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At 8,849 meters (29,032 feet), Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the world – but how did we figure that out? In fact, how do we know how high any mountain is? They certainly don’t make measuring tapes that long (plus someone would have to be at the top to read it), so how […]

When King Charles III inherited the throne from Queen Elizabeth II back in 2022, he quite famously received the right to claim ownership of any unmarked mute swans found in open water on public land. It turns out, however, that’s far from the only curiously animal-related part of his inheritance – sea creatures make an […]

If you have had the misfortune to date a narcissist, or work for one, you might have used the expression; “They think they’re the center of the universe.” Sadly, we shouldn’t mock too hard, because in a sense such people are right, at least about that. That’s because everyone is the center of the universe, […]

This week, findings suggest bacteria are passing “memories” of perturbed genes to their descendants, here’s what to know about the human parvovirus B19 that’s increasing in the US, and an expedition surveying the seafloor off the coast of Chile has discovered 20 potentially new species. Finally, we investigate the misinformation and pseudoscience in the wellness […]

Researchers might have found two new compounds with a strong ability to fight harmful bacteria. They found these interesting substances inside different types of bacteria in the depths of the Arctic Ocean. With the potential that a lot more interesting compounds can be found there. Advertisement Antibiotic resistance is a serious problem. Harmful microbes are […]

Move over, Simone Biles – there’s an insect with even better backflips. Globular springtails might only be a couple of millimeters long, but can jump and spin 60 times their own body height into the air, and new research looks even deeper at this incredible acrobatic feat. Advertisement Springtails (Dicyrtomina minuta) are pretty common little […]

Corpses become a hive of activity for the decomposition ecosystem – a rich tapestry of critters from the microscopic to the winged – and what they do with our remains can both help and hinder criminal investigations.  Advertisement On the one hand, forensic entomology is often the best way to indicate how long a person […]

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The Sun emits a stupendous amount of light. Its luminosity is almost 400 billion billion megawatts. The Earth gets less than 0.0000001 percent of that. It’s free energy and there is a way to get it, if you do not mind constructing something vastly beyond humans’ capabilities: a Dyson sphere. Advertisement This is a theoretical […]

Figuring out what our ancestors were up to thousands of years ago is no easy task – but in some regions of the planet, it’s made even harder by a lack of archaeological evidence. One such place is the Mediterranean islands. Working out when humans first arrived here has been a tricky puzzle, but it’s […]

It’s been a while since we’ve had a COVID-19 update, hasn’t it? Once upon a time, you couldn’t go a whole day without seeing updated death tolls and infection rates. Now, despite the continuing mutations of the virus into certain FLiRT-y subvariants, we barely hear about these numbers at all. Advertisement So how is the […]

Here at IFLScience, we strive to give you the answers to some of science’s most pressing questions. Are we alone in the universe? Do animals think? But the latest is by far the most important – does the real-life Paddington Bear love marmalade as much as its fictional counterpart? Advertisement The first step in finding […]

The Bronze Age was basically just one long bloodbath, made possible by the invention of new weapons forged from the copper-tin alloy that gives the era its name. While analyzing these ancient armaments using lab equipment can tell us a great deal about their histories, there’s really only one way to figure out how effective […]

A tornado is a rotating column of air that touches the land, often connected to the base of a thunderstorm. The direction of spin is typically influenced by the hemisphere it’s in, but some very rare tornadoes have bucked the trend. With windspeeds sometimes topping hundreds of miles an hour, they can have enormously devastating […]

It will be sad when the universe can no longer surprise us, but today is not that day. South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope has detected a faint ring almost in the direction of the center of the galaxy – but what it is and where it came from are mysteries we get to explore. Advertisement […]

They say out of sight is out of mind, and there’s no greater proof of that than the world’s oceans. A new study illustrates this in a particularly grim way, showing through the application of artificial intelligence (AI) models that we’ve drastically undercounted the threat of extinction to marine species – and the true figure […]

Gallium is a fun material. It’s solid as long as you are not picking it up with your own hands, because it would turn liquid due to its relatively low melting temperature. For physicists, one of the two stable isotopes of gallium also has another use: it can be employed to study solar neutrinos. And […]

A very special clutch of snakelets have just arrived at Memphis Zoo, USA, born through a methodology that marks a world-first for reptile reproduction. They are Louisiana pinesnakes (Pituophis ruthveni), a species that’s threatened in the wild, but one for which we have crucial samples stored in a “frozen zoo”. Advertisement Cryopreservation, also called biobanking, […]

Next time you do something embarrassing, just think: “At least I’m not a wild bird that had to be rescued, only for the humans to discover I wasn’t hurt, just full.” And if this example seems a bit left-field, boy do we have the story for you. A bald eagle was recently rescued in Missouri […]

This week on Break It Down: orcas disable another boat as a new theory is put forward for the behavior, bacteria pass “memories” of perturbed genes to descendants, SETI scans 2,880 galaxies for advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, what you need to know about human parvovirus B19, flying spaghetti monsters sighted on a sea mount expedition, and […]