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This week on Break It Down: fishers discover a mysterious tablet bearing an unknown language, sequencing the oldest human genome reveals when we first bred with Neanderthals, Jupiter’s got a shiny new ring, a new predator captured in the darkest depths of the Atacama Trench, working out the rules to an ancient boardgame, and can […]

Spit in a tube and we’ll tell you where you come from: that’s the basic premise being offered up by DNA ancestry kits, which have soared in popularity for those who are curious – or who’ve run out of Christmas present ideas. We’ve all heard of the horror stories of people using the kits and […]

A group of 38 leading experts in fields ranging from synthetic biology to the existence of life beyond Earth has come together to determine the risks posed by “mirror bacteria” – and what they’ve found has them “deeply concerned”. But what exactly are mirror bacteria, and what is it about them that the experts are […]

As large parts of the Northern Hemisphere play the game of wondering if it will snow for Christmas, we thought it might be time to extend the question beyond the Earth, starting with locations closest to us and working out to planets orbiting other stars. The Moon and Mercury No. Advertisement Mercury and the Moon […]

Microplastics are everywhere, which is why scientists have been dedicating a lot of time to trying to figure out a way to safely extract them. Now, it seems a super sponge-like foam that borrows the soaking skills of cotton and squid may be a promising candidate, as it was found to remove 98 to 99.9 […]

Hailed as “another feat in human history”, China has announced the completion of a 3,046-kilometer (1,892-mile) sand-blocking green belt along the Taklimakan Desert, the nation’s largest desert. The project has involved the large-scale planting of red willows, sacsaoul, and other tree species in a strip along the southern fringe of the Taklimakan Desert in Northwest […]

Gigantic superflares burst out of Sun-like stars roughly once every 100 years, releasing as much energy as a trillion hydrogen bombs exploding. Could this mean our star, the Sun, is long overdue for an outburst? Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany used data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope […]

Being stocky can have its advantages, especially when it comes to hunting prehistoric game. According to a new reconstruction of the Neanderthal ribcage, our extinct relatives may have been considerably chunkier in this area than we are, with this extra bulk potentially providing the devastating power they needed to ambush and overcome their prey. Researchers […]

If you own a car, you may have noticed that a little warning light, depicting a flat tire with an exclamation mark in the middle, tends to turn itself on much more often in the cold, winter months. First up, it’s a warning light that shouldn’t be ignored. It means one or more of your […]

NASA’s Juno flew by the little volcanic moon Io multiple times between December 2023 and February 2024. It was the closest approach in decades and provided scientists with the best understanding yet of what powers this moon. Io is one of the other few places in the Solar System with active volcanoes spewing lava – […]

Academics and armchair archaeologists still can’t agree on the date when Pompeii was destroyed in a shower of volcanic hellfire. It was almost certainly sometime in late 79 CE, but was it August, October, or even November?  A new study by the Archaeological Park of Pompeii gently backs up the theory that the town’s destruction […]

A collection of particles known as a quasiparticle has been detected behaving as if it has mass when it moves in one direction, but becomes massless when moving at right angle. Improbable as this sounds, the scientists who detected it are already contemplating applications in batteries and sensors. It sounds like a stretched joke about […]

On Olkiluoto island in the west of Finland, a tomb will soon be opening. When it is sealed, the hope is that it will remain so for over 100,000 years. Nuclear fuel, though far cleaner and less polluting than the fossil fuels that have powered our economies for the past 150 years, comes with a […]

A new study has warned that consuming more ultra-processed foods could potentially accelerate biological aging. Ultra-processed foods have been getting more media attention in recent years as they continue to be a staple of many people’s diets. These foods are tricky to categorize, even though the term has become increasingly popular. According to the authors […]

Palolo worms must have one of the strangest life cycles in the animal kingdom, although there is plenty of competition. Driven by the cycles of the moon, the spindly worms split themselves into two separate parts. Their back ends, loaded with eggs and sperm, break off and swim to the ocean surface, while the rest […]

On a cold morning, if you can think anything beyond “I’m cold”, you may have noticed that frost doesn’t form very much in areas underneath large trees. Why is that? First, what is frost? Well, there are a few types, including frozen dew, but the most common is “hoar frost”. Advertisement “Depositional frost is also […]

The Antarctic ice sheet has experienced periods of sudden melting, according to a new climate record from over 20 million years ago. This research demonstrates how sensitive the planet’s early ice ages were and that the Antarctic ice sheet is less stable than previously thought. It also offers a glimpse of how the Antarctic could […]

There’s a lot to be jealous about when it comes to lizards. Some can climb walls, some are ridiculously good at hide and seek, they’ve got tails, and – perhaps coolest of all – many can drop and regenerate said tails when in a bind.  Yes, the regenerative skills of lizards are well known, but […]

Monarch butterflies are one of the most iconic insects in North America – but they might also be at risk of disappearing. Now, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is proposing that they be added to the Endangered Species Act in order to help them stick around. Split into two populations, monarch butterflies are […]

The rings of Jupiter might not be as spectacular as Saturn’s (whose are?) but they are there. However, one of them may not have existed before just a few decades ago. A new hypothesis suggests that the breaking apart and eventual collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 – the first space rock ever directly observed hitting […]