Name: Immortal Alligators
Uploaded: 2022-06-08 00:23:34
Duration: 13 min 57 s
Description: New research reveals how incredible these ancient, unchanged reptiles really are - partly because of what’s called negligible senescence. This means that Alligators show almost no signs of aging -- regardless of how long they live - and that they are “biologically immortal.”

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

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.

Reefs of Hope

For the first time in history, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has pierced the Sun’s corona and is orbiting above its surface. Scientists have a front-row seat to better understand the sun and predict huge solar eruptions that can cause serious damage when they hit Earth.

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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.

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Year of the Asteroid

This is an inside look at NASA's groundbreaking Artemis Program, the spacecraft, and the people who will bring humanity one step closer to the moon, Mars, and beyond.

Artemis: First Launch

The dawn of a new era in astronomy has begun as the world gets its first look at the full capabilities of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. These first images from the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope demonstrate Webb at its full power.

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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.

Into the Volcano

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Immortal Alligators

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Capturing A Black Hole In Our Milky Way

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Building The James Webb Telescope

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Voyage To Venus

The ICARUS system monitors the movements and behaviors of Earth’s creatures from space. An antenna mounted on the International Space Station receives data from tiny trackers attached to animals and birds, opening the door to new discoveries that can warn us of natural disasters and outbreaks.

ICARUS: Tracking Creatures From Space

A team of scientists embarks on a quest to explore the mesopelagic zone or ocean twilight zone which sits beneath the surface layer of the ocean and stretches around the world. This mysterious region just might hold the key to climate change and the planet’s future.

Ocean Twilight Zone

A dog's sense of smell can do amazing things. Dogs can help humans sniff out all kinds of things that improve our lives, explosives, missing persons, illegal drugs. Now the latest research is revealing that dogs can detect disease, even cancer.

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First Human Link

Drones have already conquered Earth, and now they're heading out into the solar system. The Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity is proving to be successful and will pave the way for Dragonfly, a future daring mission to Titan.

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.

Saving the Right Whale

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Noah's Ark for the Humans

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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

How did the western United States become a hotspot for unwieldy and devastating forest fires? Learn how the history of forest management and loss of public trust, coupled with climate change, have led to the conditions driving mega-fire nearly year-round.

The West is Burning

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OSIRIS-REx: Asteroid Hunter

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.

Return of the Wolves

On August 2, 2020, two NASA astronauts plunged back to Earth aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule. Witness their historic flight, from the first manned launch from the US in nearly a decade, to the first splashdown attempt since the Apollo era.

Flight of the Dragon (Mission Update)

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Hunting For Martian Life: The Perseverance Rover

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Coronavirus: Don't Blame Bats

The latest developments in space technology continue to reveal the wonders of our solar system. With new moons recently spotted orbiting Saturn, the gas giant has taken the lead in our cosmic neighborhood's moon count.

Saturn: The Moon King

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.

Raising Dinos From The Dead

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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This year we said goodbye to one of our most intrepid planetary explorers, the Opportunity rover. Take a look back at its storied 15-year mission on Mars, and how it revolutionized our understanding of not just the red planet, but our solar system at large.

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El León es conocido como el Rey de la Selva. Pero fueron los tigres dientes de sable los que gobernaron las Américas en el pasado. Sus fósiles nos cuentan la vida violenta y casi humana de esta misteriosa especie.

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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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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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Climate Crisis

A ballistic missile test by India recently shot down one of its own communications satellites. With over 900,000 pieces of debris currently orbiting planet Earth, space trash has become a very real threat to ongoing missions.

Space Junk Dangers

Hayabusa2 just became the first spacecraft to take subsurface samples of an asteroid. How did they do it? Easy, just blow a crater on the surface! The probe now has its final sample and will begin its journey back home in the coming months.

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?

Modern Day Killer Asteroid

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”.

Little Foot: Exploring Our Origins

Heart disease is the number one cause of deaths worldwide, but there are researchers frantically working to change that. Meet the people inventing the future of cardiac health, from new ways of imaging the body, to the possibility of 3D printing a functioning heart.

Fixing A Broken Heart

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

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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?

Making Babies

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

Resurrecting Tasmanian Tigers

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

How long does it take for life to rebound after a major mass extinction? Scientists in Svalbard dig through fossil clues for surprising revelations about our Earth's history.

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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?

Reversing Alzheimer's

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.

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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 may hold the key to deciphering the early life of our solar system.

Asteroid Belt Discovery

NASA may have just gotten one step closer to the 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 have 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.