This week on Break It Down, a puppy gets a post-mortem 44,000 years after being frozen in permafrost, altruism found among Neanderthals in Down Syndrome case, the world’s largest terrestrial mammal migration is recorded in East Africa, a robot’s fleshy smile that will haunt your nightmares, NASA is being sued, and the Tunguska Event may […]
What The 3.2 Million-Year-Old Lucy Fossil Reveals About Nudity And Shame
Fifty years ago, scientists discovered a nearly complete fossilized skull and hundreds of pieces of bone of a 3.2-million-year-old female specimen of the genus Australopithecus afarensis, often described as “the mother of us all.” During a celebration following her discovery, she was named “Lucy,” after the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Advertisement […]
Turns Out Texas’ State Small Mammal Is Actually 4 Different Species
In news that’s likely to be awkward for whoever decided that the nine-banded armadillo should be the state small animal of Texas, scientists have discovered that it’s actually four different species – and the only one that’s kept the name doesn’t even live in the state. Advertisement At least until now, nine-banded armadillos were considered […]
Meet The Latest Dark Matter Detector: Jupiter’s Night Side
The stuff that makes up animals, planets, and stars is just a small part of the matter scientists believe is out there. Five-sixths of all matter in the universe is believed to be an invisible substance known as dark matter. We do not know what it is because it doesn’t interact with light, only with […]
China Opens Up First Ever Samples Of Far Side Of The Moon
Chinese scientists have opened up the first ever samples taken from the far side of the Moon. Advertisement On June 1, Chang’e 6 touched down softly on the far side of the moon. This was the second time China achieved this feat, and they remain the only nation to have done so. Advertisement ⓘ IFLScience is […]
Over 97 Percent Of Bleached Coral Died At Lizard Island Reef After This Year’s Event
The Great Barrier Reef was struck by an extremely harsh mass beaching event this year, and it looks like parts of the reef are struggling to bounce back. Drone imagery of Lizard Island’s North Point Reef shows that 97 percent of the bleached coral has died since the event earlier this year. Advertisement “This is […]
“Tantalizingly Beautiful” Rocks Yield More Evidence That Asteroid Bennu Came From A Wet World
The sample collected by OSIRIS-REx on asteroid Bennu continues to deliver unique insights into the history of this small space rock and the early Solar System. In the first few weeks following the opening of the sample, evidence began to show that Bennu might have had a wet past. A new discovery now adds to […]
A 44,000-Year-Old Wolf Frozen In Permafrost May Still Contain Living Bacteria
A prehistoric wolf that’s been frozen like a popsicle for over 44,000 years has undergone a post-mortem in Russia, set to reveal all kinds of insights into its life as an apex predator in the Ice Age. Advertisement The wolf was discovered in 2021 beneath around 40 meters (131 feet) of permafrost on the Tirekhtyakh […]
World’s Smallest Elephant Is Now Officially Endangered
Bornean elephants, best known as the world’s smallest living elephants, have now been classified as “Endangered” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), following decades of habitat destruction, conflict with humans, and debate over their status as a subspecies. Advertisement Unique to the island they’re named after, Bornean elephants are characteristically small […]
Livestock Burps Are Set To Be Taxed In Denmark In World First
In a world first, Denmark will tax farmers for the greenhouse gas emissions belched out by their cows, pigs, and other livestock. Advertisement The agreement was announced on June 24 by the Danish government after months of discussions between politicians, farmers, business leaders, and other parties. Advertisement “Agriculture is Denmark’s largest emitter of CO2. It […]
Our Solar System May Have Captured A Number Of Interstellar Objects
In 2017, astronomers at the Pan-STARRS1 observatory looking for near-Earth asteroids spotted an object as it hurtled past our Sun at 38.3 kilometers per second (23.8 miles per second). Advertisement Soon, telescopes around the world pointed in the unusual object’s direction, trying to capture as much data as they could before it moved away from […]
Gravitational Wave Research Helps Demystify Ancient Antikythera Mechanism
The Antikythera mechanism has fascinated people for over 120 years and research in recent years has brought more insight into this incredible device. The fragments that remain have revealed that it was likely used to calculate celestial events such as eclipses and the positions of the planets. Astronomers from the University of Glasgow have added […]
Man Survives Being Lost In Santa Cruz Mountains For 10 Days By Drinking Water Out Of A Shoe
Lukas McClish, a Californian hiker who became lost and stranded in the Santa Cruz Mountains, has been found 10 days after he first set off for what he thought was a three-hour hike. McClish left for his hike on 11 June, but became lost in part due to recent wildfires destroying landmarks used for navigation. […]
The World’s Last Mammoths Were Inbred But That’s Not Why They Died
For thousands of years after mammoths had gone extinct elsewhere, they survived on Wrangel Island off Siberia. The cause of their final demise remains debated, but new evidence indicates we can rule out one popular explanation: inbreeding. Despite being descended from no more than eight individuals, the Wrangel mammoths had enough genetic diversity to still […]
How Benjamin Franklin Charted The Gulf Stream
Back in the early days of the trans-Atlantic postal service, British packages were taking weeks longer than expected to reach the east coast of North America. With customs officials growing increasingly confused and frustrated at these slow delivery times, it fell to future Founding Father of the United States Benjamin Franklin to solve the problem […]
NASA Begins Plans To Crash The International Space Station Into The Ocean
Humans have been living continuously in space for nearly 24 years, with astronauts and cosmonauts living aboard the spacecraft since astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev first boarded the International Space Station (ISS) on Halloween, 2000. Advertisement All good things must come to an end, and NASA is now planning for […]
Radioactive Rhino Horns Hoped To Save Species From Poaching
Scientists in South Africa have for the first time inserted radioactive material into the horns of live rhinos, as part of efforts to make the horns easier to detect at international borders and curb poaching. Advertisement After facing near extinction, successful conservation work has seen rhino populations in Africa back on the up, with the […]
Close-Up Of Io’s Lava Lakes Reveal Many Have Fiery Rings
The Juno spacecraft’s focus has turned from Jupiter itself to its moons, and a fly-by of Io has produced valuable data for understanding the Solar System’s most volcanic world. Among other things, it shows just how widespread Io’s lava lakes really are, and reveals that when a crust forms on them it is often surrounded […]
IFLScience The Big Questions: Why Are We The Only Surviving Human Species?
Homo sapiens – us – are the only surviving human species. The question, and it is a big one, is why? Who were the species that came before us, or lived alongside us, and what happened to them? Host Dr Alfredo Carpineti is joined by Professor Chris Stringer, human evolution research lead at the Natural […]
SpaceX Has A Hotline You Can Call If Debris Falls On Your House
Space in the vicinity around our planet is getting quite full, or at least full for space. We are a messy species, and low-Earth orbit is apparently no exception to our “we’ll clean up later” rule. One concern about the debris is that it could cause the “Kessler Effect” (or Kessler Syndrome). Simply put, the […]
