
Patrick Pester
Patrick Pester is the trending news writer at Live Science. His work has appeared on other science websites, such as BBC Science Focus and Scientific American. Patrick retrained as a journalist after spending his early career working in zoos and wildlife conservation. He was awarded the Master's Excellence Scholarship to study at Cardiff University where he completed a master's degree in international journalism. He also has a second master's degree in biodiversity, evolution and conservation in action from Middlesex University London. When he isn't writing news, Patrick investigates the sale of human remains.
Latest articles by Patrick Pester

Parts of San Francisco and Los Angeles are sinking into the sea — meaning sea-level rise will be even worse
By Patrick Pester published
A study led by NASA and NOAA has found that California is sinking in some areas, which means the projected sea level rise for parts of Los Angeles and San Francisco has doubled.

Moroccan fly maggot uses fake face on its butt to infiltrate termite colony
By Patrick Pester published
Researchers have discovered blow fly larvae with fake termite faces on their rears that enable them to socially integrate into termite colonies in the mountains of Morocco.

Octopuses: Facts about the 8-armed geniuses of the sea
By Patrick Pester last updated
Discover interesting facts about octopuses, an intelligent group of cephalopods with three hearts, eight arms and a reputation for causing mischief in oceans around the world.

Canal turns into 'stream of blood' in Argentina as locals fear toxic leak
By Patrick Pester published
The Sarandí canal in Argentina turned blood red last week. Officials suspect a toxic substance used in dyes has entered the waterway, located on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

Watch potential 'city-killer' asteroid 2024 YR4 as it hurtles through space
By Patrick Pester published
Asteroid 2024 YR4 has a tiny chance of hitting Earth in 2032, but for now, you can watch it fly harmlessly through space in a short time-lapse video captured by the NASA-funded ATLAS telescope.

January 2025 hottest on record despite US cold and La Niña
By Patrick Pester published
La Niña and record cold temperatures in the U.S. should have made Earth cooler, but January 2025 was still the hottest on record, with an average global warming of 3.15 F (1.75 C) above pre-industrial levels.

'Incredible moment in history:' Particle accelerator and AI offer first peek inside 2,000-year-old Herculaneum scroll
By Patrick Pester published
A 2,000-year-old Herculaneum scroll buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius is filled with lost words that scholars can now decipher thanks to AI and a particle accelerator.

'Extreme' warming in the Arctic as North Pole temperatures swell 36 F above average
By Patrick Pester published
The North Pole was above freezing on Sunday after an extreme winter warming event caused temperatures to climb more than 36 F (20 C) in the high Arctic.

'We've just seen earthquake after earthquake after earthquake': Santorini earthquake swarm intensifies but likely won't trigger volcano
By Patrick Pester published
Santorini's earthquakes are intensifying as a rare earthquake swarm continues to rattle the Mediterranean's Aegean Sea. The earthquakes are probably caused by faults rather than volcanic activity.

FDA approves 1st new class of opioid-free painkillers in over 20 years
By Patrick Pester published
The FDA has approved Journavx, an oral medication for treating pain that doesn't target the brain like addictive opioids.

'Zombie' spiders infected by never-before-seen fungus discovered on grounds of destroyed Irish castle
By Patrick Pester published
A new fungus that infects cave spiders and turns them into "zombies" was discovered in a Victorian gunpowder store at Castle Espie in Northern Ireland during filming for a TV show.

Ocean warming 4 times faster than in 1980s — and likely to accelerate in coming decades
By Patrick Pester published
Ocean warming has more than quadrupled in recent decades and is likely to accelerate even faster if humanity fails to address climate change, scientists find.

Yellowstone National Park earthquake shakes hottest and oldest geothermal area
By Patrick Pester published
A minor earthquake has hit Yellowstone National Park, and some people in the region experienced a tremor. The magnitude 3.9 earthquake struck near Norris Geyser Basin, which has a history of quakes.

Orcas: Facts about killer whales
By Marilyn Perkins, Patrick Pester last updated
Discover interesting facts about orcas, the deadly and beautiful predators that lurk in every ocean.

DeepSeek stuns tech industry with new AI image generator that beats OpenAI's DALL-E 3
By Patrick Pester published
Chinese AI lab DeepSeek has released a new image generator, Janus-Pro-7B, which the company says is better than competitors.

New glowing molecule, invented by AI, would have taken 500 million years to evolve in nature, scientists say
By Patrick Pester published
An artificial intelligence model has created a new protein that researchers say would have taken 500 million years to evolve in nature — if nature were capable of producing such a thing.

Catastrophic tipping point in Greenland reached as crystal blue lakes turn brown, belch out carbon dioxide
By Patrick Pester published
Record heat and rain turned thousands of Greenland lakes brown in 2022 as they hit a tipping point and began emitting carbon dioxide.

Spotted hyena found in Egypt for 1st time in 5,000 years — then trackers killed it with a pickup truck
By Patrick Pester published
Researchers documented the first spotted hyena in Egypt for 5,000 years after it was hit with a pickup truck for killing goats.

Explosive 'bomb cyclone' descending on UK and Ireland with up to 100 mph winds
By Patrick Pester published
Storm Éowyn is about to hit the U.K. and Ireland as forecasters warn the explosive "bomb cyclone" will bring snow, rain and potentially deadly superfast winds.

Florida's snowfall record smashed as historic storm blasts Gulf Coast
By Patrick Pester published
A historic winter snowstorm has reached the Gulf Coast, smothering the region in Arctic air and dropping record-breaking amounts of snow on northern Florida.

China's 'artificial sun' shatters nuclear fusion record by generating steady loop of plasma for 1,000 seconds
By Patrick Pester published
A nuclear fusion reactor in China, dubbed the "artificial sun," has broken its own record to bring humanity one step closer to near-limitless clean energy.

'Medieval' nanotech chainmail sports 100 trillion chemical bonds per square centimeter — and could be the future of armor
By Patrick Pester published
Researchers unveiled a super-strong nanoscale material made from the first two-dimensional mechanically interlocked polymers. The material resembles medieval chainmail at the molecular level and could be used in body armor.

Cheating little penguins are big on divorce, and other breeding secrets revealed
By Patrick Pester published
A little penguin colony in Australia struggles during years with high penguin divorce rates, but the divorcees could have more offspring in the long run if they find better mates, a new study finds.
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