IFLScience - Break It Down

This week in Break It Down: Earth's about to get a new mini-moon (if only for a while), ancient rock art may have been based on a fossil, "third state" identified between life and death, a truly supermassive black hole with jets spanning 23 million light-years, there's a new blood group, and the remarkable reason why giant gorillas have tiny penises.    So sit back, relax, and let's Break It Down....

This week on Break It Down, the first-ever private spacewalk makes history and also maybe a crime, a plasma bubble over the pyramids is spotted by snazzy Chinese tech, a new Neanderthal lineage lived in isolation for 50,000 years, a chance encounter on Google Maps leads to a new discovery, the recipient of a face and eye transplant has a major breakthrough, and we take a deep dive into whether orc...

Coming soon: join IFLScience as we explore the questions nobody thought to ask but everyone wants the answers to. Get the behind-the-scenes conversations from CURIOUS magazine’s We Have Questions interviews, as we hunt down the experts to answer some of science’s stranger questions. Until then, catch up with the E-magazine here: https://www.iflscience.com/curious-magazine

This week on Break It Down, “dangerous” asteroid Apophis has a slightly increased risk of hitting Earth, a pig in Hong Kong undergoes an operation by a team in Switzerland, people in Iceland are throwing puffins off cliffs, an asteroid impact over the Philippines just made history, a python somehow managed to ingest another python, and we take a closer look at why homeopathy isn’t all it's cracked...

This week on Break It Down: orcas disable another boat as a new theory is put forward for the behavior, bacteria pass “memories” of perturbed genes to descendants, SETI scans 2,880 galaxies for advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, what you need to know about human parvovirus B19, flying spaghetti monsters sighted on a sea mount expedition, and how to avoid the nonsense that plagues the wellnes...

This week on Break It Down: Earth has a snazzy new radiation belt, the Wow! signal finally has an explanation and spoiler: it’s still not aliens, whales have joined the list of animals using tools (but do bubbles really count?), a universal flu vaccine is one step closer to reality thanks to some ferrets, the Rift Valley might not be the cradle of humankind after all, and why supermassive black ho...

This week on Break It Down: two new victims discovered at the site of Pompeii tell a vivid story, Stonehenge’s altar stone reveals a surprising point of origin, plans to terraform Mars with “glitter”, ancient environments exposed in a kilometer-long Earth sausage, we may know where the dinosaur-killing asteroid came from, and a brief history of humans’ long history of burying the dead. So, sit bac...

This week on Break It Down, the first archaeological study takes place outside of Earth, the oldest calendar might show a comet impact, a new study thinks the ancient Egyptians were using hydraulic tech to build the pyramids (others disagree), what a rock on Mars could tell us about potential life in the Solar System, a titanium heart is something straight out of sci-fi, and why we get taken in by...

This week on Break It Down: a wonky-necked giraffe is somehow still alive, an extraordinary fossil find shows a tyrannosaur with a stubby snout, a vaccine to stop COVID transmission is a success (at least, in hamsters), ancient stars are not where we expect them to be, 12,500-year-old rock art is a wildlife masterpiece, and we debunk some cortisol-based misinformation. So, sit back, relax, and let...

This week on Break It Down: deep-sea potatoes just shook foundational ideas about life on Earth, NASA plans to launch an artificial star, elephants sing “let’s go” like a barbershop quartet, the most complete Neanderthal skeleton has sprouted cave popcorn, the record for hottest day ever gets smashed twice in one week, and who would win in the animal Olympics? So sit back, relax, and let’s Break I...

This week on Break It Down: why Venus just got very exciting as a potential site of extra-terrestrial life, how you make butter out of thin air, a Stegosaurus on sale for $44 million, the discovery of the first Moon cave, why Earth just landed itself a new microcontinent, and pseudoscience Vs anti-science – what the differences are and how to tackle them. So sit back, relax, and let’s Break it Dow...

This week on Break It Down we report live from a rocket launch, freeze-dried skin gets us a step closer to bringing back mammoths, “polar rain” auroras seen on Earth in a first, two lion brothers should star in their own Disney movie, a complete larynx transplant for a cancer patient, and the people fighting for the survival of the world’s most endangered language.  Sit back, relax and let’s break...

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. So sit back, relax, and let's Break It Down... Links: Dinosaurs VS wine: https://www.iflsci...

This week on Break It Down, a puppy gets a post-mortem 44,000 years after being frozen in permafrost, altruism found among Neanderthals in Down Syndrome case, the world’s largest terrestrial mammal migration is recorded in East Africa, a robot’s fleshy smile that will haunt your nightmares, NASA is being sued, and the Tunguska Event may have been caused by *checks notes* a primordial black hole ri...

This week on Break It Down, white wine with a hint of human remains becomes the oldest ever discovered, Jupiter’s Red Spot may be younger than the United States, a disco dinosaur has been discovered with one hell of a hat, people volunteer to be infected with COVID-19 – for science, NASA uses its first two-way end-to-end relay system to send pet photos to the ISS, and a $17 billion shipwreck has l...

This week on Break It Down, elephants have names, the ISS just scared the bejesus out of everybody, how to Benjamin Button yourself in space, grolar bears remain extremely rare, “alien signal” from Mars finally gets decoded, and why London’s Kew Gardens are about to reek of corpses. Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down… Links: Elephant names: https://www.iflscience.com/african-elephants-call-e...

This week on Break It Down, Charlotte the stingray is back and it’s not good news, a zig-zagging snake stretching over 40 meters might be the world’s longest rock art, the irony of offering endangered orangutans as a form of diplomatic gift, the mysterious aurora STEVE gets a long-lost twin, why Seahenge was built, and how the iconic “March of Progress” evolution image is actually all wrong. Sit b...

This week on Break It Down, a mystery sighting in the deep ocean could be the first-ever footage of a colossal squid baby, orca attacks are more mischief than vengeance, astrology is debunked yet again, a second billionaire plans a trip to the Titanic, the world's largest genome comes in a surprisingly small package, and we explore the differences between human and chimp DNA.  Sit back, relax, and...

This week on Break It Down, we now know when humans and Neanderthals hooked up, could a human head transplant ever be realistic, a dino fossil skin preserved like glass has both scales and feathers, sometimes stars completely vanish, a skull from China tells us more about the Dragon Man, and we delve into the concept of dark extinctions. Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down… Links: Humans and...

This week on Break It Down, COVID’s new FLiRT variants, when and which dinosaurs went warm-blooded, could a lost river explain the pyramids, the search for alien megastructures, the shrinking Y chromosome, and what’s it like sailing to Point Nemo? Really hard, apparently. Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down… Links: FLiRT: https://www.iflscience.com/whats-going-on-with-the-new-covid-flirt-vari...

This week in Break It Down, scientists discover the “sperm whale phonetic alphabet”, AstraZeneca pull their COVID vaccine from the shelves, why a weak magnetic field might be a good thing for life on Earth, rock art reveals that the Sahara looked a little different 4,000 years ago, toads might be helping treat depression, and what on Earth is a dinosauroid?! Sit back, relax, and let's Break It Dow...

This week in Break It Down, the debate on T. rex intelligence rages on, a world-first video shows an orangutan applying leaves as medicine, the most complete Neanderthal gets a face, why alpaca sex is so weird that no other mammal does it like them (that we know of), the mystery of a giant hole in Antarctic ice solved, and could Earth ever get its own rings? Sit back, relax, and let's Break It Dow...

This week in Break It Down, we explore why Uranus might contain more methane than we thought, just what is happening to bacteria on the ISS, quite how long animals have been making their own light for, why carvings on a bear bone are culturally important, giant megaraptor footprints in China, and whether anything spooky might happen if you dare to enter the Pharaoh's tomb. Sit back, relax, and let...

This week in Break It Down, a new species of tiny titanosaur is compared to a cow, a 47-million-year-old snake becomes the largest ever, an RNA breakthrough brings us closer to "universal vaccines", a heart flies 7,000 kilometers to its recipient, we question Stonehenge's relationship to the Moon, and why the philosophy of science matters in the modern day. Sit back, relax, and let's Break It Down...

This week in Break It Down, 12-million-year-old snails reveal the oldest preserved fossil pigments, the violent mating dance of blue whales is caught on camera, scientists investigate the source of space’s brightest-ever explosion, foxes may have been the OG domestic canid, when is the North Star not the North Star, and what the hell even is a “henge”? Sit back, relax, and let's Break It Down... L...