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“Cabin crew, arm doors and crosscheck” is the instruction delivered over the plane’s public address. In-flight staff then pull a metal lever on each door before attaching a little red ribbon across the window of every exit, and we’re all thinking the same thing: that flimsy rag can’t be doing much. In reality, though, this […]

Next time you’re staggering into a takeaway restaurant with a belly full of beer and a desperate need to raise your blood sugar levels, it’s a good idea to check the quality of the doner kebab you are about to slather in sauce and shovel into your booze-addled body. A study in 2022 by the […]

Welcome to the wonderful world of Crocodylia, or more specifically the order. Here, we’ll break down the differences between alligators and crocodiles, beyond which one will be seeing you later and which one will be seeing you in a while.  Let’s start with a little background on crocodiles Crocodiles have a pretty wide distribution: the […]

This week on Break It Down: a quantum cat experiment breaks a record for surviving over 23 minutes, Voyager 1 encountered a glitch but fixed itself with some old school tech, fossils from the Ordovician are a glittering new species, animals are getting drunk more than we thought, though we’re not quite sure why, kyawthuite […]

Every year a small town in Canada gets a sudden influx of polar passersby as the world’s largest bear (that begins life as a fluffy stick of butter) embarks on its annual migration. The big move is driven by the return of the sea ice they need to hunt, but getting to seal town involves […]

The 1988 Piper Alpha disaster has been described as one of the worst industrial accidents of its kind. While it was a tragedy of horrific proportions, the incident did spark some significant positive changes in safety standards across the world.  The hellish disaster unfolded on the night of July 6, 1988, at the Piper Alpha offshore […]

Gather round the fire, oh traveler, and listen to an ancient story. The days of the old gods are numbered; one day, catastrophe will strike and the final battle-to-end all battles will take place. Here the gods will die and the world as we know it will end. This is the story of Ragnarök, the […]

Archaeologists excavating a site in Dorset, England, have recovered one of the oldest and most complete wooden tools ever unearthed in Britain. The ancient spade is thought to be between 3,400 and 3,500 years old and reveals new insights into the relationship between Bronze Age humans and this waterlogged landscape. The excavation took place at […]

At just 36.8 hectares (91 acres), Gateway Arch National Park in St Louis, Missouri, is the smallest national park in the United States – but while it may be small in size, it manages to pack quite the punch. The park’s beginnings Gateway Arch National Park didn’t actually become a national park until 2018, but […]

Ah, Winter. The coziest of the seasons. Time to light that fire, toast those marshmallows, and dig out your snuggliest jumpers and socks from the back of your closet. Of course, finding your clothes ruined by mold and mildew might put a big old damper on that festive feeling – so how do we ensure […]

The “Forbidden Experiment” may have the potential to illuminate fundamental truths about human nature, but it’s so grossly immoral it would send any modern university’s ethics committee into meltdown. Nevertheless, in historical periods that were less concerned with human dignity, some have dabbled with their own renditions of this deeply problematic endeavor. There are a […]

For exactly 100 years, chemists have considered double bonds impossible – or nearly so – in organic chemistry under specific circumstances. Known as Bredt’s rule, this axiom was based not on theory, but decades of previous observations of molecules where such bonds were lacking. Confidence was high enough that it has widely been published in […]

Godzilla has made something of a comeback in recent years. Ever since he stomped back into western cinemas in 2014, it seems the monstrous reptile has barely left the screen. But while Godzilla’s destructive antics are easy entertainment, the creature itself has always walked a line between chaotic spectacle and deeper metaphor. This year the […]

If a monkey was placed before a typewriter and incentivized to hit keys at random it would take it vastly longer than the universe’s anticipated lifetime to produce the complete works of Shakespeare, or even a children’s book. The Infinite Monkey Theorem is a thought experiment used to epitomize the way random processes can produce […]

Forget fictional Rodents of Unusual Size – for wildlife traffickers, there are real life giant rats to be feared, after researchers successfully trained African giant pouched rats to pick up the scent of illegally traded animal parts. The black market for illegal wildlife products is a serious global problem. While authorities and scientists have been […]

Voyager 1 continues to amaze. After 47 years, having crossed together with its twin into interstellar space, you’d think the spacecraft would stop surprising us. No chance. The probe had another glitch in the last few weeks that caused a loss of communication, but it managed to find a fix all by itself using hardware […]

COVID-19 has been overtaken as the deadliest infectious disease on the planet. According to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO), tuberculosis (TB) is now once again the biggest killer among infectious pathogens, having previously held the top spot before being surpassed by the virus in 2020. Collating data from 193 countries, WHO […]

If you find yourself facing down the barrel of winter, the good news is you can escape to Asia every Sunday for the next seven weeks, all without leaving your living room. The BBC and Sir David Attenborough are providing some eye-balm in ultra-high-definition 4K with Asia, a seven-part series that will take you from […]

Humans have been burying their dead for millennia, but it’s not the only way we’ve utilized nature to help us transform corpses. In Tibet, birds of prey play a pivotal role in Sky Burials, and elsewhere, Zoroastrian tradition saw the erection of Towers Of Silence, a place where corpses are arranged so that carnivorous birds […]

You know, they say that complicated problems require creative solutions, but inventing a never-before-seen type of island and then building it off the coast of Belgium is definitely a new one to us. Nevertheless, that’s precisely what’s happening: the European Investment Bank (EIB) has approved a €650 million (around US$705 million) loan for the construction […]