News

Sometimes it really is your lucky day, and for Christopher Columbus that day came on February 29, 1504. As well as being a leap day, this peculiar date also saw a total lunar eclipse occur in the Caribbean night sky, allegedly allowing the famous navigator to trick his native hosts into treating him and his […]

This week astronomers have spotted evidence of the rare rainbow-like effect known as a glory on another planet,  a prehistoric sand sculpture of a stingray might be the world’s oldest animal art, and a series of ancient engravings found on volcanic boulders in southern Peru might represent music that was performed during shamanic rituals involving […]

Lorain County Emergency Management (EMA) in Ohio has issued a warning to eclipse watchers and locals to the path of totality to stock up on food, water, and fuel ahead of the total eclipse on April 8, with an influx of visitors to the area expected. The last total solar eclipse over the US was […]

IFLScience needs the contact information you provide to us to contact you about our products and services. You may unsubscribe from these communications at any time. For information on how to unsubscribe, as well as our privacy practices and commitment to protecting your privacy, check out ourPrivacy Policy Deborah BloomfieldSource Link: Ligers V Tigons: What’s […]

This might be a bit forward of us, but we’re asking anyway: how do you feel about tickling? Is it just something you used to torture your siblings as a kid, or is it still something you like to incorporate into more grown-up playtime? If so, you might well have knismolagnia, otherwise known as a […]

The rainforest can be a noisy place to be, so how do you make yourself heard if you end up in trouble? For the clay robber frog, the answer is to give off an almighty scream – but it’s one that we humans can’t naturally hear. However, a team of scientists have now successfully recorded […]

Feast your eyes on this stunning picture from the world’s most powerful magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine. In just four minutes, this incredible piece of kit can acquire images at a resolution that would take hours for your average hospital scanner, giving scientists an unprecedented window into the human brain. MRI scanners work by surrounding […]

As North America prepares to marvel at a total solar eclipse this coming Monday, the only thing that viewers need to worry about is how to protect their eyes while observing the event. Yet things weren’t quite so chilled in ancient times, when eclipses often provoked panic and bloodshed among those watching from the ground. […]

Chomping into a big ol’ hunk of watermelon is a rite of passage into the summer months for some of us, but for people with chronic kidney disease (CKD), too much can actually end up being dangerous. That was the case for three patients with CKD featured in a new case study, who ended up […]

This article first appeared in Issue 18 of our digital magazine CURIOUS.  When it comes to astronomy, sight is the sense that we as a species mostly rely on. Contrary to popular belief there is some sound in space – the sonification of many cosmic events can deliver intriguing insights – and a lucky few can […]

Earlier this morning, residents of New York City and the surrounding areas experienced an earthquake that officials are so far measuring as 4.8 on the Richter scale. Though this is thankfully on the milder side of things, as earthquakes go, it’s a rarity in this part of the world. The US Geological Survey (USGS) puts […]

The camel spider might just be the most misunderstood arachnid on the planet. Also known as a wind scorpion, it’s neither a spider nor a scorpion.  What is a camel spider? The camel spider is an eight-legged arachnid, but it’s not a true spider. Belonging to the order Solifugae, it sits between spiders and scorpions […]

During the 1869 solar eclipse, two astronomers identified an emission line in the spectrum from the Sun’s corona that didn’t match any known substance. Some decided it must be a new element, and it was named coronium, although others favored newtonium. Eventually it became clear no such element exists, and that the emission line at […]

As natural as it is, it’s kind of amazing that the human body can create and excrete a special kind of food to keep a baby alive and healthy without any other input. And we’re hardly alone: mammals as a class are literally named after the fact that they have boobs with which to feed […]

The Great American Eclipse will grace the skies of North America on April 8 – and it has inevitably attracted a foul-smelling cloud of ludicrous conspiracy theories. Among the most ridiculous involves a favorite target of easily debunkable delusions: the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN.   The story goes that CERN […]

Astronomers have spotted evidence of the meteorological phenomenon known as a glory on another planet. If this were Mars or Jupiter it would be remarkable enough, but the planet in question is WASP-76b, which is millions of times further away than either of them, outside the Solar System. A glory consists of one or more […]

For the first time since 1997, the US Census is changing the way it categorizes people by race and ethnicity. The next national census in 2030 will include a category for people who identify as “Middle Eastern or North African”. The move, announced by the White House last week, was made in light of a […]

Kylie, a wild dolphin in Scotland, was seen chatting with her adopted family of harbor porpoises in their “language” back in 2022, representing a remarkable world first in cross-species communication. After 14 years away from her species (the common dolphin, Delphinus delphis), Kylie had spent so much time around porpoises that she even started to […]

Ask just about any mathematician, and they’ll tell you the same thing: you can’t predict the primes. Indeed, the pseudorandomness of these building blocks of mathematics – defined as numbers that can only be divided by themselves and one – is as close to a truism as you can get in the subject. Or is […]