News

For the first time in the history of robot dogs and space travel, a four-legged robodog has been controlled by a human outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. Only robots with wheels have been controlled remotely from space before now.  The “Surface Avatar” test carried out in January saw European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Marcus Wandt […]

In a massive step forward for Elon Musk’s controversial Neuralink project, the tech billionaire announced yesterday that the startup has implanted a brain chip into a human subject for the first time. Revealing the news in a post on X (formerly Twitter), Musk gave little detail but did say that the recipient is “recovering well”. […]

Ten days after its soft landing on the Moon, Japan’s history-making Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) is back in action. The lander had a slight mishap while carrying out its precision landing, ending up on its side, which prevented its solar panels from powering up and left the lander running on batteries. Crucially, the […]

It might not be as cute as most baby animals, but the suspected first-ever images capturing a newborn great white shark could be highly scientifically significant. Great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) are the largest surviving fish that prey on anything larger than krill, and the inspiration for films such as Jaws and Sharknado. Scientists refer […]

This article first appeared in Issue 16 of our free digital magazine CURIOUS.  Were you to stare into the eyes of a tiger, you might clock that it has round pupils – just like ours – moments before it severed your carotid. It could be assumed it’s a predatory adaptation, then, but look into the peepers […]

While investigating the many microbes that have colonized the human body, a team of researchers stumbled upon something strange: a previously unrecognized class of virus-like objects, which they have dubbed “Obelisks”. The newly described entities are thought to inhabit human mouth and gut bacteria and have circular RNA genomes, sequences of which have been found […]

This article first appeared in Issue 16 of our free digital magazine CURIOUS.  A dramatic sight awaits anyone drifting near the shores of the Isle of Staffa where a unique sea cave is carved into the rugged coastline. Known as Fingal’s Cave, its name comes from an Irish myth in which Fionn MacCumhaill, nicknamed Fingal for “white […]

Five people with Alzheimer’s disease developed the condition as a result of a medical procedure decades earlier, a new study reports. While the procedure that has been implicated is no longer in use, the findings could provide important insights into how the disease progresses, and represent the first evidence of Alzheimer’s being transmitted to living […]

A donkey-ass hybrid from Bronze Age Mesopotamia is the earliest known example of a hybrid animal bred by people. The bones of the horse-like creatures date back 4,500 years and put to bed decades of dispute surrounding the ancient equids’ identity. After meticulous DNA sequencing, the team from the Institut Jacques Monod (CNRS/Université de Paris), […]

If you’ve ever dreamed of going on safari to see Africa’s big five, allow us to present a different kind of opportunity. The government in the Indian state of Odisha has announced the world’s first black tiger safari in a bid to provide tourists with a chance to catch a glimpse of the only black tigers […]

In recent years, the once-hypothesized landmass in the Southern Hemisphere, now known as Zealandia, has become increasingly popular for scientific research. In fact, as of the end of 2023, Zealandia became the first continent to be completely mapped out, even though 95 percent of the newly identified continent is underwater. And yet Zealandia is not […]

An X (Twitter) thread has been widely-shared over the weekend, in which Radiolab host Latif Nasser explained how he investigated the mystery of a moon labeled “Zoozve” on his 2-year-old’s astronomy poster. Having noticed the label, he of course Googled it, and found the NASA-confirmed fact that Venus has no moons. Advertisement ⓘ IFLScience is not […]

Imagine a sprinkler system with S-shaped arms. The water comes out and the sprinkler moves – so far, it seems pretty straightforward. Now imagine the complete opposite version: Your sprinkler is submerged and sucking in water. The question that physicist Richard Feynman asked was the following: in which direction does it rotate? We now have […]

Plants have been up to some pretty weird tricks already this year and now a tree fern species (Cyathea rojasiana) has joined the party. Well, in order to join in it first has to die and then come back from the dead to help its mother. Let us explain. Cyathea rojasiana is a tree fern […]

The term zero-G has been, for a long time, a popular way to explain the apparent lack of gravity in space. But it is an incorrect term. There’s nowhere in the universe where there is zero gravity. The term microgravity is actually what is now being used to more correctly describe what is going on. […]

Astronomers at The Virtual Telescope Project have captured incredible footage and images of asteroid 2024 BJ as it made a close encounter with Earth on Saturday.  The asteroid whizzed past the Earth, making its closest approach of 353,000 kilometers (220,000 miles), just 10 days after its discovery. At its closest approach, the asteroid was around […]

Despite weighing around 25 tons each, the enormous sarsen stones of Stonehenge were somehow transported over incredible distances when the monument was constructed almost 5,000 years ago. The majority of these colossal monoliths came from a spot known as the West Woods, around 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) from the site itself, yet new research has […]

With 200 billion trillion stars (ish) stars in the universe and the 13.7 billion years which have elapsed since it all began, you might be wondering where all the alien civilizations are at.  This is the basic question of the Fermi paradox, the tension between our suspicions of the potential for life in the universe […]

The speed and voracity with which our innate immune system responds to invaders is great – until it turns against us. That happens in autoimmune conditions like lupus, and researchers have been trying to better understand how the system gets so out of control. In a new study, not only have scientists identified a new […]

Scientists have had to stop using the Corbassière glacier in Valais, Switzerland, as a record of the changing climate, because the climate has changed too much.  Much of what we know about the Earth’s climate, we have learned from ice. Glaciers capture bubbles of air that reveal atmospheric concentrations of gasses when the ice formed. […]