Fossils and ancient creatures sometimes tend to give researchers a headache just as much as they bring excitement to the team. One such item is part of a marine tapeworm that has been discovered trapped in amber – quite how a marine parasite ended up trapped in tree resin is leaving scientists scratching their heads. […]
Mercury-Bound Mission’s Fate Is Uncertain Following Thruster Problem
BepiColombo will be the first mission to Mercury in a decade, a joint collaboration between the European and Japanese space agencies ESA and JAXA. But almost a month ago, the mission team discovered a glitch that is causing a lack of power in its thrusters, potentially putting the mission in jeopardy. Advertisement BepiColombo is three […]
Rare Fireball Comet Turns Night Into Day Over Spain And Portugal In Spectacular Footage
Shortly before midnight on Saturday night, an enormous blue-green fireball lit up the skies over Portugal, turning night back into day for a few incredible seconds. Also visible across parts of Spain, the light show was the work of a comet that burnt up in the Earth’s atmosphere as its race across the cosmos came […]
Keeping Up With COVID Vaccines Arms The Immune System Against Future Variants And Viruses
Keeping up with your COVID vaccines could have benefits beyond just topping up immunity to the latest circulating variants, according to a new study. Researchers led by a team at Washington University School of Medicine found that the antibodies generated by the vaccine have broad effectiveness against a range of variants, and might even help […]
Bizarre “Lenticular” Galaxy Surrounded By Dark Matter Captured In New Hubble Image
NASA has shared an image of a truly bizarre-looking galaxy, believed to be surrounded by a “halo” of dark matter. Advertisement The image – taken by the aging but still extremely useful Hubble Space Telescope – shows lenticular galaxy NGC 4753, part of the Virgo II Cloud of around 100 galaxies and galaxy clusters. Lenticular […]
What Is The Richest Country In The World? 5 Answers To Make You Rethink The Question
Asking which country is the richest is like asking what the best recipe for dinner is: it sounds like a sensible question, right up until you try to answer it – at which point you realize some pretty important context has been left out. Advertisement Sure, we usually think we know what it means: which […]
Is Hypnosis Real? Here’s What Science Has To Say
This article first appeared in Issue 19 of our digital magazine CURIOUS. Advertisement Nobody on stage has ever been hypnotised in the history of the world. – The Amazing Kreskin, veteran mentalist and showman, 1994 Advertisement It was midnight, in the Palace of Westminster, UK in December 1994, and hypnotism was in trouble. “Stage hypnotism has been a […]
What’s Going On With The New COVID FLiRT Variants? This Lost River Could Explain How The Pyramids Were Built, And Much More This Week
This week, two new searches have identified 60 potential “alien megastructures” in our galaxy, something strange is happening to the Y chromosome, and warm-blooded dinosaurs may have evolved 180 million years ago. Finally, we meet the explorers who travelled to the most remote place on Earth in an IFLScience exclusive interview. Advertisement Subscribe to the IFLScience […]
What Were The Most Popular Baby Names In 2023?
Every year, the US Social Security Administration releases its list of the most popular baby names from the previous year, providing an interesting insight into the naming trends that have captured parents – and maybe even what the most popular TV show is at the time (know a baby Khaleesi, anyone?). So what came top […]
Why Is My Scalp Flaky? Exploring The Causes Of Dandruff And How It’s Treated
If you’ve ever thought twice about wearing a dark shirt or jacket in case it ends up covered in a light dusting of flakes, you will know the annoyance that dandruff can cause. Lots of us will have to deal with this at some stage in our lives – and while it’s not dangerous, it […]
Blueberry Wine Could Be The Next Big Superfood
We’re now in the midst of blueberry season and that means a glut of delicious blue-but-not-really fruit heading toward our tables. If you end up with more blueberries than you can freeze, bake, or blend, one option might be to turn it into wine – though according to a new study, maximizing the plonk’s potential […]
Why Does Everything Eventually Become Disordered?
If you feel the world is breaking down into chaos, you’re right. You may or may not be correct if that feeling is in regard to politics and the state of society, but on the timescale of the universe there is no doubt, order is breaking down. That is what it always does. But why? […]
Crucial Building Blocks Of Life On Earth Can More Easily Form In Outer Space – New Research
The origin of life on Earth is still enigmatic, but we are slowly unravelling the steps involved and the necessary ingredients. Scientists believe life arose in a primordial soup of organic chemicals and biomolecules on the early Earth, eventually leading to actual organisms. It’s long been suspected that some of these ingredients may have been […]
The World’s Largest Salt Flat Is Full Of Mysterious Patterns
This article first appeared in Issue 19 of our digital magazine CURIOUS. Advertisement A photographic playground of a salt flat can be found sprawling across southwest Bolivia. Here, the remains of an ancient lake have created a salty crust that makes for great perspective games in the dry season – and turns into a massive mirror when wet. Advertisement The world’s largest salt flat […]
Webb Telescope Spots Most Distant Black Hole Merger Ever Detected
Astronomers have discovered the most distant pair of interacting supermassive black holes. The duo was in the process of merging when the universe was just 740 million years old. The light of the system, dubbed ZS7, traveled over 13 billion years to reach us and the observations are providing insights into how supermassive black holes […]
World-First Gene Editing Approach Wants To Make Quolls Resistant To Cane Toad Neurotoxins
In a world-first application for gene editing technology, Colossal Biosciences is attempting to use CRISPR to make the endangered northern quoll resistant to the neurotoxins of cane toads. Snacking on a cane toad can be a fatal error for a hungry quoll, but the world-first de-extinction company is striving towards introducing genetic resistance that could […]
What Is A Keystone Species, And Why Are They So Important?
As a wise and leonine monarch once said, “Everything you see exists together in a delicate balance. As king, you need to understand that balance […] we are all connected in the great Circle of Life.” Advertisement But what if that circle was more of an… oval? What if, instead of each species being just […]
Deforestation Rates In Amazon Rainforest Drop To Lowest In 5 Years
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has been declining month-on-month for over a year and has now reached the lowest rate in five years, according to data from Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE) analyzed by Mongabay. Advertisement The INPE’s DETER system also indicates that deforestation between August 2023 and April 2024 had dropped by 51 […]
Weight Loss Drug Can Sustain Results For Up To 4 Years And May Protect Hearts Too
Wegovy, an injectable prescription weight loss drug, can produce effective results that help patients keep weight off for up to four years, a new study suggests. The drug may also offer heart protection benefits for overweight and obese patients who had heart disease before starting the treatment. Advertisement The drug, which is developed by Novo […]
Are We Really About To Talk To Whales?
The past decade has seen an explosion of new research into some of the most fascinating sounds in the sea: the vocalisations of whales and dolphins. Scientists have uncovered how humpback whales learn songs from neighbouring populations, so that these songs travel from western Australia to South America. They discovered bowhead whales singing 184 different […]
