As much as we may love them, cats are major reservoirs of zoonotic infections, and their bites and scratches can pose a serious threat to our health. It’s a sad truth that one UK-based man found out the hard way after he was bitten by a stray cat and contracted an extensive soft tissue infection caused […]
The World’s Heaviest Fruit Is Something You Might Not Expect
The confusing world of fruits and vegetables is full of some surprising, and frankly delicious, specimens, from strawberries and tomatoes to asparagus. But which of these fruits could be classed as the world’s biggest? We take a look at some whoppers of the fruit world. A new entrant To start us off, a new whopper […]
“City Killers” And Half-Giraffes: How Many Scary Asteroids Really Go Past Earth Every Year?
Asteroids are chunks of rock left over from the formation of our Solar System. Approximately half a billion asteroids with sizes greater than four metres in diameter orbit the Sun, travelling through our Solar System at speeds up to about 30 kilometres per second – about the same speed as Earth. Asteroids are certainly good […]
X Marks The Unknown In Algebra – But X’s Origins Are A Math Mystery
Even though x is one of the least-used letters in the English alphabet, it appears throughout American culture – from Stan Lee’s X-Men superheroes to “The X-Files” TV series. The letter x often symbolizes something unknown, with an air of mystery that can be appealing – just look at Elon Musk with SpaceX, Tesla’s Model […]
India’s Moon Rover Chandrayaan-3 Has Entered Lunar Orbit
India has crossed a major milestone in the quest to become the fourth nation to make a soft landing on the Moon. Having launched on July 14, the Chandrayaan-3 mission entered lunar orbit on August 5. Touchdown is scheduled to take place on August 23 or 24. The United States, the Soviet Union, and China […]
Revealed By Thaw: The Ancient “Mummies” Of The Mongol Empire
The permafrost of east Eurasian mountains is slowly melting away, helping to reveal the buried bodies of the much-feared Mongol Empire – as well as their unquenchable thirst for yak milk. Research has studied the remains of a cemetery at the so-called Khorig site, located high in the Khovsgol mountains. Dating suggests that the cemetery […]
Would We Still See Ourselves As ‘Human’ If Other Hominin Species Hadn’t Gone Extinct?
READER QUESTION: We now know from evolutionary science that humanity has existed in some form or another for around 2 million years or more. Homo sapiens are comparatively new on the block. There were also many other human species, some which we interbred with. The question is then inevitable – when can we claim personhood […]
We’re Back: Communication With Voyager 2 Re-Established
Well, that didn’t take long. Having picked up what they called Voyager 2’ “Heartbeat” on Wednesday, by Friday NASA had restored communications. It seems you can’t keep a good spacecraft down, and Voyager 2 is undoubtedly one of the best. After visiting Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune and returning arguably the richest treasure trove of scientific […]
Video Game Study Reveals What People Do When The World Ends
There are few things more difficult than studying the end of the world, and how humanity would react before it. If you try when the world isn’t ending, then you probably won’t get an accurate impression, given that the world isn’t really ending. If you try while the world is actually ending, people won’t be that […]
Why It’s Bad To Always Suck Your Stomach In
Our abdominal muscles are among the hardest-working muscles in the body. They are involved in nearly every move we make, keeping the body stable and balanced, protecting our spine and even ensuring our internal organs stay where they’re supposed to. But certain health conditions and even unnecessarily tensing the muscles during your daily life can […]
Why Do Geologists Lick Rocks?
This article first appeared in Issue 10 of our free digital magazine CURIOUS. If you’re ever out walking and stumble across a geologist with a rock stuck to their tongue, fear not. They’ve not succumbed to the midday heat and started trying to eat their environment, they’ve simply struck fossilized bone. Advertisement In the pursuit of […]
Is “Twin Telepathy” Real?
This article first appeared in Issue 10 of our free digital magazine CURIOUS. Speak to anyone with siblings and they’ll likely have a rich backlog of dumbassery they’ve witnessed in the company of their brothers or sisters. The quirks of genetics mean that sharing the same parents isn’t enough to guarantee any morphological consistency among siblings, […]
Antarctica Is Missing A Chunk Of Sea Ice Bigger Than Greenland – What’s Going On?
Deadly heatwaves, raging wildfires, and record global temperatures are upon us. But far from the flames, at the southernmost tip of the planet, something just as shocking is unfolding. It’s Antarctic winter, a time when the area of floating sea ice around the continent should be rapidly expanding. This year though, the freeze-up has been […]
Beautifully Complete 150-Million-Year-Old Turtle Fossil Discovered In Germany
An incredibly well-preserved fossil of an ancient Jurassic sea turtle has been uncovered in Germany, the first to have a complete skull, shell, and all four limbs. The marine turtle had a massive head and would have swum through the shallows of a tropical sea that once covered Europe 150 million years ago. Across the […]
How Hidden Details In Ancient Egyptian Tomb Paintings Are Revealed By Chemical Imaging
The walls of ancient Egyptian tombs can teach us much about the lives of the pharaohs and their entourages. Tomb paintings showed the deceased and their immediate family members involved in religious activities, the burial itself, or feasting at banquets and hunting in the Nile marshes. But many such tombs were looted in antiquity and […]
US Soldiers Have Crossed The DMZ To North Korea Before, Just Like Travis King
The Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is, ironically, one of the most militarized borders in the world. Laden with barbed wire, electric fences, and landmines, the DMZ serves as a buffer zone between South Korea and North Korea, which have been in conflict (both directly and indirectly) with each other for seven decades. Over the past […]
Record Ultra-Long Gamma-Ray Burst Set Off Telescope Twice – And The Reason Is Cataclysmic
Gamma-ray bursts are incredible releases of energy. Some last for a fraction of a second, caused by the merger of neutron stars, while others last for many seconds and some even for minutes. These last ones are ultra-long gamma-ray bursts and are defined by a duration of more than 1,000 seconds, which is almost 17 […]
Wanna Win The Lottery? Math Tells Us How Many Tickets You Need
The old joke says that the lottery is a tax on people who can’t do math, however, mathematical analysis can actually be used to try to understand the complex probability involved in such a game. But is there a minimum number of tickets you can buy to guarantee a win? Mathematicians at the University of […]
The 100,000 Soldiers Of Trabuc Caves Are A Geological Oddity Not Seen Anywhere Else
We at IFLScience love a cave. The deeper, bluer, and more terrifying the better. We are also always keen to celebrate the weirdest wonders planet Earth has to offer, and as geological oddballs go, the Trabuc Caves in southern France take the cake. Situated in Mialet, France, the caves are the largest network of underground […]
People Are Just Learning What Doner Kebab Meat Is – They’re Not Impressed
Doner Kebabs should be made of lamb, that’s pretty much the standard definition for what goes into the popular post-piss-up nosh (though opinion here is varied). But a recent YouTube video has divided viewers as it not only reveals how the meat is made but also what it is often made of. And let’s be […]
