News

Mysterious blobs are the ocean’s bread and butter, as anyone who’s lived near a beach will tell you. All kinds of suspicious lumps can wash ashore, but among them, one of the most peculiar is sea pork, a porcine-like blob that’s meaty, but probably not all that appetizing. Sea pork refers to several species of […]

You might already be aware that the name “strawberry” is a misnomer, as strawberries aren’t really berries at all. Well, it seems strawberries are full of surprises, or rather covered in them because those seedy-looking white dots aren’t actually seeds. The strawberries’ pitted accessories are called achenes, and they are in fact the plant’s fruit, with each […]

The size of the human brain has roughly tripled over the past four million years of hominid evolution, yet the factors driving this encephalic expansion are not fully understood. Attempting to solve this conundrum, a very brainy biologist has devised a computer model that recreates the development of our cognitive contraption, revealing that the human […]

The humble honeybee could become the newest recruit in the fight against a growing global health threat. In a new study, researchers enlisted honeybees, using them to keep track of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the environment. AMR is the result of bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens evolving to the point where they are no longer […]

Two new dinosaur species have been described by scientists in Morocco, dating back to the period just before an asteroid wiped out 90 percent of life on Earth 66 million years ago. They were primitive cousins of the famous Tyrannosaurus rex, only with bulldog snouts and even tinier arms. Bless. Dating back to the end […]

India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission has made a world (or moon) first: measuring the temperature of the soil at the lunar south pole. Last week, the Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover successfully touched down on the lunar surface, making India the fourth nation on Earth to land successfully on the Moon, and the first to land near the […]

The world map was not always as complete as it is today and for centuries explorers spent time, money, and, sometimes, their lives, traveling the planet to fill in the gaps. Relying on a mix of observation, hypothesis, and pure myth-testing, these explorers searched for landmasses and peoples both real and imagined.  As you can […]

For years, people have claimed that ships and aircraft that pass over the Bermuda Triangle – a loosely defined area between Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico – tend to go missing or get wrecked at a higher rate than elsewhere on the planet. Pushing through the Bermuda Triangle is the Sargasso Sea, which some claim […]

As I wait, shuffling nervously between the cramped shelves of Spiritualism for my psychic, Paula, to materialize from her sanctuary (the basement), I half-read the almost comically specific inscriptions of the “supernatural stones” the shop sells. “Bloodstone – A stone to overcome influences such as electromagnetic stress”. “Bronzite – known to protect against curses”. “Amethyst […]

For the first time, the distinctive double peaks in emission lines detected from the heart of a galaxy have given us a chance to explore the edges of the bright disk surrounding the central black hole. This has not only confirmed many things we suspected about the region around supermassive black holes, but also allowed […]

For some reason, 2023 was the year that people decided that the Loch Ness Monster has been fannying around for too long and it’s time to show its face. A huge hunt took place over the weekend for Nessie, the beast first “photographed” 89 years ago and which occasionally turns out to be a fish. […]

A new case report describes how a brain-dead woman was able to carry a fetus almost to term before the healthy baby was eventually delivered by cesarean section. Though similar incidents are rare, a recent systematic review uncovered 35 examples of pregnant women becoming brain-dead, 27 of which ended with a live birth, including three […]

A revolutionary blended wing body (BWB) aircraft could take to the skies in as little as four years after the US Air Force selected JetZero to head up the next phase of its development program. This will be a seriously futuristic-looking craft, but the idea of rethinking airplane design in this way is nothing new. […]

Your hands reveal a lot about the state of your health. This is something that has been recognised since at least the time of Hippocrates – the father of modern medicine. The ancient Greek physician first described “clubbing” in a patient with empyema (where pus fills the space between the lungs and the membrane around […]

Scientists have found a way to reprogram human cells so that they mimic the highly plastic embryonic stem cells that have so much promise for use in regenerative medicine. By essentially wiping the cell’s “memory”, the team have created so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which could be used to regenerate or repair diseased tissue and […]

If you look down the back of your throat, you may be shocked to discover a small lump of hard material nestled in the folds of your tonsils. These are called tonsil stones, but what exactly are they made of? Firstly, what are tonsils? Despite what some people believe, the dangly thing at the back […]

A new gene therapy for alcohol addiction has shown impressive results in a study in monkeys. If these results translate to human trials, we could be looking at a whole new way of treating severe alcohol dependency. Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a challenging condition to treat, with huge implications for the physical and mental […]

People are confused about the weather forecast, and finding out that the percentages given don’t mean quite what they thought they did. The latest confusion comes courtesy of the account “wild (tiktok) screenshots” on X (by which we mean “Twitter”), who lived up to their name and posted this: Advertisement ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for […]

For the first time, neutrinos produced from nuclear reactions triggered by the Large Hadron Collider have been detected. Although physicists have been sure that the reactions occurring when particles are accelerated to close to the speed of light and crashed together produce neutrinos, capturing the evidence has been a different matter. The achievement could help […]