New research has revealed the existence of a brand new organelle within mammalian cells. The never-before-described “mini organ” is called the exclusome, and is made up of DNA rings called plasmids. The team responsible for its discovery believe it could be involved in autoimmune disease and may help further our understanding of how nuclei evolved. […]
Pythagorean Theorem Found On Clay Tablet 1,000 Years Older Than Pythagoras
Study math for long enough and you will likely have cursed Pythagoras’s name, or said “praise be to Pythagoras” if you’re a bit of a fan of triangles. But while Pythagoras was an important historical figure in the development of mathematics, he did not figure out the equation most associated with him (a2 + b2 […]
Curious Case Of The Killer Whale That Swallowed Seven Sea Otters Whole
Researchers in Russia have investigated the strange case of a female orca (Orcinus orca) whose body was found on a beach and contained seven otters that had been swallowed whole. Not only is this an unusual meal for this type of marine mammal, but the orca was washed up far away from its normal territory. […]
“JuMBO” Discovery In The Orion Nebula Will Rewrite Planet And Star Formation Theories
The boundary between planets and stars is a bit muddled up. Sure, it is clear why the Earth is different from the Sun – but when you have gas giants like Jupiter and stellar objects like brown dwarfs with the same composition but different masses, it is difficult to make a clear dividing line. There […]
Echidnas Recorded Making Dove-Like Calls And Strange Grunts In Adorable First
Zoologists have recorded the adorable cooing sounds echidnas occasionally make during the mating season, as well as some others that might be described as grunts. This comes as something of a surprise since the spikey monotremes were previously thought to make no sounds besides a little snuffling and wheezing as they walk. Combined with the […]
This Tiny Crocodile Can Moo – And Yes We Have The Receipts
If you’ve ever wondered what a crocodile sounds like, we’re willing to bet you weren’t imagining this. One fun-size, West African crocodile inexplicably sounds just like a cow – and the revelation could be useful for conservationists trying to keep tabs on the tiny reptiles. The African dwarf crocodile (Osteolaemus tetraspis) is the smallest extant […]
Mysterious Dark Shadows Observed Across Orion Nebula
The Orion Nebula is one of the brightest nebula visible to the naked eye and the closest star formation region to Earth. Observations with JWST have brought forth stunning pictures and incredible discoveries such as the presence of Jupiter-Mass Binary Objects that challenge the current theories of how planets and stars form. But something even […]
People Are Attempting To Get Tans By Eating Carrots, Apparently
According to a video going around the Internet, there is a “carrot tan skin hack” that can give you tanned-looking skin without soaking up those UV rays. The video posted to TikTok suggests that eating three carrots a day can make you “glow from the inside out”. Advertisement ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared […]
New Weight-Loss Drug That Mimics The Effects Of A Workout Shows Promise
A new weight-loss drug has shown some promising results in mice, sparking hopes it could be developed for use in humans. We’ve heard a lot about these types of drugs recently, but this one works very differently. It doesn’t affect appetite or how much food you eat – instead, it tricks the body into thinking […]
Pizzlies Are Hybrid Bears That Show A Worrying Future For The Arctic
Pizzlies are hybrids born as a result of inter-species romping between a grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) and a polar bear (Ursus maritimus). Although rare, some scientists believe they could become more common due to climate change meddling with bear habitats in the northernmost stretches of our world. Polar bears are significantly larger than grizzlies, […]
The Great Vowel Shift: How Far Back In Time Could You Still Understand English?
Languages evolve over time, prompting a great question: How far back in time could you go and still understand English? If you were to speak to someone from the 1800s, or read a book from the same period, you would likely be fine. Sense and Sensibility (1811) remains comprehensible, for example, with some even claiming […]
New Weight-Loss Drug That Mimics The Effects Of A Workout Shows Promise In Mice
A new weight-loss drug has shown some promising results in mice, sparking hopes it could be developed for use in humans. We’ve heard a lot about these types of drugs recently, but this one works very differently. It doesn’t affect appetite or how much food you eat – instead, it tricks the body into thinking […]
COVID Vaccine mRNA Tech Wins Nobel Prize In Medicine 2023
The winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine are Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman. The award was given for discovering “nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.” The prize is worth 11 million Swedish kronor (around 1,002,000 US dollars at the time of publishing), which will […]
Perseverance Spots A Towering Martian Dust Devil In The Distance
On August 30, something moved in the background of a series of images taken by one of the Perseverance Rover’s Navcams. On a planet with no life (at least not large enough to see) and little in the way of meteorological activity, that’s unusual. The movement came from a dust devil seen over a rise […]
The Science Of “Luck”
This article first appeared in Issue 12 of our free digital magazine CURIOUS. Luck, a phenomenon that has fascinated and perplexed humans since time immemorial, has often been attributed to chance, fate, or supernatural forces. But is there more to this supposed phenomenon than mere chance and happenstance? Could there in fact be a rational and […]
Are We Really All Made Of Stardust?
This article first appeared in Issue 12 of our free digital magazine CURIOUS. Carl Sagan said: “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” It’s a quote so unbelievably good it makes you stay up at night to take it all in. But […]
Could Humans Ever Be Fossil Fuels In The Future?
Have you ever considered what will become of our remains in the distant future when we are long dead? We don’t mean in a few decades, or even a few hundred years, we mean eons into the future when the human race may have gone the way of the dinosaurs. Is it possible some of […]
Possible Hints Of Life Found On Distant Planet – How Excited Should We Be?
Data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has shown that an exoplanet around a star in the constellation Leo has some of the chemical markers that, on Earth, are associated with living organisms. But these are vague indications. So how likely is it that this exoplanet harbours alien life? Exoplanets are worlds that orbit […]
Jamais Vu: The Science Behind Eerie Opposite Of Déjà Vu
Repetition has a strange relationship with the mind. Take the experience of déjà vu, when we wrongly believe have experienced a novel situation in the past – leaving you with an spooky sense of pastness. But we have discovered that déjà vu is actually a window into the workings of our memory system. Our research […]
NASA Opens Lid Of Asteroid Sample Capsule, Preserved Proteins Found After Millions Of Years In Dinosaur Feather, And Much More This Week
This week we turn to science for the answer to how long couples should wait before getting intimate, rare red auroras caused by the Sun ripping holes in Earth’s magnetic field, and the zoo hypothesis attempts to explain why aliens haven’t made contact. Finally, we speak to wildlife filmmaker Bertie Gregory about the highlights from […]
