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We don’t like saying it any more than you like hearing it, but COVID-19 has not gone away. Many of us know people who’ve recently gone down with coughs and sneezes, and you may even have asked yourself that timeless question: do I have hay fever or COVID? But what about symptoms that don’t mimic […]

A spade-toothed whale, the world’s rarest whale species, has been found washed ashore on a beach in Otago, New Zealand, one of only six specimens to have ever been documented. Advertisement While marine mammal strandings are relatively common in New Zealand – there are around 85 per year – when experts from the Department of […]

The internet was meant to be an “information superhighway” – a place where all human knowledge could be available, allowing humanity to find the truth of any situation at the touch of a button. Advertisement Instead, it’s a place where anti-vaxxers tout deworming tablets for viruses and people pretend that birds aren’t real. It’s a wild […]

A high school student has completed an ambitious project after three years of work: creating a model rocket that lands vertically. Advertisement Landing a rocket vertically is a pretty difficult task, being literal rocket science. Just ask SpaceX, who have blown up many a rocket stage in their attempts to land rocket boosters, though sometimes […]

El Niño, at its worst, can be devastating. It’s the climate phenomenon that sees the Pacific jet stream moved southwards by reduced equatorial winds, causing everything from heatwaves in Canada, to droughts in Africa, to intense storms over the west coasts of the Americas.  Advertisement Well, bad news: according to a new paper, those worst-case […]

It wouldn’t be a day ending in “y” without a tourist having a mishap at Yellowstone National Park.  Advertisement The latest snafu comes courtesy of five visitors who accidentally drove their SUV into the Semi-Centennial Geyser – a hot, acidic pond located near the park’s Roaring Mountain, between Mammoth Hot Springs and Norris Junction. The […]

Have you heard of saki monkeys? It wouldn’t be surprising if you hadn’t – they’re incredibly elusive, and unless you live deep in the Amazon rainforest, you’re unlikely to see one even by accident. Advertisement But you really ought to know more about them. Not only are they fashion icons, they’re also incredible athletes and […]

A man in China has been caught trying to smuggle more than 100 live snakes into the country inside his pants – bringing new meaning both to the term “trouser snake” and also the term “holy cow dude, seriously, why would you EVER DO that?” Advertisement The traveler was intercepted by customs agents in Futian […]

Once upon a time, COVID-19 was two weeks of coughing and an inability to smell your new candle. Then we discovered the existence of Long COVID – a vague conglomeration of more than 200 symptoms that can be debilitating months or even years after the original disease seems to have cleared up. Advertisement Now, four […]

You’ve got your shiny new luggage, battled your way through the airport, and now you’re only one step away from that much-needed vacation. Just 14 hours on a plane and you’ll be there. But what happens to your body spending all that time up in the air? Advertisement Feeling Dry Why it happens Ever feel […]

QR codes enjoyed an unlikely resurgence during the COVID-19 pandemic as a “touchless” system to relay information. Even today, the legacy of lockdowns still lingers in some restaurants and bars that ask patrons to scan a QR code to look at a menu (much to their dismay). However, not many people know the surprisingly long […]

This week, 52,000-year-old “freeze-dried” mammoth skin delivers the first-ever set of 3D chromosomes, lion brothers swim a record-breaking distance across predator-filled waters, the first sighting of incredible “polar rain” from Earth finally has an explanation. Finally, we explore the world’s most endangered language, N|uu. Advertisement Subscribe to the IFLScience newsletter for all the biggest science […]

The risk of a solar storm destroying power networks and submarine cables – and potentially even bringing down civilization – depends on the angle at which it hits the Earth’s magnetic field and the local time of night. Unsurprisingly, the strength of the incoming shock is also important, but new research emphasizes the influence of […]

Across the island of Cyprus, archaeologists have discovered the ancient remains of young women who appear to have been murdered before being sealed inside buildings, as if to separate them from both the living and the dead. The latest discovered victim of this grisly practice was recently unearthed at the Bronze-Age site of Erimi, where […]

The blockbuster film, Dune, has inspired a new full-body spacesuit that can recycle its wearer’s urine, allowing them to walk for further during any future exploration. Advertisement Even though it is true that in space, no one can hear you pee, astronauts on spacewalks have few options when it comes to answering the call of […]

This week on Break It Down we report live from a rocket launch, freeze-dried skin gets us a step closer to bringing back mammoths, “polar rain” auroras seen on Earth in a first, two lion brothers should star in their own Disney movie, a complete larynx transplant for a cancer patient, and the people fighting […]

Most of us will have seen a tumbleweed. Well, not necessarily in real life, but as a long-standing prop in cowboy movies, or in your brain when someone asks you a question during a Friday afternoon meeting. We know what they look like – but do you know what they actually are? Advertisement TikTok user […]

For humans, being able to orientate ourselves is crucial. Getting lost on the level is bad enough, but not knowing which way is up is worse. Most of the time gravity ensures that’s not a problem – but what happens in space without that assistance? Advertisement The International and Tiangong Space Stations lie very much within […]

When human ancestors dispersed out of Africa over 50,000 years ago, they encountered Neanderthals that already carried some of their genes.  Advertisement Today we are the only human species in the world, but it wasn’t always like that. Four hundred thousand years ago, when Homo sapiens’ ancestors lived in East Africa, Neanderthals already lived in […]