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This week on Break It Down: just a week after the discovery of our third-ever interstellar visitor we may know where it came from, ancient enamel provides a snapshot into the lives of prehistoric rhinos, the moa becomes the fifth species targeted for de-extinction, a robot performs gallbladder surgery – no human required, chimps start […]

Do you ever get that thing where you bump into a relative you haven’t seen for a while and don’t immediately recognize them? Maybe it’s little Timmy who you haven’t seen since he was yay-high, or perhaps Jennifer with the new hair. Or maybe it’s Homo floresiensis, “the hobbit” of Homos that went extinct around […]

We don’t really know if there is other life in the universe, but due to one failed Moon landing in 2019, we know there is terrestrial life on the Moon… kind of. One small cockup by “man”, one giant spill for tardigrade kind In February 2019, SpaceIL, a private Israeli non-profit that worked in partnership […]

When you’re tucked away in the safety of your home tonight, spare a thought for these two ancient human relatives whose lives in East Africa ended around 1.8 million years ago in a deeply undignified fashion: mauled to pieces by a crocodile and, somehow, chewed over by a leopard-like carnivore. The pair belonged to the species Homo […]

Taman Negara National Park is a critical habitat for Malayan tigers. It was once home to the densest population of tigers in Malaysia, but their numbers have since crashed, and now the park forms a vital corridor connecting two separate groups. This information, however, hasn’t escaped the knowledge of poachers, who lay snares to illegally […]

Who’s a good boy? Oosagoodboyyy?! That’s right! Your dog is a good boy! But how he got that way is a puzzle that’s long plagued archaeologists and palaeontologists. Simply put: we know dogs were once wolves. We know they’re not anymore – in fact, in some cases, they could hardly be further from the keystone […]

Orcas are easily recognized by their jet-black bodies punctuated with striking white markings, most notably the “eye patch” on their head, which makes them appear like an ominous masked supervillain. But these markings aren’t just eye-catching to humans – they’re an ingenious evolutionary tool. The black-and-white coloring of orcas is primarily a matter of camouflage. […]

After more than 40 years of exploration and excavations at the ancient Maya city of Caracol, researchers have finally unearthed a tomb belonging to one of its rulers. Even more significantly, the burial happens to contain the remains of Te K’ab Chaak, the very first king of this pre-Hispanic powerhouse and founder of its royal […]

It’s the mainstay of every toolbox; a holiday stocking stuffer for a crafter of any kind; the precursor to one of those snappy bracelets that grade school kids love to thwap you with – we’re talking, of course, of the tape measure. Retractable, dependable, and always, for some reason, slightly wobbly at the end. But […]

Thanks to NASA’s steadfast commitment to blasting robots into space, we now get regular images from another planet beamed back down to Earth. The current generation of Mars rovers began their adventures – finding strange rocks and potentially getting caught up in the center of electrified dust devils, among other important planetary research – in […]

In recent years, videos of gorillas showing their distaste for rain have attracted millions of views on YouTube. However, the spread of these videos has created an impression among viewers that gorillas, at least once they leave rainforests, are united in their opinion of the wet stuff falling from the sky. Now, another video shows […]

A newly-discovered rock art panel on the western bank of the River Nile may depict an Ancient Egyptian authority figure from the dawn of the First Dynasty. Based on the style and content of the engraving, the author of a new study suggests that it was most likely commissioned by an early political ruler during […]

If you read any research about Alzheimer’s disease, two proteins are going to be your main characters. There’s amyloid-β, which builds up and forms plaques in the brain; and there’s tau, which aggregates into clumps called tangles. These tangles occur when the tau protein is altered by phosphorylation, and for many decades, the buildup of […]

Is civil war looming in the United States? This has been a recurring contention among some political commentators and nationalist subgroups for some time, and what it might look like was even explored in director Alex Garland’s movie Civil War, last year. But despite ongoing political tensions, most Americans do not expect a civil war […]

The Voyager probes were the first spacecraft to go interstellar and after almost 50 years in space, they are pretty amazing. Voyager 1 is almost one light-day away from Earth, with Voyager 2 not too far behind. They communicate with humanity with a radio transmitter with a power of 23 watts. Basically, the light in […]

Over the past two centuries, humans have quietly nudged the very axis of our planet. As thousands of dams have been built across the world, Earth’s poles have tilted by over 1 meter (3 feet). The movement of Earth’s poles can be traced to two great waves of dam construction: first in North America and […]

Put down the rosemary oil and pause the red light therapy, research suggests the secret to curing male pattern baldness could lie in a sugar that occurs naturally in our bodies.  In a mouse model of testosterone-driven hair loss, the sugar, called 2-deoxy-D-ribose, stimulated hair regrowth just as effectively as existing treatment minoxidil – the […]

An explosion seen in the cosmos in the early 1600s may actually be an “Alien Type Ia supernova”, according to a new paper. In October 1604, astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler spotted a new star in the sky and began tracking it. Over the course of several weeks, the star remained visible in the daytime […]

Earlier this year, researchers announced the discovery of what they believed to be the world’s oldest impact crater. According to their results, the crater was created over 3.5 billion years ago when a meteorite crashed into what is now a region of Western Australia. This was an incredible and exciting find at the time, but […]

It must be hard being a judge for ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year. The competition, organized by the Royal Observatory Greenwich, is in its 17th year, and it continues to deliver truly breathtaking cosmic art no matter the subject: electrifying aurorae, incredible juxtapositions of buildings or natural objects with the dark sky, and so […]