News

An international team of researchers has developed a photonic quantum computer designed to operate in the harsh environment of space. The computer was integrated into a satellite and launched into space last month, collecting data about how a quantum computer would work in low Earth orbit. Quantum computers are the next revolutionary step in information […]

Deep beneath the surface of the Earth, there is a massive reservoir of water, estimated to contain three times the amount of water of all the oceans on our surface. A new study suggests how it might have ended up there, trapped in the Earth’s transition zone. In 2014, a team from the US used […]

A comparison of the structure of leopard seal songs to those of other mammals and various forms of human music has found the closest counterpart to be nursery rhymes. Unsurprisingly, however, the evolutionary driver for this repetitiveness is not the same as why we teach these songs to our children. Food is scarce in the […]

Researchers at MIT have conducted what they are calling the most “idealized” double-slit experiment yet, finding further evidence that Einstein’s take on the phenomenon is likely incorrect. The double-slit experiment and its variations is one of the weirdest results humans found as we began to study the world scientifically. In 1801, Thomas Young took a […]

We all love a good story. In fact, I am willing to bet there’s no one alive who can say they don’t like stories in one form or another. And we are all storytellers, too. Of course, some people have more narrative flare than others, but that does not mean they are not capable of […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]