Skip To Content
BuzzFeed News Home Reporting To You



12 Of The Saddest Science Facts Of All Time

It's lonely spacecraft and abandoned animals all the way down. I'm so sorry.

Posted on July 28, 2015, at 10:05 a.m. ET

1. On its first birthday on Mars, the Curiosity rover was programmed to play "Happy Birthday" to itself.

As if being alone on a cold, faraway planet wasn't bad enough.

2. Mars is populated entirely with robots, but they'll never meet each other.

NASA / Via

Of all the robots on Mars, only Curiosity and Opportunity are still alive and well, and they're on opposite sides of the planet.

3. There's a whale called 52 Blue that might be the only one of its kind. It travels alone, singing at a different frequency to other whales.

Purestock / Getty Images

Whale calls are usually around 20 hertz, a frequency only just audible to humans. So when scientists started hearing a 52 hertz call, they didn't work out right away that it was a whale. The scientists wrote in a paper:


(Although this story may have a happier ending – some scientists now believe they've picked up similar signals, meaning the whale might not be alone after all.)

4. Pluto didn't get to make one whole orbit of the sun in the time between its discovery and demotion.


It takes 248 years to complete the journey.

5. New Horizons spent nine years travelling to Pluto but only 22 hours collecting data from the dwarf planet.

"Omg hiiii!!!" "Oh ok bye then. :("

6. Scientists accidentally killed the world's oldest known animal when they (also accidentally) discovered it in 2006.

Bangor University

Ming the clam was dredged up off the coast of Iceland in 2006. Ming was one of about 200 clams that were brought up as part of a research project on climate change. All of the clams were frozen – killing them – aboard the boat. A year later the scientists realised what they had done.

It was only when they got the clams back to the lab that they realised how old Ming was by looking at its shell under a microscope. At first they thought it was 405 years old, but a later analysis put its age at 507. That means it was born in 1499, during the Ming dynasty in China. RIP Ming.

7. The two Voyager spacecraft are the farthest human-made objects from Earth, but they're travelling in different directions.


Hurtling out into the cosmos all alone, Voyager 1 is now in interstellar space. Voyager 2 is still in the heliosheath, the outermost layer of a bubble around the solar system created by the solar wind.

8. Voyager 1 won't reach another star system for 40,000 years, and even then it'll be over a light year away from the star.


Voyager 2 will pass by a different star around the same time.

9. A spacecraft that launched in the '70s was still transmitting a signal to Earth in 2008, but nobody had been listening for nine years.


It was originally called ISEE-3 and was tasked with investigating the solar wind, then in 1983 changed tack (and name, to ICE) and headed off to look at some comets. ICE was supposed to stop transmitting at some point in the '90s, but apparently someone forgot to tell it.

So in 2008, when it was in orbit around the sun, NASA mission design specialist Robert Farquhar tried – and succeeded – to detect the signal ICE was transmitting.

In 2014, ICE came back from its cometary adventures and passed by Earth. NASA was no longer funding communication with the spacecraft, but an unofficial group called the ISEE Reboot Project managed to speak to it in May that year, and fire the thrusters in July, before eventually losing contact once again.

10. Cuckoos trick other birds into raising their young by laying eggs in their nests. The baby cuckoo grows faster than the others and can force the smallest chicks out.

Per Harald Olsen / CC BY-SA http://3.0 /

11. Grizzly bears have been known to abandon single cubs so they can try for a bigger litter the next year.

Karen Bleier / Getty Images

A lone cub would take two years to raise, so the mother wouldn't have another litter for three years if she raised it.

12. Pandas often have twins, but usually the mother can only manage to care for one, so the other is abandoned.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Giant panda cubs can't even open their eyes until they're 6 weeks old, and can't move around until they're 3 months. Poor little guys.

