A Long-Lost Megalodon Fossil Found, The Strange Minds That May Exist in the Universe, and a Blood Test That Could Detect Over 50 Types of Cancer
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Discover the top stories from June 27 to July 2, 2026, including the return of a long-lost Megalodon fossil and a new blood test that could detect cancer from a single sample.
Anastasia Scott is an Assistant Editor at Discover Magazine. Her work focuses on bringing clarity and creativity to scientific ideas. Rosie McCall is a London-based freelance writer who frequently contributes to Discover Magazine, specializing in science, health, and the environment.View Full Profile.
Jenny Lehmann is an Associate Editor at Discover Magazine who writes articles on microbiology, psychology, neurology, and zoology, and oversees the Piece of Mind column of the print issue.View Full Profile. Missed some of our top stories from the week? Check out our round-up below, covering the biggest science news and stories that matter.
For this week's stories, from June 26 to July 2, 2026, we're covering a long-lost Megalodon fossil that confirms the giant shark's length, the potential creation of a "StormWall" to protect Earth from solar storms, how consciousness may exist in different forms across the universe, the surprising potential of marigolds as the next superfood, a look at a famous female shaman from the Middle Stone Age, and a new blood test that researchers claim can detect over 50 forms of cancer. In the 2018 film The Meg, a 75-foot shark terrorizes the ocean. The actual science behind that number, the research that established how large Megalodon could really grow, rested on a single set of vertebrae dug out of a clay pit in Gram, Denmark, in the late 1970s.
But when researchers moved the specimen out of its original research lab after publication, it was misplaced, leaving behind only photographs. Researchers are asking how we can fortify Earth against solar storms' most severe side effects. A new paper describes a system named “StormWall,” which involves flinging chemicals into the outer edges of the planet’s geomagnetic field in order to provide a temporary shield that deflects extreme space weather.
Think of Scarlett Johansson’s character Samantha in the movie Her or Rocky, the lovable alien in Project Hail Mary. Neither was made of flesh, blood, and tissue, but code and algorithms (Samantha) and oxidized metals and a crystallized brain (Rocky).
Think About This
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- Ask your child: “What do you think scientists discovered about longlost megalodon? What part surprised you most?”
- Explore together: Search for “longlost megalodon” on NASA Kids’ Club, DK Find Out, or National Geographic Kids for more kid-friendly facts.
- Critical thinking: Science findings can change as more research is done. Ask: “How would scientists test this? What would prove them wrong?”
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