A very rare fish has washed up on a California beach, but it could come with some bad news.

For the second time in 2024, a rarely seen deep sea fish, known as an oarfish, has washed up on the coastline in California.

The creatures are historically considered a ‘harbinger of doom’ and tend to live in an area of the deep sea called the mesopelagic zone, where light cannot reach.

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, reported that, last week, one of its PhD students came across a specimen on a beach in Encinitas, southern California, and it measured roughly around 10ft long.

Oarfish tend to have long, ribbon-like bodies and are often referred to as ‘doomsday fish’.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography shared on X: “Look what decided to make another appearance! Last week, another #oarfish washed up on Grandview Beach in Encinitas and was spotted by Scripps Oceanography PhD candidate Alison Laferriere. This cool creature measures roughly 9 to 10 feet long.”

In a second tweet, the account revealed what Scripps’ Marine Vertebrate Collection Manager Ben thinks, adding: “Like with the previous oarfish, this specimen and the samples taken from it will be able to tell us much about the biology, anatomy, genomics and life history of oarfishes.”

Social media users were shocked at the photographs of the 10-ft specimen.

One person said: “They look amazing! Wow! This will help scientists understand these creatures better and also look for reasons why they’re appearing more frequently on our beaches,” while a second added: “Magical fish!”

It’s the second time an oarfish has washed up on the California coast this year. (Alison Laferriere/Scripps Institution of Oceanography)

The creatures got their nickname due to their mythical reputation as predictors of natural disasters or earthquakes. In the months leading up to the 2011 earthquake in Japan, 20 oarfish were found on beaches around the country.

The latest discovery comes just a number of months after a group of kayakers and snorkelers came across a 12ft-long oarfish off the San Diego coast, floating dead in the water.

Seeing these creatures wash up on the shore is a very unusual occurrence, with oarfish having only been documented washing up in California on 20 occasions since 1901, per The Guardian.

Researchers took samples and froze the oarfish recovered recently for further study. Preservation is planned in the institution’s marine vertebrate collection.

The discoveries this year have allowed scientists to conduct in-depth studies on oarfish, enabling them to analyse the creatures’ organs and bodies.

The ocean’s a pretty lonely place really. Miles and miles of water without a soul in sight.

Well, from above the surface anyway, as we know there’s all kinds of fish and life down under the water.

But there’s so much we don’t know about the ocean, as the majority of it remains unexplored.

And somewhere out there, is the ‘world’s loneliest whale’. Yeah, sounds like a kid’s book, right?

The 52-hertz whale has baffled scientists for decades and has never actually been seen.

Also nicknamed 52 Blue, the whale has only ever been heard via hydrophones and is known for having an unusual call.

As its name suggests, this mysterious whale calls at a unique frequency of 52 hertz (Hz) – higher than that of whale species with migration patterns it most closely matches.

The blue whale calls at a frequency between 10 to 39 Hz and the fin whale at around 20 Hz. So, it’s said that this lonely underwater creature essentially has the equivalent call of talking like Mickey Mouse.

This unusual call of the 52 Blue has been detected often in a variety of locations since all the way back in the late 80s and scientists reckon it is just one whale that’s making the sound.

Getty Stock Image

There have been ‘potential’ recordings of another 52-hertz whale in a different place at the same time since 2010 but it seems like it’s a lonely old life for 52 Blue.

Recordings of this unknown creature shared online are pretty eerie, as it swims around the ocean, never to be seen and just making this high frequency call.

The lonely whale tends to be detected in the Pacific Ocean each year and is suspected to travel as far north as the Asleutian and Kodiak Islands and then as far south as the California coast.

52 Blue has inspired various film and music works, with K Pop band BTS releasing ‘Whalien 52’ in 2015 about a lonely whale that ‘can never reach someone else, no matter how hard it shouts’.

But not all experts reckon it’s ‘lonely’.

Whale communication expert Christopher Clark told the BBC in 2015: “Blue whales, fin whales and humpback whales: all these whales can hear this guy; they’re not deaf. He’s just odd.”

Poor guy.

There’s also the theory that the passing of commercial shipping meant whales increased the frequency of their calls so they could be heard above all that noise.

Either way, 52 Blue has yet to be seen.

If 1998’s sci-fi classic Armageddon is anything to go by, humanity will stop at nothing to protect the future of Earth from annihilation.

Well, we’ll stop you right there. We see your asteroid and we raise you the pending explosion of the Sun. Sorry lads, but it is game over at that stage.

NASA has a very real plan in place to deal with intergalactic threats to the planet, with contingency plans ready to rock and roll in the case of impending cosmic chaos.

Through the American space agency’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, scientists actively look for asteroids that could be heading towards Earth. What happens if we find one? It’s simple – we’ll blow it up in to a million pieces.

Sadly we’d be left powerless if the Sun decided to go ahead and blow up; something that would have devastating consequences for the entire solar system.

Recent studies have shown that our Sun, that helps make life on Earth what it is, will eventually turn into a ginormous star known as a red giant.

And from there it’ll channel its inner No-Face from Spirited Away and devour everything in sight.

Thankfully for humanity, this will happen in a solid five billion years time from now.

Dr Edward Bloomer, a senior astronomer at Royal Observatory Greenwich, said: “There is probably somewhere in the region of five billion years to go before the red giant phase for the Sun. So we’ve got some time.”

The Sun’s power is immense and essentially a giant nuclear reactor floating through space, keeping all eight planets in the solar system – and associated moons – under gravitational control. But nothing lasts forever.

The Sun is going to boom in size. (ESO/M. Kornmesser)

Speaking to MailOnline, Dr Bloomer said the Sun’s red giant future will be upon us ‘when it runs out of hydrogen to fuse in its core’.

This will be a huge moment for the solar system, with the Sun then collapsing under the pull of its own gravity. It creates an immense reaction with so much pressure and heat that helium atoms will be fused in to carbon, causing a massive outwards explosion.

This moment will see the Sun go from its more regular size to hundreds of times the size it is when it collapses inwards.

And if the Sun grows to its maximum size of 186 million miles outwards, we could find a situation where Mercury, Venus and Earth are all swallowed hole by the burning ball of fire.

At the very end of the Sun’s lifespan it will turn in to a white dwarf, with Uranus and Neptune drifting out in to deep space. (Mark Garlick / University of Warwick)

But the damage wont stop there. The next three planets in the solar system – Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn – will have their atmospheres completely destroyed.

After exploding and changing the solar system for good, the Sun will eventually run out of energy for good in seven billion years time, forming a tiny white dwarf star with rings of gas and dust called planetary nebula.

During this process Uranus and Neptune, the two planets furthest from the Sun, will feel a force so powerful it will boot them out of the solar system in to deep space.

Let’s not even be all dreamy and tip-toe around it, we’re all going to die one day.

No matter how much you insist you’re capable of living forever, you’re obviously not. Time will eventually get the best of all of us but that’s not to say we can’t stick around for a while before then.

According to Guinness World Records, the oldest person alive is Maria Branyas Morera at the age of 117 with a Brit recently declared as the world’s oldest bloke at 111 years old.

So, look, there’s hope for all of us as humans are clearly capable of hanging round on the planet for quite some time. But just how long is it actually possible for us to live?

Well, based on the fact humans are living longer than ever before, scientists have given an answer for how long it will ever be possible for humans to stay alive.

Although, it’s tricky to say exactly because so many proposed ‘maximum human lifespans’ have changed through the decades.

Richard Faragher, University of Brighton Professor of Biogerontology, writes in a study that ‘in 1921 it was demonstrated that ages above 105 were impossible’.

“Estimating the limits to longevity has since been criticised because every ‘maximum limit’ to lifespan so far proposed has been surpassed,” he explained.

For example, the oldest human ever made it to the incredible 122 years and 164 days. Jeanne Calment died back in 1997 and her record is yet to be surpassed.

And her age is the one closest to the most common age scientists reckon humans can live to.

The world’s oldest man. (Guinness World Records)

It’s widely agreed that the current limit on our lifespans is around 120 years.

And it’s not just because of Calment’s extraordinary record that this is theorised but because of the ways in which the human body function.

“[If we] look at how our organs decline with age, and run that rate of decline against the age at which they stop working,” Faragher wrote, “most calculations indicat[e] organs will only function until the average person is around 120 years old.”

However, that 120 mark isn’t the definite limit on us mere humans, some scientists reckon we can make it all the way up to 150 – if you’d want to be sticking around for that long, anyway.

Ken Watcher, a professor of demography at statistics at the University of California, previously told PBS: “We’re seeing death rates, among extreme ages, go down a little bit. That means we’re not coming up against a limit to lifespan.”