The Butterfly Nebula is among the most beautiful nebulae out there. It’s a planetary nebula formed by an aging star throwing out layers of plasma before turning into a white dwarf. New observations have allowed astronomers to track the formation of cosmic dust in this peculiar environment, understanding where the building blocks of planets, including […]
The Pacific Ocean Is So Vast It Contains Its Own Antipodes
In most countries, people have a belief about where they’d end up if they dug their way through the center of the Earth and popped up on the other side, more technically known as the “antipode”. For people in the USA, they think it’s China. For people in the UK, they think it’s Australia. Australians […]
World’s Tallest Bridge Over “Crack In The Earth” Gets Daunting Load Test By Fleet Of 96 Trucks
The world’s tallest bridge has undergone final load tests ahead of opening, with 96 weighted trucks driving over the bridge to test its structural integrity. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. Construction of the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge in Guizhou province, China, […]
Mars’s Interior Still Has Evidence Of Ancient Impact, Dead NASA Mission Tells Us
An international team of researchers has provided new insights into the interior of Mars. The Earth is moderately well divided. It has a crust, a mantle, and an outer and inner core. The crust, mantle, and core division is present on the Red Planet as well, but unlike the mostly smooth mantle of Earth, Mars […]
A Soviet Physicist Once Survived A Proton Beam Through The Head – This Is How
In 1978, while inspecting a faulty detector inside the Soviet Union’s most powerful particle accelerator, physicist Anatoli Bugorski was struck in the head by a proton beam traveling close to the speed of light. Amazingly, Bugorski remains alive to this day, and while government secrecy prevented details of his medical assessment from being leaked, researchers […]
Outstanding Photos Show First Baby Planet Growing In The Grooves Of A Stellar Disk
For several years, astronomers have been seeing the hallmark of planet formation around stellar protoplanetary disks. A baby star is surrounded by a disk of gas and dust, and to observatories like ALMA, grooves in the disk appear as dark rings. These grooves are believed to be formed by fledgling planets, but no planets have […]
The “Plague Of Justinian” May Have Been The First Pandemic. DNA At A Mass Grave Has Finally Identified Its Cause.
A new study has found direct genetic evidence pointing to the cause of the devastating “Plague of Justinian” first described nearly 1,500 years ago. Reports of the disease first came around 541 CE in the port of Pelusium in Lower Egypt, before spreading through trade routes around the Byzantine Empire. During a particularly intense outbreak […]
Michelson And Morley’s “Failed” 1887 Experiment Changed The Course Of Physics, And Put The Aether To Bed
In the past few centuries, scientists have conducted countless experiments that have revolutionized our understanding of the universe. Very few have been as impactful as the Michelson-Morley experiment, which attempted to find evidence of the luminiferous aether, and found nothing. First, a little context. In the 19th Century, physicists revolutionized our understanding of light, in […]
Only 19 US States Require School Sex Education To Be Medically Accurate, Finds Sweeping Review
Sex education has become a complex topic in the United States. Despite the overwhelming evidence that it offers substantive health benefits for children and young people, there is no federal law requiring schools to teach it. As a result, the decision to teach students about sexual matters lies with states or even local school districts. […]
Do Any Frogs Or Toads Give Birth To Live Young? Just One: Meet The Western Nimba Toad
When we think of amphibians like frogs and toads, we often imagine spawn. Gloopy little eggs spilling out into ponds. It’s a great glimpse into the metamorphosis of anurans, allowing us to see them grow from egg to tadpole, to froglet, or toadlet. There is, however, one species that keeps things a little more intimate. […]
Tasmanian Tigers’ Genetics May Have Doomed Them Long Before Humans Came Along
What killed off the Tasmanian tiger? For a long time, it was believed this enigmatic marsupial went extinct due to being exterminated as a “pest” and competition with newly introduced dingoes. However, new research suggests there may have been another factor at play: the animal’s genetic diversity. Tasmanian tigers, or Thylacines (Thylacinus cynocephalus), sometimes known […]
Scientists “Wake Up” Ancient Life That’s Been Under The Seabed For 100 Million Years
Deep below the seafloor, locked in a layer of 100-million-year-old sediment, a lifeform quietly lives. It’s not quite Godzilla, nor a long-lost Megalodon, but it does go to show how life on Earth can dwell under the most extreme and bizarre circumstances. Scientists discovered that communities of microbes living beneath the seafloor are able to […]
Measurable Brain Changes Following Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Identified For The First Time
You’ll sometimes hear psychotherapy referred to as “talking therapy,” and it’s not entirely wrong. Some routes of treatment, including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), can involve a lot of talking as therapists work with clients to try and question negative patterns of thinking and pave the way for a fresh outlook. Thing is, people aren’t always […]
“It Was Really Unexpected”: Scientists Stunned By Glowing Plants, And All It Takes Is An Injection
Scientists toying with the afterglow of phosphor particles were stunned to see how uniformly they could diffuse across succulent plants when injected into their leaves. The result is a succulent that glows like something out of Avatar, lasting for hours. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to […]
Scientists Created Gene-Edited Albino Cane Frogs To Unravel The Mysteries Of Natural Selection
It’s often assumed that albino animals are rare in the wild because their lack of pigment makes them stick out in the natural environment, turning them into easy pickings for hungry predators. However, in a new study, a team of scientists from Macquarie University in Australia found evidence that the story isn’t so simple. There […]
In Vivo Vs In Vitro: What Do They Actually Mean?
If you’ve spent time reading medical research articles, you’re bound to have seen two Latin phrases that sound a bit like a magical spell: in vivo and in vitro. But what do they actually mean? These phrases aren’t just there to make experiments sound fancier; they reveal where and how the science is being done. The […]
IFLScience The Big Questions: What Will The Fossils Of The Future Look Like?
Today’s rubbish may well be the fossils of tomorrow. Plastic bags, old pens, cheap clothing, or even chicken bones are all examples of possible “technofossils”, rapidly accumulating debris and detritus that may come to represent the story of humanity in the geological record long after we’re gone. The rest of this article is behind a […]
Finally, A Successful Starship Launch – What This Means For The Moon Landings
Starship’s 10th test flight has deployed simulated satellites for the first time, and splashed down on target in the Indian Ocean, achieving SpaceX’s primary objectives after months of failed attempts, many ending in fiery explosions. Plans for Starship’s involvement in the future Moon landings remain badly behind schedule, and not everything went according to plan. […]
26 Years After Launch, The ISS Will Try A New Way To Stay In Orbit Next Month
The International Space Station (ISS) is about to be boosted using a new method, 26 years after the orbiting laboratory first launched. Though you might imagine that the ISS could orbit the Earth long-term like the Moon, it actually needs to be regularly boosted in order to keep it from falling back down to the […]
The World Map As You Know It Is Misleading – Now Africa Wants To Change That
The map of the world as you know it – the Mercator projection – isn’t totally accurate. And Africa is leading the charge to get rid of it for good. Last week, the African Union, a continental union of 55 member states, reportedly endorsed a campaign to have organizations around the world replace the Mercator map […]
