Over 500 years after it was painted, analysis of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of Italian noblewoman Lisa del Giocondo is still revealing its secrets. Earlier this year, one Italian researcher claimed to have identified where the Mona Lisa was painted after identifying the bridge as the Romito Etruscan-Roman bridge in the municipality of Laterina, in the […]
Magnetic “Whistling” Chorus Detected Around Mercury For The First Time
Plasma waves that chirp and whistle like the dawn chorus have been found around the innermost planet. The discovery provides insights into the weak magnetic field of Mercury and gives us a preview of what the BepiColombo spacecraft will be able to study once it is in orbit around the planet. These observations come from […]
Bog Bodies And Desert Deaths: How Natural Mummification Really Works
Mummies have been found on every continent on Earth (if you include the penguin mummies of Antarctica). You’ll no doubt be aware of the intentionally prepared mummies made by ancient civilizations to honor their dead, but it’s also possible for mummification to occur under extreme natural circumstances. The key is to disrupt the natural stages […]
JWST Detects Tiny Quartz Crystals In A Distant Hot Jupiter’s Atmosphere
High in the atmosphere of WASP-17b are clouds of tiny quartz particles, like minuscule grains of sand. The discovery is proof of the capacity of the JWST to probe the composition of distant planets – in this case, one 1,300 light years away. It’s also a great reminder of how good we have it on […]
Ants Found Tangled Up In Plastic Pollution For The First Time
The plight of plastic pollution has reached the insects. For the first time, scientists have documented ants becoming entangled in plastic fibers. The impact and extent of the phenomenon aren’t immediately clear, but it marks another milestone in the planet’s deepening problem with plastic pollution. Armand Rausell-Moreno from the National Museum of Natural Sciences in […]
On New Tourist Spaceship You Can Have The Finest Dump You Ever Took
Space tourism firm Space Perspective has unveiled designs for a “space spa” to be fitted in their Spaceship Neptune capsules, which they hope to begin launching in 2024. During the early days of the Apollo missions, NASA didn’t think about peeing and pooping too much. When the first American man – Alan Shepard – went […]
The Neurology Of Taste: How Your Brain Perceives Flavor
What’s your favorite food? And what foods make you turn up your nose in disgust? These are probably easy questions to answer, but have you ever stopped to wonder how you know what flavors you love and what flavors you hate? You’ve probably seen that diagram of a tongue split into zones for five different tastes, […]
New “Super Predator” Pliosaur Genus Changes What We Know About Ancient Sea Monsters
Museums, far from dusty remnants of the past, are a hotbed of discovery for the general public and researchers alike. In fact, a fossil exhibit in Luxembourg’s National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) has revealed a brand-new genus of pliosaur and with it, changed what we know about the ocean predators’ emergence. The fossil was […]
Neanderthals Interbred With An Unknown Lineage Of Modern Humans Long Ago
When modern humans migrated out of Africa around 75,000 years ago, they hooked up with Neanderthals and rampantly interbred with them, leaving a genetic legacy that still lives on today in most people of European descent. However, it turns out, the Neanderthal genome was already seeded with the DNA of Homo sapiens at this point […]
World’s Most Ambitious Rewilding Plan To Relocate 2,000 Southern White Rhinos
Rewilding has become something of a buzzword in recent years and for good reason. Reintroducing species into habitats they have been lost from is proven to help restore ecosystems, and brings with it a whole host of benefits from flood management to carbon capture. Now, potentially the world’s most ambitious rewilding plan has been hatched. […]
Pittcon: The Biggest Annual Laboratory Science Event Of The Year
This past March, Philadelphia hosted one of the world’s largest annual laboratory science events of the year – Pittcon. This dynamic and transnational conference brought together 1,100 technical sessions, 450 exhibitors, and more than 15,000 visitors. It truly was the epicenter of discovery, learning, and interaction. And there is more to come. What is Pittcon? […]
Immune System Aging Can Be Seen With A Simple Scan
Have you heard of the thymus? New research suggests it’s high time we paid more attention to it, after finding that a computerized tomography (CT) scan of the oft-forgotten organ can uncover immune system aging. The thymus is a small organ located in the upper part of the chest and is home to immature T-cells, […]
Nomophobia Is On The Increase – Do You Have It?
Smartphones have been a part of our lives for so long that it’s difficult for many of us to remember the Before Times, but even 20 years ago the kind of tech we see in today’s phones would have been unimaginable. As their role in modern society has increased, scientists have scrambled to try and […]
En Caul Birth: Fascinating Video Shows Rare Baby Born Inside The Amniotic Sac
A video showing an “en caul” birth has been widely shared on X (still aka Twitter) and Instagram, introducing a new batch of people to the fact that some babies are born inside their amniotic sacs. The video, from an unknown source but shared first by kids.mood on Instagram, shows a baby wriggling around inside […]
Fish Species Thought To Be Extinct Is Actually Alive And Thriving
The houting, a fish that lived in North Sea estuaries and was officially classified as extinct in 2008, turns out to be alive and kicking… or flopping. According to research from the University of Amsterdam and the Natural History Museum, London, the species is actually quite common. But the story is more complicated than it […]
Only 21 Of These Enormous Chicken Frogs Remain Alive In The Wild
One of the world’s largest frog species is on the brink of extinction due to a devastating combination of infectious disease, climate change, and habitat loss. Once widespread across the Caribbean, the critically endangered mountain chicken frog can now only be found on the island of Dominica, where just 21 of the giant amphibians remain. […]
Predatory Stargazers Are Much Easier To Photograph Than They Are To Find
The menacing grimace of a stargazer earned wildlife photographer Pietro Formis Highly Commended for Animal Portraits in the Wildlife Photographer Of The Year 2023 competition. Captured in Rijeka, Croatia, it depicts a Mediterranean stargazer (Uranoscopus scaber) laying in wait on the seabed in a portrait aptly named Death In Waiting. As ambush predators, stargazers wiggle […]
Supernova Detected, Confirmed, And Classified By AI For The First Time
At least in astronomy, AI seems to be delivering on the promise of helping humans by doing tedious time-consuming jobs. A series of robotic telescopes and machine learning algorithms have been able to work together to first detect a possible supernova, then follow up the observations to confirm it, classify its type, and then share […]
Americans Witness Fascinating “Eclipse Shadows” Naturally Projected Onto The Floor
On Saturday, people across the Americas witnessed a “ring of fire” eclipse, the last annular eclipse before the total solar eclipse of 2024. As well as awesome photos of the eclipse itself, some have posted photos and videos of “eclipse shadows” on the ground, to the confusion of others. Advertisement #Eclipse #EclipseSolar #Eclipse2023 pic.twitter.com/aUCV6QrYBk— X-Tok […]
Think This Giant Spider Is About To Eat The Small One? Think Again
When IFLScience visited Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2023, there was one photo that really stopped us in our tracks. On the surface, it looks as if a small arachnid is about to meet its end at the hands (or legs, as it were) of a monstrous spider. However, when it comes to the battle […]
