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Showing posts from January, 2017

It's official: A brand-new human organ has been classified

Your body now has an extra organ. Researchers have classified a brand-new organ inside our bodies, one that's been hiding in plain sight in our digestive system this whole time. Although we now know about the structure of this new organ, its function is still poorly understood, and studying it could be the key to better understanding and treatment of abdominal and digestive disease.  Known as the mesentery, the new organ is found in our digestive systems, and was long thought to be made up of fragmented, separate structures. But recent research has shown that it's actually one, continuous organ. The evidence for the organ's reclassification is now published in  The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology . "In the paper, which has been peer reviewed and assessed, we are now saying we have an organ in the body which hasn’t been acknowledged as such to date,"  said J Calvin Coffey , a researcher from the University Hospital Limerick in Ireland, who fir

23 science facts we didn't know at the start of 2016

It's been a long year. 1.  Gravitational waves  are real . More than 100 years after Einstein first predicted them, researchers finally detected the elusive ripples in space time this year. We've now seen three gravitational wave events in total. 2.  Sloths  almost die  every time they poop, and it looks agonising. 3.  It's possible to live for  more than a year  without a heart in your body.  4.  It's also possible to live a normal life without  90 percent of your brain . 5.  There are strange, metallic sounds  coming from the Mariana trench , the deepest point on Earth's surface. Scientists currently think the noise is a  new kind of baleen whale call . 6.  A revolutionary new type of nuclear fusion machine being trialled in Germany  really works , and could be the key to clean, unlimited energy.  7.  There's an  Earth-like planet just 4.2 light-years away  in the Alpha Centauri star system - and scientists are  already planning  a mission to v