IFLScience - Break It Down

This week in Break It Down, a rainbow-like glory is detected beyond our Solar System, a sand-slab stingray may be the oldest animal art, ancient etchings in Peru may depict psychedelic music, scientists complete the world’s largest digital camera, and a toad with heart-shaped pupils. Plus, how far can a bird fly without flapping? Turns out, pretty damn far. Sit back, relax, and let's Break It Down...

This week in Break It Down, why the solar eclipse can be fatal, Barbie pigs 5,000 meters below the sea, world-first cooperative mimicry in two spiders pretending to be a flower, the first image of magnetic fields around black hole Sagittarius A*, why climate change might be about to change the time, and are men really more likely to be psychopaths than women? The science appears to suggest otherwi...

This week in Break It Down, a hill becomes a pyramid and then a hill again, quantum tornadoes teach us about black holes, a living human gets a pig kidney for the first time, Homer’s Iliad helps us find shipwrecks, the world’s rarest fish makes a comeback – one ridiculous baby at a time – and we find out about the longest eclipses on, and off, record. Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down… Link...

This week in Break It Down, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a nova, astroforensic science, why everybody thinks male mammals are so big, the world’s oldest body piercings, 70 years in an iron lung, and the strange things animals do during a total solar eclipse. We’re looking at you, Galápagos tortoises. Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down… Links: Nova: https://www.iflscience.com/this-...

This week in Break It Down, we talk de-extincting the mammoth, the world’s oldest fossil forest, elephant burials, hypervaccination (and by hyper, we mean 217 COVID vaccinations in 29 months), a small Pacific nation that spans all four hemispheres, and a contentious question on geologists’ lips: are we in the Anthropocene? Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down… Links: From elephants to mammoths...

This week in Break It Down, the first-ever photographs of humpbacks humping involves two males, NASA changes the shape of an asteroid, a tiny fish makes a big din, some very old megaliths in Peru, the heaviest animal on the planet, and the bizarre story of one of the biggest astrophysical discoveries in recent times. Sit back, relax, and let’s break it down... Links: Queer nature: https://youtu.be...

This week in Break It Down, we discuss how a Will Smith series led to the discovery of a new species of giant anaconda, plus the smallest star ever discovered, lab-grown testicles, an electric vehicle breakthrough, sophisticated Neanderthal glue, and how to destroy a dinner party by dropping the question: is math discovered or invented? Sit back, relax, and let’s break it down… Links: New species...

This week in Break It Down, we discuss whether or not an aquarium in the US is about to become home to the world’s first “shingray,” how scientists are sending messages and power from space, a groundbreaking cancer breakthrough, fossil forgeries, and what on Earth a pink fairy armadillo is. Sit back, relax, and let’s break it down… Links: Shingray: https://www.iflscience.com/shark-ray-hybrid-aquar...

A little teaser for our upcoming podcast, Break It Down.