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Carl Zimmer@carlzimmer.bsky.social |
6343 followers 818 following 153 posts
New York Times columnist, author
carlzimmer.com
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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On Wednesday the official number of cases in which cows gave people the flu rose to four. Today in my email newsletter, I look back at H5N1's evolutionary trail and imagine its possible paths from here. 🧪buttondown.email/carlzimmer/archive/fridays-elk-just-when-i-thought-i-was-out/
2 replies 5 reposts 13 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Denisovans lived for over 100,000 years on the Tibetan plateau, hunting snow leopards and golden eagles and other animals. Here's my story on these remarkable people [Gift link] 🧪 www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/s...
2 replies 23 reposts 65 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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In new experiments, scientists have given bird flu to cows and watched what happens. The results indicate the virus isn't spreading in droplets infecting airways. For those worried about the evolution of a new pandemic, that's good news--for now. Here's my story. 🧪 Gift link: nyti.ms/3RNOYhX
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Glad to hear it! Thanks.
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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The last woolly mammoths survived on a remote island till 4000 years ago, wracked for millennia by genetic disorders. Here's my story on what they can tell us about saving endangered species today. 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/06/27/s...
3 replies 70 reposts 172 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Last year, I wrote about a dispute over some studies claiming to find a distinct microbiome in tumors. Today the most prominent one was retracted. 🧪 My story: www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/h... Retraction: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
0 replies 10 reposts 26 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Plato wrote that thought “is a silent inner conversation of the soul with itself.” And yet recent studies on the brain find no evidence that we use language to think. Here’s my story on this fascinating debate. [Gift link] 🧪 www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/s...
3 replies 11 reposts 30 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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How does a fish put both its eyes on one side of its head? Darwin's enemies thought the question was fatal to evolution. Now the rise of flounders and other flatfishes is coming into focus. 🧪 My story: www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/s...
0 replies 11 reposts 30 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Scientists have been puzzling over a fossil called Pikaia for decades. Is this 508-million-year-old creature our pre-vertebrate cousin? Now researchers say the confusion came from how we looked it it. We've had Pikaia upside down the whole time. 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/06/11/s...
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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True, but they mutate so fast along the way that most copies cannot copy themselves any more.
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Please consider subscribing to my email newsletter! In the latest issue, I write about giant genomes and how I gave my blood to witness the power of junk DNA. 🧪buttondown.email/carlzimmer/archive/fridays-elk-life-keeps-throwing-more-junk-at-us/
3 replies 3 reposts 22 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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This little Pacific fern has the biggest genome yet found--50 times bigger than ours. Here's my story on the evolution of extreme genomes. 🧪 [Gift link] www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/s...
1 replies 16 reposts 56 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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I do my best impression of a singing humpback whale on the Daily podcast today 🧪www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/podcasts/the-daily/whales-song.html
1 replies 3 reposts 18 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Why do humans make music? 75 experts launched a study to find out--and each of them sang a song that they analyzed together. Here's my story (and some tunes!) 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/s...
2 replies 9 reposts 31 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Check out the brain worm edition of my email newsletter. buttondown.email/carlzimmer/a...
1 replies 1 reposts 10 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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I understand your frustration. Please bear in mind that the magazines that pay writers like me have to make money, and it is not easy for them these days. If it's too much for you to handle, you can always find all my work on my own web site: carlzimmer.com/hidden-epide...
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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If the pop-ups are too much for you to handle, you can find my column mirrored here: carlzimmer.com/hidden-epide...
1 replies 2 reposts 9 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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With brain tapeworms in the news today, I thought I'd share this column from back in my Discover days, on the gruesome but surprisingly common disease known as neurocysticercosis www.discovermagazine.com/health/hidde...
16 replies 57 reposts 161 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Marine biologists and computer scientists say they have discovered that sperm whales use a "phonetic alphabet." Do they use it for a language made of underwater clicks? Here's my story. 🧪 [gift link] www.nytimes.com/2024/05/07/s...
1 replies 13 reposts 46 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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The Biden administration has released its official new policy on overseeing potentially dangerous research on pathogens. Here's my story with Ben Mueller: www.nytimes.com/2024/05/07/s...
0 replies 4 reposts 12 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Is anyone hearing the cicadas singing yet? Here's a short animation about this year's broods. 🧪www.nytimes.com/video/science/100000009443205/our-reporter-on-the-cicada-lifecycle.html
0 replies 1 reposts 8 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Mega-droughts, war, migration: What do 30,000 years of history reveal about how societies withstand collapse? I take a look at an intriguing new study for my Origins column. 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/s...
0 replies 5 reposts 13 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Do cicadas know something about prime numbers? For my email newsletter, I wrote about the stubborn mysteries of these insects. 🧪buttondown.email/carlzimmer/archive/fridays-elk-april-26-2024/
1 replies 3 reposts 27 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Don't hold your breath in New York! The northeast is left out of this year's festivities.
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Have you heard the cicadas yet this spring? In celebration of 2024's double-brood event, I wrote about how little we know about how trillions of insects know to emerge at the same time. 🧪 [Gift link] www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/s...
2 replies 12 reposts 27 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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What is "airborne"? WHO has created a new common language for talking about how diseases spread. It took over two years to put it together. Here's my story 🧪 [Gift link] www.nytimes.com/2024/04/18/h...
1 replies 13 reposts 25 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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I recently went to Florence for the first time and ended up writing about Galileo, the city’s greatest scientist–and the stories we tell about him four centuries later. It’s in my latest email newsletter. Read here: buttondown.email/carlzimmer/a... Subscribe here: buttondown.email/carlzimmer 🧪
0 replies 1 reposts 11 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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One of the many reasons tardigrades are amazing: they can withstand a blast of gamma rays a thousand times greater than a lethal dose for humans. I wrote about their molecular secrets of survival. 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/s...
0 replies 12 reposts 43 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Bonobos--famous as "hippie chimps"--actually commit more acts of aggression than chimpanzees. I wrote about how this new finding is changing our ideas about the origins of human aggression. 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/s...
2 replies 15 reposts 50 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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I write sometimes for other outlets. This is my seventh piece for Quanta so far. www.quantamagazine.org/authors/carl...
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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For Quanta, I took a trip through the social life of viruses. Check it out! 🧪 www.quantamagazine.org/viruses-fina...
2 replies 11 reposts 34 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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In my email newsletter today, I explore the hallmarks of life, why scientists don't agree on them, and whether A.I. can help broker an understanding. Contains a groovy organoid GIF. Check it out! 🧪 [Fixed link] buttondown.email/carlzimmer/a...
0 replies 0 reposts 10 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Thanks! Pesky beaker...
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Whoops, link is not clickable. Let's try that again! buttondown.email/carlzimmer/a...
0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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In my email newsletter today, I explore the hallmarks of life, why scientists don't agree on them, and whether A.I. can help broker an understanding. Contains a groovy organoid GIF. Check it out! 🧪buttondown.email/carlzimmer/archive/fridays-elk-march-22-2024/
2 replies 3 reposts 10 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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I wrote about people who survived a climate disaster 74,000 years ago thanks to resilience & versatility. Some scientists think they are the key to understanding how modern humans finally expanded out of Africa and survived on other continents permanently 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/s...
0 replies 3 reposts 24 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Aside from humans, there are only five species known to regularly go through menopause--all of them whales. A new study suggests many of the same evolutionary factors have produced it in every case. 🧪 [Gift link] www.nytimes.com/2024/03/13/s...
2 replies 8 reposts 38 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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For the "Ideas" series at the New York Times, I take a look at what might be called LifeGPT: letting large-language-model-like programs teach themselves biology by looking at data from millions of cells. They are learning fast. 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/s...
1 replies 7 reposts 19 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Neanderthals and Denisovans: Homo sapiens or not? Depends on which scientist you ask! I take a look at the most personal version of the species question in my latest email newsletter. 🧪buttondown.email/carlzimmer/archive/fridays-elk-march-8-2024/
0 replies 6 reposts 20 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Here's a story on clumps of cells sprouting woolly mammoth hair and why elephants don't get cancer. Trust me, it all fits together! 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/s...
2 replies 7 reposts 25 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Facebook, Threads down. Two fewer distractions for now…
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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*form
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Places like Laos are just not great places to from and preserve human fossils—climate, etc.
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Denisovans share a number of mutations in common, showing that they belong to a distinct lineage
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Two possibilities: 1) Denisovans lived in places where fossils don’t survive well 2) People have already found them but misclassified them. (Some puzzling fossils in China might be Denisovan, but they don’t seem to have DNA)
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Probably not continuously. There's a layer in the cave with only Neanderthal DNA and no Denisovan DNA. But Denisovans did come back to it for hundreds of thousands of years.
2 replies 0 reposts 7 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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You can hold all the known fossils of Denisovans in your cupped hands. But as scientists find more of their DNA, they get more and more interesting. Here's my profile of these ghostly people. 🧪 gift link: www.nytimes.com/2024/03/02/s...
6 replies 36 reposts 99 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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"California's Sierra Nevada could see up to 12 feet of snow." (Yes, feet.) weather.com/storms/winte...
4 replies 6 reposts 27 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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I wrote in August about a gigantic fossil whale that might have been the heaviest animal to ever live. Now some scientists are downgrading it to sperm-whale size. Big, but not THAT big. Quick update here 🧪 (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/s...
0 replies 3 reposts 31 likes
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Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.bsky.social
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Scientists have figured out how to look for the genetic signature of Down syndrome in ancient skeletons. Here's my story. [Gift link] www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/s... 🧪
0 replies 3 reposts 13 likes