News

Although it may sound like hyperbole, measles cases really have surged across the world in the last few years. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 10.3 million cases were reported in 2023, which represents a 20 percent increase since 2022. The organization has said that this rapid and widespread rise is due to […]

This week on Break It Down: turns out the one time we saw Uranus it was having an uncharacteristically windy moment, new meanings behind the Amazon’s most incredible rock art, the world’s largest coral found lurking off the Solomon Islands, a ~35,000-year-old saber-toothed baby comes complete with fur, whiskers, and toe beans, and amber found […]

A major realization of Einstein’s general relativity is the fact that massive objects warp space-time in a way that is similar to a lens, magnifying and shifting the light of background objects. This was a crucial test for relativity just four years after it was proposed, and it has been seen in countless examples. Today, […]

With a love of human sacrifice, warfare, and towers made out of human skulls, the ancient Aztecs certainly knew how to have fun. Just to add to the excitement, the pre-Columbian empire-builders may have conducted some of their favorite activities to the sound of skull-shaped whistles, which produced a horrifying “death scream” that sent chills […]

For the first time, scientists have recovered the mummified, frozen body of a juvenile saber-toothed cat from the Arctic permafrost in Siberia. Despite being over 35,000 years old, the sub-zero temperatures have kept the specimen in a remarkable state of preservation, with its fur, head, torso, and limbs still intact. The frozen carcass of the […]

The movements of the planets in the Solar System are pretty difficult to get your head around, even before we get started on the dark matter which seems to keep galaxies together and rotating with ridiculous speed. One common question people seem to have about the planets’ orbits is why the planets are drifting away […]

The Hubble Space Telescope has taken a look at the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a nearby dwarf galaxy, being stripped of its gas by the far more massive Milky Way. The LMC is a dwarf galaxy, relatively close to the Earth (in galactic terms) at around 160,000 light years away. That may sound distant, but […]

Statistically speaking, you – yes, you, reading this right now – are probably not some kind of militant vegan. Chances are pretty much equally low, however, that you’re a complete psychopath – which means that you’ll probably get a bit uncomfortable if we inform you of how every year, thousands of mice, rats, cats, dogs, monkeys, and […]

Islands play a distinct role in the evolution of the animal species that inhabit them, providing different ecological niches and cutting off populations from other individuals. These conditions give rise to a whole host of adaptations, some which are more unusual than others – and some of which lead to especially hairy legs.  The Viñales […]

One minute you’re gently drifting off to sleep, and then the next, you’re suddenly jolted awake. No, you’ve not been betrayed by your cat leaping onto the bed or a particularly loud snore from your partner, but your own body. This is known as a hypnic jerk – but what exactly is it and why […]

In news your 8-year-old kid probably knew about weeks ago somehow, a new Minecraft rip-off is available to play online. In a surprising twist on the genre, every frame in this one is entirely generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The game, Oasis, lets players explore a 3D world filled with square blocks, mine resources, and […]

Across the globe great animal gatherings are taking place that make the footfall at a Taylor Swift concert look like a kid’s party. The motivations driving these mass gatherings can be the need to flee, feed, or… reproduce, and while the gatherings can be crucial for the survival of a species, there are some examples […]

The nēnē, or Hawaiian goose, is the world’s rarest goose, and can only be found living in the wild in one part of the planet: the Hawaiian Islands. There, the species was once on the brink of extinction – but it’s been making one hell of a comeback. The rarest goose Perhaps best known as […]

Yellowstone’s Isa Lake is a fairly unremarkable pond except for one unique quality: it’s the only lake in the world known to drain into both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Located in the Yellowstone National Park between the Old Faithful and West Thumb geyser basins, Isa Lake sits directly on the Continental Divide of North […]

The world’s largest coral colony has been discovered in the Solomon Islands, measuring a whopping 34 by 32 meters (112 by 105 feet). This thing is so huge it’s even visible from space, and yet it’s been hiding away from human eyes for around 300 years. The coral sits at a depth of 12 meters […]

To ask if a beam of light can make a shadow sounds like a sort of Zen paradox, but physicists have demonstrated the possibility. They used a laser beam to block another laser beam, albeit with some crystalline assistance. They say the work has the potential to allow one laser to control another, but if […]

Right now, space travel is limited to trained astronauts and cosmonauts, and the super-wealthy. This means there is little opportunity for having a little zero-g intercourse unless you don’t mind doing it in very close proximity to Jeff Bezos and Captain Kirk. However, that might not be the case forever. Assuming humanity survives for long […]

Should scientists have a role to play in public policy, and do you trust them to make decisions that are in the public’s interest? These are some of the questions at the heart of a new report by the Pew Research Center, which found that the majority of Americans have confidence in scientists, which has […]

Incredible footage shows the meeting of lava and snow as molten rock from an Icelandic volcano creeps across the snowy terrain.  The video was captured by Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove during the eruption of the Sundhnúkagígar Volcano in February 2024. The flurry of volcanic activity was associated with the larger Sundhnúkur eruptions of 2023–2024, which destroyed buildings […]

A bunch of startling and wild allegations were made in the latest US congressional committee on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), or UFOs as they’re more commonly known. While the public hearing suggests that attitudes on the subject are starting to change in the US government, evidence for some of the bolder claims was lacking.  The […]