Home / Editorial Team / Chris Packham
Chris Packham

Chris Packham

Author

Chris has written and edited for newspapers and alt newsweeklies since 2003, including the Kansas City Star, The Pitch and the Village Voice. He has been copyediting and occasionally writing for Science X since 2013.

Articles by Chris Packham

Phys.org / Saturday Citations: Hot, hot gold; mechanisms of face recognition; first pathway of gut-brain communication

It's Saturday! Let's review the last seven days of research findings: In a kind of logistics/transport breakthrough, archaeologists in Wales have determined that smaller megaliths surrounding Stonehenge were transported by ...

Jul 26, 2025
Phys.org / Saturday Citations: Dogs like TV; mRNA vaccine enhances cancer therapy; old rhyme inaccurate

This week in science news: Researchers from the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid, Spain, digitally reconstructed the ribcages of four prehistoric Homo sapiens and theorize that climate influences ribcage evolution. ...

Jul 19, 2025
Phys.org / Saturday Citations: Disproving string theory; interstellar comet arrives; lemurs age gracefully

Well, it's July 12, which means (a) the Steam Summer Sale is over and (b) it's really hot outside in the northeastern U.S. This week, researchers discovered a cool new fish and named it after Darth Vader. An analysis of the ...

Jul 12, 2025
Phys.org / Saturday Citations: Upside-down sharks; brain network functioning in psychopaths; IQ associated with better predictions

This week, biologists discovered a new cellular organelle that's like "a new recycling center within the cell." Wild-growing tomatoes in the Galápagos are de-evolving. And geologists at the University of Southampton detected ...

Jun 28, 2025
Phys.org / Saturday Citations: Genetic toggles, undersea farmers and exploding rockets

This week, medical researchers ruled out brainstem CT scanning alone for proof of neurologic death. Researchers at Yale presented new evidence that the brain stores and retrieves visuomotor associations in graph-like cognitive ...

Jun 21, 2025
Phys.org / Saturday Citations: Chatbots easily tricked; better strength training; dynamics of a neural 'reward map'

This week, the state of Florida reached a "startling milestone" in the effort to eradicate invasive Burmese pythons in the Everglades. Archaeologists found the 6,000-year-old remains of a teen girl with cranial modification. ...

Jun 14, 2025
Phys.org / Saturday Citations: Reality vs. imagination; rhinos vs. poachers; mathematics vs. the Big Bang

This week, Chinese researchers reported a nearly complete skull representing the first known sauropod species from East Asia. A team at the USDA identified viruses from a miticide-resistant parasitic mite causing honey bee ...

Jun 7, 2025
Phys.org / Saturday Citations: Wages vs. welfare; origins of teeth; a search for primordial black holes

A new study of the Gobi Wall in the Gobi highland desert of Mongolia reveals a multifunctional role beyond defense; data from the James Webb Space Telescope is bringing physicists closer to resolving the Hubble tension; and ...

May 31, 2025
Phys.org / Saturday Citations: Protoplanetary cornucopia; trees abound; the importance of diversity in corporate boards

This week, paleontologists reported finding new details in an Archaeopteryx fossil via CT scanning and UV light exposure. NASA engineers revived a set of thrusters aboard Voyager 1 that had been considered inoperable in 2004. ...

May 17, 2025
Phys.org / Saturday Citations: AI predicts cancer survival outcomes; Hubble spots a wandering black hole

This week, physicists at CERN reported the transmutation of lead into gold in the Large Hadron Collider, raising the possibility that a Science X alchemy vertical could be on the horizon. An international research collaborative ...

May 10, 2025
Phys.org / Saturday Citations: Cancer precursor cell identified; Webb spots more old galaxies

This week, archaeologists identified depictions of the Milky Way galaxy in ancient Egyptian imagery. A mathematician found a new way to solve higher polynomial equations, one of algebra's oldest challenges. And climbing shoe ...

May 3, 2025
Phys.org / Saturday Citations: Is the universe a computational process? Plus: Psychological benefits of gaming

This week, researchers uncovered the negative pressure mechanisms plants use to communicate stress. Linguists found that the melody of spoken language in English functions as its own, distinct language. And there was also ...

Apr 26, 2025
Phys.org / Saturday Citations: An exoplanetary biosignature; the diplomacy of body odor; personalities of bees

This week, the Curiosity rover found large carbon deposits on Mars, suggesting an ancient carbon cycle. Researchers exploring the domestication of cats believe they may have originally pounced out of Tunisia. And researchers ...

Apr 19, 2025
Phys.org / Saturday Citations: Huge eruptions from a black hole; the largest-ever functional brain map; origins of human musicality

This week, researchers reported a brain circuit linked to the intensity of political behavior. Microbiologists found that the 2018 eruption of the Kīlauea volcano drove a rare, massive summertime phytoplankton bloom, the ...

Apr 12, 2025
Phys.org / Saturday Citations: Leaky continental plates, talking monkeys and a spectacular Einstein ring

This week, researchers reported on nine rivers and lakes in the Americas that defy hydrologic expectations. Geologists report that Earth's first crust probably had chemical features similar to today's continental crust. And ...

Apr 5, 2025