Name: Decoding Megalodon
Uploaded: 2021-05-12 00:00:00
Duration: 17 min 5 s
Description: By examining countless Megalodon teeth from around the world, scientists have concluded that "meg" was able to achieve its gargantuan proportions by starting its carnivorous diet early -- in the womb.

Take a deeper look at some of the recent developments in physics, astronomy and other sciences.

In Antarctica, a state-of-the-art robotic penguin, called ECHO, is changing the way scientists monitor wildlife. The autonomous yellow robot has been integrated into the penguin colony and is using remote sensing technology to monitor these now-endangered penguin colonies.

ECHO: The Penguin’s Bodyguard

It’s been called the most significant breakthrough of the century. For the first time, scientists are using a new type of astronomy to detect gravitational waves all around us, opening a window into the history of our universe that could someday lead to time travel.

Gravitational Waves: A New Universe

Launched in 2016, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft returns to Earth after a 7-year journey with NASA’s very first asteroid sample. Rocks and dust collected in 2020 from the asteroid Bennu will provide scientists with key evidence from the birth of our solar system—about 4.5 billion years ago.

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A giant mass of floating seaweed is invading popular beaches in the US and Caribbean! At sea, the sargassum belt is a floating ecosystem, but when it hits the shore it turns toxic. Scientists are racing to figure out how to protect the coast while tracking and studying this natural wonder.

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Forecasting the Big One

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Jupiter's Moons and the Search for Life

Humanity is closer than ever before to a perpetual clean power source after a team of scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory successfully produced a nuclear fusion reaction resulting in a net energy gain. We now know one thing is possible, we can reach ignition.

Fusion: Harnessing the Power of Stars

With new state-of-the-art tools and technologies that include curious underwater vehicles and hydrodynamic modeling, scientists have hope of better understanding the threats to coral communities while finding the source to restock reefs worldwide.

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Voyage Into the Sun

Anyone stuck in traffic has fantasized about lifting off and transforming their car into a helicopter. A sleek ride, capable of circumventing the chaos of city driving, soaring above coastal roads, or even the coast itself. Those days are upon us as flying cars move out of the realm of fantasy.

Tomorrow's Flying Cars

While humans debate which is worse, dwindling resources or planet-killing celestial bodies, new breakthroughs in extra-planetary surveying and rocket propulsion are revealing the dichotomy of asteroids; those that might provide a new source of precious metals and those that can outright kill us.

Year of the Asteroid

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Artemis: First Launch

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First Images: The James Webb Telescope

Forecasting volcanic eruptions is notoriously challenging, but teams of scientists from around the globe may soon be utilizing cosmic rays to diagnose when a volcano is about to blow.

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Capturing A Black Hole In Our Milky Way

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Building The James Webb Telescope

For the first time in decades, NASA is sending two new missions to Venus designed to study and explore the planet’s atmosphere and earth-like composition. Together, DAVINCI and VERITAS will provide a new, 360º view of Venus -- its history, and perhaps a window into Earth’s past as well.

Voyage To Venus

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ICARUS: Tracking Creatures From Space

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Secrets of a Dog's Nose

Nearly a century after the discovery of King Tut's tomb, archaeologists uncover the lost city of Luxor revealing new details about life in the Golden Era of ancient Egypt.

Egypt's Lost City

From their unique predatory behaviors to the web masterpieces they weave, science is revealing big breakthroughs about spiders and their super strong and flexible silks.

Super Spider Silk

65 million years ago, an immense space rock slammed into Earth, creating the equivalent of nuclear winter, killing all of the dinosaurs. Now, a team of scientists believes there was a witness to the catastrophe …a survivor that walked alongside T-rex … and that also allowed humans to be here today.

First Human Link

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Drones in Space: Mars to Titan

By examining countless Megalodon teeth from around the world, scientists have concluded that "meg" was able to achieve its gargantuan proportions by starting its carnivorous diet early -- in the womb.

Decoding Megalodon

The North Atlantic Right Whale is on the verge of extinction. The leading cause of death and injury to the whales is from ship strikes or entanglement in fishing lines. In this Breakthrough episode, we will hear from the leading experts and biologists who are racing to save this species.

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Our bodies are habitats for bacteria, and many of the microbes are beneficial to us. Scientists believe that within a few decades many useful microbes will have disappeared … so they want to create a vault for Human Microbiota like a Noah's Ark for the future of the human species.

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Peru's Mysterious Cloud Warriors

Watch as the Mars Perseverance Rover makes its historic landing on the Red Planet. We take you inside the harrowing February 18, 2021 landing, the science mission, and cutting-edge technology, including the first-ever Martian helicopter.

Mars Perseverance: The Hunt Begins

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OSIRIS-REx is NASA's first asteroid-sampling spacecraft on an asteroid called BENNU. It attempts a "touch-and-go" (TAG) sample collection which involves a series of maneuvers that will bring the spacecraft down to the asteroid's surface.

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Capture teams from the U.S. National Park Service track down and relocate wolves to Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior under an ambitious initiative to restore balance to a wilderness ecosystem.

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Flight of the Dragon (Mission Update)

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Could a 75 million-year-old dinosaur skull that has been sitting in a museum for over 20 years hold the first-ever dinosaur DNA discovered by humans? Follow an international team of scientists as they try to unlock the mystery of dinosaur DNA sequences.

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Hundreds of millions of people around the world could run out of water soon. Experts are desperately searching for solutions to stave off "Day Zero" when the taps will run dry. But the recent discovery of a massive aquifer hidden beneath the U.S. coastline may offer the greatest hope for humanity.

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Coronavirus: Race For a Vaccine

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Coronavirus: Combating the Outbreak

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Greenland is Melting

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For all of human history, the Sun, our home star, has measured our days and our seasons while fueling all life on Earth. Yet it remains an enigma. NASA's Parker Probe Plus is on a mission to change that -- flying through dangerous radiation to become the closest spaceship to orbit our Sun.

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Lions may be known as the kings of the jungle, but it was saber-tooth cats that ruled over the Americas. New fossil evidence is shinning a light on the violent lives of these mysterious species.

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The eruption of Mount Vesuvius is renowned for its decimation of Pompeii, but nearby, an equally impressive Roman settlement known as Herculaneum was lost to history. Today, the latest in technology is opening a wind to the past, as scientists digitally "unravel" the Herculaneum Scrolls.

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Rip currents can appear without warning, turning an ideal beach outing into a horrific scene of chaos and panic. But groundbreaking new research could teach thousands of potential victims how to spot and escape these silent killers before it's too late.

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Space Junk Dangers

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Hayabusa2: Asteroid Explosion

66 million years ago, an asteroid slammed into Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, causing a dinosaur mass extinction. With over 700,000 asteroids in space, what's in store for humanity and our planet if it happens again?

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One of the oldest known hominins in southern Africa. An almost complete skeleton dates back more than three million years. Found in 1994 in the Sterkfontein Caves near Johannesburg in South Africa, which form part of the “Cradle of Humankind”.

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T-Rex Timeline

A non-profit organization established in 2011 is aiming to land the first Israeli spacecraft on the Moon. This is the story of their attempt and the excitement of being the first private company to have a spacecraft launched with the intention of going to and landing on the moon.

Private Moonshot

How close are we to rendering infertility a problem of the past? Scientists believe that they are steps away from making healthy babies from stem cells, opening the doors for those with health limitations to become parents. But what are the legal and ethical implications of this breakthrough?

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Wiped off the face of the Earth by humans nearly a century ago, geneticists are now working on resurrecting the enigmatic Tasmanian Tiger.

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Great white sharks are one of the most feared predators on Earth, and yet we know very little about them. Science is now revealing the mysteries of this perfect predator through evolutionary biology.

Shark Family Tree

For the first time, scientists have captured a photograph of a black hole. The image verifies one of the most important theories in physics and will help unlock the greatest mysteries of the cosmos.

The First Picture of a Black Hole

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New Horizons: The Kuiper Belt Target

MOSE is one of the world’s largest and highest-profile civil-engineering works. But will it be able to save Venice? Venice has grappled with inundation for centuries. But due to natural subsidence and higher tides caused by global warming, the city is more vulnerable to flooding than ever before.

Floodgates of Venice

The fate of the Mars InSight lander will all come down to a fiery seven-minute freefall into the Red Planet. Will it survive and reveal new insight into our planetary neighbor, or will the atmosphere of Mars prove to be too much for our new planetary explorer?

Mars InSight: Seven Minutes to Touchdown

The Mars InSight lander is on a 6-month journey to the Red Planet, with hopes of uncovering some of our planetary neighbor's secrets. Digging deep into Martian soil, the lander will measure marsquakes and also study the deep interior of Mars - perhaps revealing the origins of the planet.

Drilling For Marsquakes: Mars InSight

As the number of people affected by Alzheimer's Disease continues to grow at an unprecedented pace, researchers worldwide are racing to discover a cure. While stopping the disease is the ultimate goal, could a team in the UK have cracked a method to reverse Alzheimer's Disease?

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New evidence suggests humans arrived in North America far earlier than previously thought, and that they may have traveled along paths now buried deep beneath the sea.

The Earliest Americans

Discovered in 2013, new and puzzling finding of small-skulled fossils of Homo naledi have scientists trying to understand whether Homo sapiens lived at the same time as Homo naledi, and how Homo naledi communities may have lived.

Homo Naledi

Scientists investigate the way the Sun builds its power -- through fusion -- hoping to find a way to use fusion as a less dangerous and less radioactive waste-producing path to energy than fission. But there are some major difficulties along the way...

Building The Sun: The 250 Million Degree Problem

An extraordinary new discovery of a dinosaur fossil so pristine and complete, that it shows off the texture, patterns, and color of a prehistoric giant. Discover this brand new species that roamed during the late Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

World's Best Dinosaur Fossil

Twenty years after its launch, we bid farewell to the Cassini spacecraft as it plunges into Saturn’s atmosphere in a planned death spiral. Productive right to the end, Cassini has rewritten the textbook on not only Saturn and its moons, but our whole solar system as well.

Cassini: The Grand Finale

Geologists in New Zealand created a stir earlier this year when they declared their discovery of the eighth continent of the world. Learn how was it formed and how something so massive could remain undetected until now.

The Eighth Continent: Zealandia

As scientific studies confirm sea level changes throughout the globe, major coastal cities like Miami are now fighting back against these rising tides, before it's too late. Parts of Miami Beach are under serious threat, with major economic and social dangers looming large.

Miami Beach Underwater

Gravitational Waves from three billion light years away have reached Earth -- the latest discovery from a new branch of astronomy that one day could give us a front-row seat to the Big Bang.

Gravitational Waves: Rewinding Time

New evidence from NASA's Dawn mission to Ceres, a dwarf planet the size of Texas, is changing our understanding of not only the Asteroid Belt but may also hold the key to deciphering the early life of our solar system.

Asteroid Belt Discovery

NASA may have just gotten one step closer to answering the question: are we alone? The Spitzer Telescope has made a groundbreaking discovery of exoplanets that could be similar to our own. And as Kepler also continues its search, our understanding of the universe continues to be redefined.

Exoplanets

New information from the eye of the Greenland Shark confirms it is the longest living vertebrate on Earth. Find out what qualities the shark has, and how looking at Sea Squirts (Tunicates) is also helping scientists understand more about the aging process.

The Mystery Of The Longest Living Vertebrate

Only 20 years ago, on July 5, 1996, scientists cloned a sheep, Dolly. Now genetics has advanced to gene editing, a technique that is promising to pave the way for curing genetically carried illnesses, like certain cancers. But how does it all work? And what are the challenges?

What is CRISPR?

Einstein was correct about gravitational waves. Here is a short primer on these up-to-now-only theoretical waves. And you will find out how we have finally confirmed Einstein's theory and what the research into gravitational waves will tell us about the beginnings of our Universe.