in Tanzania and Zambia contain fossil records of this time range that are almost as pristine as the Karoo’s. The excavation trips by Sidor, Angielczyk and their colleagues represent the largest analysis to date of the region’s fossil record from before and after the Great Dying. In 2018, they published a comprehensive analysis of the post-Permian animals of the Ruhuhu and Luangwa basins. These new papers look further back into the Permian.
A map of Zambia and Tanzania in southern Africa showing the locations of the three basins visited by the team, the Luangwa and Mid-Zambezi basins in Zambia and the Ruhuhu Basin in Tanzania.Christian Sidor/University of Washington
“The number of specimens we’ve found in Zambia and Tanzania is so high and their condition is so exquisite that we can make species-level comparisons to what paleontologists have found in South Africa,” said Sidor. “I know of no better place on Earth for getting sufficient detail of this time period to make such detailed conclusions and comparisons.”
The team’s papers describe a number of new species of dicynodonts. These small, burrowing, reptile-like herbivores first evolved in the mid-Permian. By the time of the mass extinction, dicynodonts — many of whom sported a beak-like snout with two small tusks that likely aided burrowing — were the dominant plant-eaters on land. The team’s findings also include several new species of large, saber-toothed predators called gorgonopsians, as well as a new species of temnospondyl, a large salamander-like amphibian.
“We can now compare two different geographic regions of Pangea and see what was going on both before and after the end-Permian mass extinction,” said Sidor. “We can really start to ask questions about who survived and who didn’t.”
In addition to the UW and the Field Museum, the team includes scientists from the University of Chicago, Loyola University Chicago, Idaho State University, the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, Carleton University, the University of Southern California, the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, the Iziko South African Museum, Southern Methodist University, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, the Museum for Natural History in Berlin, the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Oklahoma, the National Heritage Conservation Commission in Lusaka, Virginia Tech, and the Chipembele Wildlife Education Center in Mfume, Zambia. Seven of these scientists are former UW postdoctoral researchers, doctoral students or undergraduate students. The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society.
For more information, contact Sidor at casidor@uw.edu.
Tag(s): Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture • College of Arts & Sciences • Department of Biology
Apple’s tvOS 26 beta removing HomeKit branding and adding “Apple Home” shouldn’t be a surprise, since Apple has been on that road for two years.
HomeKit is now over ten years old, having been announced during the launch of iOS 8 in 2014. In that time, it’s rather failed to make the impact Apple may have hoped for, and alongside some fundamental technology changes, the company is also quite slowly rebranding it.
The latest example of this has been spotted by Israeli publication, The Verifier. It shows how tvOS 26 has now reworded its Settings menus from “AirPlay & HomeKit,” to “AirPlay & Apple Home.”
It follows Apple’s move in iOS 18.4 to force users to upgrade to the new HomeKit architecture. That came in 2025, but the first release of the updated version of HomeKit, was as far back as November 2022.
Since then, there have been various references in the code for operating systems such as iOS 26. One notable one even gave a hint to the screen size of a predicted Apple Home Hub, now expected in 2026.
Craig Federighi launching the original HomeKit in 2014 — image credit: Apple
Separately, this Home Hub is rumored to be being tested by Apple staff, and it was even a surprise that the expected “homeOS” was not unveiled at WWDC 2025.
Yet Apple has been steadily working to put everything in place for this new smart home project. It has the benefit now of supporting Matter, the open smart home standard that has also been adopted by Samsung, Google, and more.
So now instead of being confined to working only with smart devices explicitly made to work with HomeKit, Apple users should be able to buy and use devices from any manufacturer. Apple’s HomeKit was never going to supplant its rivals, but now any device can come under the control of Apple Home.
This new report of the Apple Home branding is an early occurrence of it appearing in software that users will be able to see, once the beta test is over. But it’s far from the first sign of the branding at all.
Back in January 2025, for instance, Apple announced that it was making it easier for third-party firms to gain what was once called “Works with HomeKit.” And is now “Works with Apple Home.”
AppleInsider has also been told of cases where Apple has actually chastized brands who referred to HomeKit instead of Apple Home.
Note that overall, The Verifier does not have good track record in Apple reports. However, this claim is backed up by screen shots showing the new wording, and is getting picked up by more conventional media as a sea change to branding, where it is not.
