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A new type of nuclear thermal propulsion reactor fuel has been successfully tested at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, with hopes that the fuel could take humans to Mars in the not-too-distant future. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Getting to the Red Planet, as things currently stand, will be a long-haul mission. Mars is, on average, […]

The ancestor of all four-limbed creatures crawled out of the ocean around 400 million years ago. Then, 350 million years later, the ancestors of today’s whale species crawled back in. Its descendants that swim through Earth’s waters might be some of the largest and most talked about ocean species, with seriously impressive hunting techniques and […]

When observing the various objects in our Solar System and beyond, scientists have found evidence that some of them appear to be shrinking. So what is going on, and is this happening to the Earth? Mercury is shrinking ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Back in 1974, NASA’s Mariner 10 mission flew by Mercury and discovered evidence […]

Structural differences between male and female brains are apparent from the very earliest days of life, according to a new study. The researchers found that even in young babies, female brains have more gray matter and male brains have more white matter, as well as an overall larger volume.  ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE “We found […]

At the bottom of the “Sacred Cenote” in Mexico sits a layer of ancient treasure consisting of gold artworks, beautifully carved jade plaque, and human remains. These relics were not carelessly discarded but deliberately offered to the gods, chunked into the sinkhole as if it were a portal to the watery underworld. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD […]

As the world grapples with a flood of Large Language Models, some computer programmers have gone old school, reaching back to where it all began by reanimating the first chatbot using its original code. This comes sixty years after Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT created ELIZA, named after the character Eliza Doolittle from Pygmalion and generally […]

Moments after the presidential inauguration, US President Donald Trump signed several anti-scientific executive orders (EOs), such as taking the United States out of the Paris Agreement to curtail human-made climate change and withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization. He also signed an EO targeting trans and non-binary people which had the unintended consequence […]

I am sure that you have all watched a scene where a hero, villain, or nameless goon has been pushed into a pool of water or river, then, wham, bam, thank you Ma’am!, a ferocious swarm of piranhas rips the flesh off their bones leaving a pearly white skeleton in its wake. It has been […]

Popular culture, especially in relation to sci-fi, is filled with nifty gadgets and incredible devices. One of the more entertaining and arguably iconic is the “shrink ray”, a staple of many TV and film plots, like Marvel’s Ant-Man, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, and so on. The principle is simple – scientists have a gun […]

From the brain-exploding Martians of Mars Attacks! to the wonderful diversity of Men In Black’s extraterrestrial entourage, the possibility of alien life is a concept that has captured the imagination of our entire planet. Most of us only get to explore it at the movies – but for some scientists, the search for alien earths […]

Trains in Switzerland are allowed to have up to 255 axles. They are also allowed to have 257+ axles. From this, you might infer that trains are allowed to have 256 axles, to which we say this; are you trying to get us all killed? ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE “Um das ungewollte Freimelden von Streckenabschnitten […]

Hybrid grouper fish, released into Hong Kong’s coastal waters as part of a religious ritual, could be wreaking havoc on local biodiversity. By exploiting unique ecological niches and asserting themselves as dominant predators, the hybrid giants have the potential to outcompete their native, non-hybrid counterparts and threaten the balance of marine ecosystems. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD […]

As Johnny Cash once sang: “Love is a burning thing, and it makes a fiery ring […] And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire; the ring of fire.” This isn’t wrong, apart from one little detail: the first word should have been not “love”, but “a 40,000-kilometer-long horseshoe-shaped tectonic belt running around the […]

Around this time last year, some US politicians were calling for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate the marketing and safety of nicotine pouches after an uptick in sales and social media influencers touting them. Now, after reviewing the science, the agency has authorized the marketing of these pouches for the first time […]

An ultra-rare all-black penguin has been spotted on South Georgia Island, standing out among its more typical black-and-white buddies by bucking the tuxedo trend with an entirely black body. Remarkably, the rare animal was captured by a photographer who’s no stranger to unusual color morphs, having snapped a peculiar yellow-and-white penguin back in 2021. ADVERTISEMENT […]

“There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium…” starts Tom Lehrer’s song The Elements. Since he composed it, humanity has created several artificial elements on top of the 92 that are found in nature. There are now 118 elements and we periodically see people asking a simple but profound question: can you create a molecule that contains all […]

Booming interest in Ozempic and its sister drugs was a huge health story in 2024 – and it’s not going anywhere. Called GLP-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs), the drugs were first developed to treat type 2 diabetes, but really took off when their potential as weight loss aids was recognized. Now, with hints they might have […]

In chimpanzees, peeing is contagious. That’s the surprising conclusion reached by scientists at Kyoto University who described it as “an unexpected and fascinating result”. They conducted observational studies of chimpanzees at a sanctuary and saw that not only did they exhibit contagious urination, but that it was also more likely among individuals with lower dominance […]

At IFLScience, we love a dinosaur movie. If anything, too much (rumor has it Managing Editor Katy Evans even got excited about The VelociPastor). Safe to say, our opinion on the best dino flick can’t be trusted – which is precisely why we decided to scroll our scientist contact list to find out what the […]

Ask around today, and most people will tell you that the RMS Titanic in April 1912 sank due to an ill-placed iceberg, poor visibility, the material weaknesses of the not-so-unsinkable ship, and a healthy dose of human error. However, in the early 20th century, when supernatural séances and recent archaeological discoveries were lighting up people’s […]