Internet Panics After Hearing Leaked Audio From The ISS, African Elephants Call Each Other By “Names”, And Much More This Week

Deborah Bloomfield

6 months ago

This week, an “alien” signal from Mars received just over a year ago has finally been decoded, with just eight confirmed individuals, polar-grizzly bear hybrids are “extremely rare”, and it turns out a trip to space could (temporarily) reverse aging. Finally, we meet (literally) the enormous and stinky corpse flower, Amorphophallus titanium.

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Internet Panics After Hearing Leaked Audio From The ISS They Were Not Supposed To Hear

The Internet was briefly sent into a panic this week after a NASA audio feed from the International Space Station (ISS) was accidentally “misrouted” to a public feed. The ISS broadcasts its view live, including footage from cameras inside and outside the station. While very cool, mishaps with the feed can happen, as evidenced on Wednesday when the public heard what appeared to be a medical emergency going down in real time. Read the full story here

African Elephants Call Each Other By “Names”, Just Like Humans Do

Names are universal throughout human cultures and across different languages. They form a huge part of our identity and help us communicate with each other, but personal names are considered a uniquely human thing. Now, new research has suggested that wild African elephants could address each other with individual specific calls – the equivalent of a name – with fascinating implications for the evolution of language. Read the full story here

“Alien” Signal From Mars Has Finally Been Decoded One Year On

Just over a year ago, people across this planet received a challenge from the heavens: Solve an encoded message. The message was created by Daniela de Paulis, Artist in Residence at the SETI Institute. The goal was to simulate an alien signal – and despite its earthly creation, it really came from another planet. Read the full story here

Grolar Bear Hybrids Are “Extremely Rare”, With Just 8 Confirmed Individuals

Grizzly bears in the Arctic are becoming an increasingly common occurrence as the planet warms, which means that they are beginning to encroach on polar bear territory more regularly. As a result, scientists have found evidence of polar-grizzly hybrids, but new research has confirmed that these “grolar bears” remain extremely rare. Read the full story here

Turns Out, Billionaires Can Go To Space To (Temporarily) “Benjamin Button” Themselves

Amongst the super-rich, it’s almost a requirement at this point to try some wacky way of halting the irrepressible march of time. Anti-aging strategies range from the positively vanilla – drink lots of water and wear sunscreen – to the still-quite-tame cosmetic surgery options, to the extremely expensive and bizarre (penis rejuvenation, anyone?). But what if all you had to do was take a quick trip into space? Read the full story here

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Feature of the week:

Extraordinary “Corpse Flower” Blooms In Kew Gardens And We Were There To See It

There’s something rotten in the kingdom of Great Britain. One of the smelliest plants on Earth is about to bloom in London. Not in the street, but in the tropical rainforest glasshouse of Kew Gardens, which hosts the “largest and most diverse botanical and mycological collections in the world”. Among the gems of this collection is an absolute stinker (said with love), so we popped down to see it for ourselves, and to ask the experts about this one-of-a-kind plant. Read the full story here