Bodies preserved by the deep cold of the Altai mountains offer archaeologists a rare insight into ancient tattoo art, and modern artists are impressed by the skill some of the work displays. Tattooing is so widespread across cultures that were isolated from each other that it almost certainly has very ancient roots. However, skin is […]
Humans Were Buzzing On Psychoactive Betel Nuts 4,000 Years Ago
Bronze-Age communities in Thailand used psychoactive betel nuts to enhance their alertness, relax their bodies and minds, and generate a sense of euphoria. Though demonized and banned in the country’s urban regions today, the natural stimulant continues to be consumed ritually and recreationally in rural areas, and may have played a role in religious practices […]
Megaflash Stretching 892 Kilometers Sets New World Record For Longest Lightning Strike
There is a new world record for the longest single lightning strike. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has confirmed a bolt that crossed the southern states of North America, from eastern Texas to near Kansas City in Missouri, in October 2017, stretched for an incredible 829 kilometers (515 miles), beating the previous record holder by […]
Your Organs Don’t All Age At The Same Rate. One Is Growing Old Much Quicker Than Others
Today is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be. That’s just the way it is, but did you know that not all of you is aging at the same rate? New research has shown that, in fact, some of our organs age much faster than others, opening new frontiers for understanding, […]
IFLScience The Big Questions: How Has The Internet Changed The Way We Use Language?
Language can evolve surprisingly quickly, and nothing has sped it up quite like the invention of the Internet. So, how does it affect how we communicate, not just on our devices but offline, IRL? Join host Tom Hale, senior journalist at IFLScience, as he discusses this and more with Internet linguist Dr Gretchen McCulloch, where […]
One Of The Most Dangerous Volcanoes Is Home To The World’s Largest Lava Lake
The world’s largest lava lake lies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), nestled within Mount Nyiragongo. Stretching about 250 meters (820 feet) across at a depth of 600 meters (1,970 feet), it’s quite the hot tub of bubbling magma. Part of the Virunga Mountains, it sits within the UNESCO World Heritage Site Virunga […]
What Astrobiology Might Tell Us About What Aliens May Look Like
Trying to figure out what alien life may look like is, as you might imagine, a pretty difficult task, given we have data on life from exactly one planet: Earth. But that doesn’t mean that we have nothing to work with. Astrobiologists have attempted to figure out how aliens may evolve given what we know […]
Voyager: An Inside Look At NASA’s Longest-Running Mission With Someone There From The Start
In August 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 into space with no idea they would go on to become the space agency’s longest-running mission. The twin probes would end up visiting Jupiter and Saturn, and Uranus and Neptune, respectively, before going on to become the first (and only) human-made objects to get to […]
Meet Alba: The World’s Only Known Albino Orangutan Still Living In Borneo
On April 29, 2017 a thin, dehydrated, and distressed orangutan was rescued after being captured and caged within Indonesian Borneo. While this is unfortunately not an unusual occurrence, the orangutan in question was something totally unique: a rare albino who became known as Alba. Alba was thought to be around 5 years old at the […]
Yikes! Baby African Social Spiders Filmed Eating Their Moms Start-To-Finish For The First Time
Raising offspring is expensive. It costs you time, it costs you money, and for some species: it costs you your life. This is the grisly fate of the African social spider, Stegodyphus dumicola, a dedicated mother who can only become a mother once. Why? Because her babies will eat her. This is what’s known as […]
Why Is The Great Rift Valley So Important In Our Understanding Of Human Evolution?
When Homo sapiens first came onto the scene, we were just one of several human species walking the Earth. You might imagine that we just sort of popped up one day with a nice, simple, single point of origin, but the true story is a bit more complicated than that. Our emergence was slow and, […]
6th Strongest Earthquake On Record – An Incredible 8.8 Magnitude – Triggers Tsunamis And Volcanic Eruption
At 11:25 am local time on July 30, one of the strongest earthquakes ever hit the Kamchatka Peninsula, in eastern Russia. The quake had a reported magnitude of 8.8, making it tied for the sixth strongest on record. Two stronger ones were the 2004 Indian Ocean quake that hit Sumatra and the 2011 Tōhoku quake, […]
Avoid These 7 Common Objects That Can “Wreck” Your Wi-Fi Signal
Tips for boosting your Wi-Fi signal range from the sensible to the downright bizarre (yes, aluminum hats can help, no, a Faraday cage won’t). But sometimes the issue isn’t the router itself; it’s the objects you have placed near it. Routers connect our devices to the Internet by sending signals that direct data traffic between […]
“The Blob” Triggered The Largest Single-Species Event In Modern History, Killing 4 Million Seabirds
An unprecedented die-off has been declared in Alaska, where as many as four million murres are estimated to be missing from colonies across the state. According to the study in late 2024, it’s the worst single species die-off in modern history and was triggered by “The Blob“, a mass of warm water in the north Pacific […]
Someone Invited The Internet To Give “One Good Reason” The Magnet Truck Won’t Work, And They Absolutely Delivered
You may have noticed, perhaps around the time you started studying magnets in school, that we don’t power vehicles by strapping a magnet to the front of them and propelling them forward with a second magnet just out of reach in front of it. Instead, we continue to power our cars using electricity and the […]
Earth’s Most Show-Stopping Electrical Storm Sees 280 Lightning Bolts An Hour
What’s the longest lightning storm you’ve ever seen? For the people of Venezuela, seeing an electrical display that goes on for up to nine hours isn’t out of the ordinary. Here, at the mouth of the Catatumbo River, specific conditions for heat and humidity give rise to one of the most dramatic lightning displays on […]
“Hot Rock” Under Appalachians Traveled From Greenland To US At 20 Kilometers Per Million Years – And Is Still Moving
An area of anomalously hot rocks 200 kilometers (120 miles) beneath the northern Appalachian Mountains could be the product of a continental divorce when dinosaurs still ruled, geologists claim. The presence of this deep heat has been known for a while, but the most common explanation has been an even older rift with Africa. The […]
Scientists Succeed In Capturing Elusive “Ghost Particles” Escaping Nuclear Reactor
Neutrinos are fundamental particles with a tiny mass and no electric charge. This allows them to move undisturbed through solid objects, such as the whole planet. Every second, 60 billion neutrinos from the Sun go through every square centimeter of us. To capture these so-called “ghost particles”, researchers need enormous detectors. A new method for […]
Just How Many “Sixth Senses” Do We Have, Anyway?
People have been searching for the mysterious “sixth sense” ever since… well, since 1761 at least, but potentially since the days of Aristotle. It was he, after all, who originally declared the number of senses to be five, and labeled them too: touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing. But Aristotle said a lot of garbage. […]
No Life But Lots Of Water – Latest Observations From Controversial Planet K2-18b
K2-18b is back in the news thanks to new research that quells a controversial claim made in April. Researchers at the University of Cambridge had claimed that in the light filtered through the exoplanet’s atmosphere, they had seen the “strongest hint yet” of biological activity. New observations from a different team, which await peer review, […]
