News

With summer storm season continuing to bubble up in the planet’s northern hemisphere, you might be unfortunate enough to come across a derecho.  A derecho – which means “straight ahead” in Spanish – is loosely defined as a widespread, long-lived wind storm that has a strip of rapidly moving thunderstorms that can prove devastating for […]

On July 17, the Earth may have witnessed the hottest midnight ever recorded, at a stifling 48.9°C (120°F). The potential new record was set in Death Valley, California, which is notorious for record-breaking temperatures. This latest milestone was reached between the hours of 12 and 1 am, per recordings from Badwater basin weather station. While the readings […]

One character that’s hard to miss in the trailer for the upcoming movie Oppenheimer is Albert Einstein, the wild-haired, paradigm-shifting theoretical physicist who needs no introduction. Rest assured, Einstein’s cameo in the movie is not just fanciful Hollywood storytelling (such as Archimedes’ unlikely appearance in the latest installment of Indiana Jones).  While Oppenheimer and Einstein never […]

Here’s a weird question: does your phone weigh more when it’s “full” than when it’s “empty”? It sounds almost ridiculously naïve – of course, a phone isn’t like a jug of water, with each photo or contact adding an extra few milliliters to the total. How could information have weight? But like many apparently simple questions, this […]

Though many people associate hypnotism with second-rate magicians, the practice is in fact supported by a large number of clinicians and neuroscientists who see it as a powerful tool to hack the minds of patients suffering from psychological and psychosomatic disorders. Yet in order to get the best results out of this strange yet apparently effective […]

Giant centipedes can be found in several habitats across the globe, but none are as impressive as Scolopendra gigantea, also known as the Amazonian giant. It’s the largest centipede species in the world, stretching to over 30 centimeters (12 inches) in length, and has an appetite to match. Armed with a powerful venom, these giant […]

It’s easy to like someone simply because they’re into the same music as you are, or to hate a person because of their views on the shape of the Earth. According to new research, there’s a simple psychological mechanism behind this tendency to judge a person based on a single characteristic, highlighting how the rules […]

If you’re familiar with the work of Charles Dickens, in particular his 1853 novel Bleak House, you may also be aware of a strange phenomenon termed “spontaneous human combustion”. In arguably the most famous literary case of this curiosity, Dickens details the grisly demise of junk merchant Mr Krook, who meets a fiery end, leaving […]

TikTok has found a new flirting technique to pine over, the so-called “Triangle Method”. Videos about the technique have wrapped up millions of views so far and many commenters appear to be happy with the results. While you’ll be hard-pushed to find any clinical trials investigating the effectiveness of the method, there are a handful […]

Over the last two decades, the number of people diagnosed with and prescribed medication for ADHD has significantly increased in the UK, a new study has found. Though interestingly, this rise has not included children under five. ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is usually identified in childhood but that […]

After a successful launch on Friday, July 14, India is on its way to achieving its goal of becoming the fourth nation ever to land on the Moon and explore its surface, setting down near the lunar South Pole towards the end of August. This is the third mission to the Moon for the Indian […]

Earlier this year, Eli Lilly and Company announced positive results from a Phase 3 clinical trial of their new Alzheimer’s drug, donanemab. The statement was compelling, detailing how almost half of the trial participants had not seen their disease worsen in the year since beginning the treatment. However, experts called for caution until the complete […]

A classic conspiracy theory is being discussed on social media this week, after Twitter user Rod Mason asked his followers how lunar landers returned astronauts to Earth. ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites. Advertisement Of course, people were quick to call the question stupid, or question why Mason posted it to […]

Benjamin Franklin helped America break free of the British currency system by designing paper money that was hard to fake. Some of his techniques have been lost in time, and only now been reconstructed using 21st-century analytic technologies. After the little things like explaining gravity and the rainbow, Isaac Newton spent the second half of his […]

A recent study has shed light on a potentially overlooked consequence of climate change: the increased risk of being bitten by a venomous snake. Looking at reports of hospitalizations in Georgia, USA, the team found evidence of an increase in snake-related envenomation in relation to a rise in average daily temperature. With the World Health […]

Earwax might look gross, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad for you, in fact, it carries out an important role in the delicate ear canal. Unfortunately, it’s become the norm to wage war against earwax and many people are unknowingly making their ear health worse by over-cleaning with unsafe tools.  Put the cotton bud down […]

Ahead of the release of Christopher Nolan’s long-awaited Oppenheimer (and Lin Manuel-Miranda’s even more anticipated Hip Hoppenheimer) this week there has been a renewed interest in its central character, the real-life J. Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was the theoretical physicist often referred to as the “father of the atomic bomb” for his work as director of the […]

General Relativity predicts that wormholes could connect two distant parts of the universe in a way that could be traversed instantaneously, or nearly so. Given that Special Relativity had previously demonstrated that traveling faster than light would be the equivalent of traveling in time, this raises the question of whether wormholes could also allow us […]

It’s a commonly held belief that the best place to discover new species is your own backyard. While this newly discovered species of millipede doesn’t quite cut it, being discovered in a park on the outskirts of Los Angeles is pretty impressive given the suburban surroundings.  It was first spotted in April 2018 by two […]

Anticyclones are, as the word implies, the opposite of a cyclone. Where a cyclone brings stormy weather and fast winds, anticyclones are high-pressure zones where winds move more sluggishly. For these reasons, they are associated with sunny, warm weather. But they can easily become heat traps. The high pressure pushes air down, which warms as […]