News

The quest for human longevity seems to be working – people are now living longer than ever before. So what’s the secret? Living in the right place? Mythical elixirs? Nicking blood from your son? According to a new study, the answer may be rather more simple. Advertisement In that paper, a team from Harvard University […]

This week on Break It Down, why dinosaurs had to die so that we could have wine, the world’s oldest narrative art, the flying skills of hippos, evidence for pants in the Palaeolithic, turning meteorites into space LEGO, and a bunch of animals talking like humans that really shouldn’t be talking like humans. Available on […]

Psychedelic drugs such as LSD and magic mushrooms may be worth a shot when it comes to treating development stuttering, according to the authors of a new study. Analyzing all the available evidence supporting the use of hallucinogens as potential therapies for stammering, the researchers conclude that some mind-altering compounds may help to restore the […]

In 1901, RRS Discovery helped launch the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration” when it took exploration luminaries like Robert Falcon Scott (who led the expedition) and Ernest Shackleton on their first trip into the ice-packed waters of the distant south. Now, 123 years later, researchers have created a “digital twin” of the pioneering vessel that […]

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has revealed their final plan to kill nearly half a million owls. The motive behind the mass cull? The survival of another species of owl. Advertisement In a Final Environmental Impact Statement published this week, the agency proposed the culling of around 450,000 invasive barred owls over a period […]

Above our heads, almost at the edge of space, there is a fair bit of plasma extending way past the orbit where the International Space Station flies. This is the ionosphere. Ultraviolet light from the Sun frees electrons from the atoms and molecules in the atmosphere creating this layer. It influences radio communications and it’s […]

Have you heard of trypophobia, the fear characterized by an aversion to clusters of small holes? Awareness of the phobia has become more widespread in recent years, creating a source of fascination for the public and the scientific community alike. But is it just another human quirk, or does trypophobia have an evolutionary root? New […]

JR West is set to start fixing its railway system in a very Japanese fashion: using advanced humanoid robots. Advertisement Starting this month, giant Mecha-style robots will be used to perform a bunch of maintenance tasks on the company’s railway infrastructure, such as painting overhead support structures and removing tree branches that obstruct the tracks. […]

If you go down to the ancient swamp today you’ll be sure of a big surprise. Which is exactly what happened to researchers in Namibia who have discovered a giant salamander-like ancient beastie with huge fanged teeth and a head that was over half a meter long. Advertisement Found in the Gai-as Formation in the […]

By the end of the decade, there will be another station in orbit: the Gateway. But it won’t be in low-Earth orbit like the International Space Station (ISS) or Tiangong. It will be in orbit around the Moon, making it the first outpost for humanity in deep space.  Advertisement NASA has provided a gorgeous visualization […]

Ronaldo the boa was believed to be a male who had happily spent the past nine years alone at a school in the UK. So, you can imagine the surprise when students came to class one day and found the 13-year-old snake had given birth to 14 babies. Advertisement “One of the students discovered them […]

Underwater footage of a mother blue whale nursing its calf has been caught on camera for the first time, providing a rare glimpse into the private life of Earth’s largest animal. Advertisement The video was recently filmed off the coast of Timor-Leste in Southeast Asia by a research and citizen science program led by the […]

Mexico is racing to evacuate sea turtle eggs from the beaches south of Cancun ahead of the approach of Hurricane Beryl. Advertisement Hurricane Beryl became the earliest Category 5 Atlantic hurricane on record, before weakening to a Category 4 on Tuesday. On Wednesday it weakened again, but it is still expected to be a significant […]

Long-term exploration of the Solar System requires knowing what being there will be like. The best way to do that is by running experiments that inform us of the challenges. This is why NASA is running CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog), sending four simul-astronauts on a year-long mission where they will have to […]

One of the slowest art heists in history is currently going down in the Negev desert, where a host of hardy fungi and lichens are destroying ancient artworks before our very eyes. The petroglyphs carved by ancient humans have endured for 5,000 years, but they’re now at risk of being lost forever. Advertisement The desert […]

The European Space Agency (ESA) is going to launch its brand-new rocket Ariane 6 next week. The window for the inaugural launch opens at 2pm ET (6pm GMT) on July 9 and will last for three hours. There is trepidation across ESA and the European space industry – this has been a long time coming. […]

Antarctica is caked in a layer of ice with an average thickness of 2.2 kilometers (1.4 miles). Unlike the Arctic in the Northern Hemisphere, beneath this ice is a continental landmass featuring rocky mountains, volcanoes, and vast canyons that have been tombed for millions of years. Thanks to decades worth of satellite data and radar […]

One of the biggest goals for the future exploration of the Moon is to build a permanent base using material found there. Scientists have experimented with creating bricks using different materials, including blood and potatoes. European Space Agency (ESA) researchers have just tested a different method. They made 3D-printed LEGO bricks out of a billions […]

When helmeted hornbills go to battle, they wield their giant heads as weapons in an airborne jousting competition. Diagrams reveal the calamitous outcomes that send one contender spiraling toward the ground as the victor rises, but how do they smash into each other without falling unconscious? That’s just what scientists have been trying to find […]

Up until last month, Japan had 1,035 regulations that involved the use of floppy disks, storage devices that can only fit a couple of megabytes of data at best. The Japanese government has finally got rid of them – now there is only one regulation that uses them, concerning vehicle recycling.  Advertisement Spearheading this initiative […]