NASA astronaut Don Pettit has helped YouTuber Steve Mould with the final step in his “weird chain theory”: testing the idea in space. In 2013, YouTuber and science communicator Steve Mould brought the “chain fountain”, an unsolved problem in physics, to the attention of the wider public. The effect, sometimes referred to as the “Mould […]
The Oldest Stalagmite Ever Dated Was Found In Oklahoma Rocks, Dating Back 289 Million Years
Did you know that organisms that live exclusively in caves are known as troglobites? It’s not the most appealing name in the world, but it seems fitting. Brings to mind images of wet, cold, and dark places where unknown liquids drip from the ceiling (some of which has been discovered to be the oldest water […]
2024’s Great American Eclipse Made Some Birds Behave In Surprising Ways, But Not All Were Fooled
Thousands of volunteers recorded bird behavior in response to the total solar eclipse of 2024, revealing a diversity of bird responses. For some, the wonder of total solar eclipses is enhanced with reports of animals responding as if night has come early. In 1932, New England cattle were reported heading to their barns, while frogs […]
“Carter Catastrophe”: The Math Equation That Predicts The End Of Humanity
Since we became a (semi) intelligent species and started studying the cosmos, humanity has been on a long journey to realizing we are not the center of the universe, the galaxy, or even the Solar System. While disappointing for an egotistical species, this realization has led us to discoveries about the real nature of our […]
Why Is There No Nobel Prize For Mathematics?
October is Nobel Prize season, an annual period when scientists in the fields of physics, chemistry, and medicine eagerly await to see who will win a giant gold coin in Stockholm later that year. Even economists get their turn in the spotlight in these. But mathematicians, much to their dismay, are left out in the […]
These Are The Only Animals Known To Incubate Eggs In Their Stomachs And Give “Birth” Out Their Mouths
It’s fair to say that growing new life is rarely easy. For humans, it involves a lengthy stay in the womb before being squeezed out through the vagina – an amazing, but painful feat. Some other species have rejected the genitals as a means of delivery, however. Just take a look at gastric-brooding frogs. How […]
Constipated? This One Fruit Could Help, Says First-Ever Evidence-Led Diet Guidance
The first-ever evidence-based dietary guidance for adults experiencing chronic constipation has just been released, and you might be surprised by some of the recommendations. Advice like eating a generally high-fiber diet has been found to be lacking in evidence, but an unlikely star has emerged as something of a gut health hero: the humble kiwi […]
NGC 2775: This Galaxy Breaks The Rules Of “Galactic Evolution” And Baffles Astronomers
Human classification, from celestial bodies to living organisms, often starts with their morphology. Depending on how something looks, it gets a certain label. This is all well and good until you find the exceptions, so you expand the category. But what happens when you find an exception to the exception? Well, you get something like […]
Meet The “Four-Eyed” Hirola, The World’s Most Endangered Antelope With Fewer Than 500 Left
On a small stretch of land near the Kenya-Somalia border lives the world’s rarest antelope, a curious-looking, “four-eyed” animal called the hirola that once roamed the region’s grasslands in the thousands. Today, it’s on the brink of extinction – but how exactly did it get there? Formally known as Beatragus hunteri, these bizarre members of […]
The Bizarre 1997 Experiment That Made A Frog Levitate
In 2000, the famous 1997 Levitating Frog experiment hopped its way to an Ig Nobel Prize, thanks to Dr. Andre Geim and his team, who figured out how to make a frog, a cricket, and a few plants float using magnetism. Geim would later win a real Nobel Prize for graphene, but that’s another story. […]
There’s A Very Good Reason Why October 1582 On Your Phone Is Missing 10 Days
People on social media have noticed an odd quirk in the iPhone calendar: if you scroll back to October 1582, you’ll see it jump straight from the 4th to the 15th, skipping ten entire days. It’s not a glitch or a hidden joke from Apple’s developers; those ten days genuinely never existed. The days weren’t […]
Skynet-1A: Military Spacecraft Launched 56 Years Ago Has Been Moved By Persons Unknown
A military spacecraft launched 56 years ago was moved from its orbit – and nobody is quite sure who did it, or why. In 1969 the UK launched Skynet-1A, a military communications satellite placed in orbit above the east coast of Africa in order to relay information to British armed forces. It stopped working due […]
There’s A Simple Solution To Helping Avoid Erectile Dysfunction (But You’re Not Going To Like It)
For reasons that nobody is fully sure of, society seems to have decided that Real Men Eat Meat. It should perhaps be taken as proof that the universe has a sense of irony, therefore, that it seems a vegan diet might be best for preventing that most manly of health problems: erectile dysfunction. Why? Well, […]
Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS May Be 10 Billion Years Old, This Rare Spider Is Half-Female, Half-Male Split Down The Middle, And Much More This Week
This week, the world’s first butt-drag fossil shows a 126,000-year-old hyrax scooting across the ground, the first-ever living recipient of a pig-to-human liver transplant survived for 171 days, and a new study is questioning evidence of the long-assumed “oldest human habit”. Finally, we explore a “truly exceptional” 125-million-year-old two-headed reptile fossil. Create an IFLScience account […]
Why Do Trains Not Have Seatbelts? It’s Probably Not What You Think
If you’ve ever used public transport, you may be a little confused as to why trains are one of the only vehicles (looking at you, too, buses) that don’t have seatbelts. Cars have seatbelts, planes have seatbelts, so why not trains? There are a few reasons, and not all of them are obvious. To start […]
World’s Driest Hot Desert Just Burst Into A Rare And Fleeting Desert Bloom
The Atacama Desert in Chile might be one of the driest places on the planet, but even this barren landscape can occasionally bloom into a sea of colorful flowers – and right now it’s at its peak. The desert bloom phenomenon sees a vast and vibrant carpet of flowers appear in the world’s driest nonpolar […]
Theoretical Dark Matter Infernos Could Melt The Earth’s Core, Turning It Liquid
When trying to identify the nature of dark matter, sometimes it’s the things it doesn’t do that tell us the most, like turning the center of the Earth liquid. A new study has shown that if some models and particle masses for dark matter were correct, a “dark inferno” would be released within the Earth’s […]
North America’s Largest Mammal Once Numbered 60 Million – Then Humans Nearly Drove It To Extinction
The largest mammal in North America is also one of its longest-standing residents. Its ancestors arrived on the continent hundreds of thousands of years ago, and their descendants have lived there ever since – that is, until humans nearly caused them to disappear entirely. The iconic animals we were so close to driving extinct? Bison. […]
North America’s Largest Ever Land Animal Was A 21-Meter-Long Titan
Today, the largest land animal in North America is the bison, which can clock in at nearly 4 meters (13 feet) in length, and weigh as much as two grand pianos. But as much as we love bison, they pale in comparison to the biggest terrestrial animal ever to have roamed the continent: Alamosaurus. The […]
A Two-Headed Fossil, 50/50 Spider, And World-First Butt Drag
This week on Break It Down: 3I/ATLAS is a 10 billion-year-old time capsule, a world-first fossil captures the moment a rock hyrax dragged its butt 126,000 years ago, a living person received a pig liver transplant for the first time, the “oldest human habit” might not be what it seems, a rare gynandromorph spider is […]
