Imagine waking up to find your entire body gone — no torso, no limbs — just a head that has expanded, split into five distinct sections. That sounds like a horror film or a scene from science ...

If you’re able, watch this video. If not, allow me to explain. Two crown-of-thorns starfish are placed in separate tanks. Ordinary seawater is poured into one. In the other, seawater that a giant ...

Measuring rocket pollution, how calcium induced an ice age, unpacking dark matter and a listener question about freezing flows ...

For many creatures, having a limb caught in a predator’s mouth is usually a death sentence. Not starfish, though—they can detach the limb and leave the predator something to chew on while they crawl ...

For centuries, scientists have wondered: Where is the head of a starfish? Researchers mapped starfish genes to solve the mystery, and it wasn't what they expected. Turns out, starfish genes suggest it ...

On an extended research visit to a friend’s lab in Tokyo, marine biologists Amy Johnson and Olaf Ellers witnessed something they’d never seen before. The starfish in Tatsuo Motokawa’s lab weren’t ...

While the cartoon starfish Patrick Star from "SpongeBob Squarepants" is famously stupid, his real-life counterpart in science may in fact be all head. This at least is the conclusion of a landmark ...