News

This week, a total of 175 generations of painters created rock art spanning 4,000 years, depicting cyclical time and multiple dimensions. A world-first study has identified five brain “ages”, and we may finally know where pet cats come from – spoiler, it’s not where we thought. Finally, we explore a new vaccine that’s 34.5 percent […]

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area of contaminated ocean split between two regions, one off the coast of California and another near Japan. The Patch is not a mountain of tin cans and old tires sitting on the ocean’s surface, but more like a thick soup of millions of plastic particles, trapped in […]

The Earth’s magnetosphere is a protective shroud that blocks charged particles and cosmic rays blasted out by the Sun. The four unmanned spacecraft that make up NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS) have spent nearly a decade studying how the magnetosphere interacts with the Sun’s magnetic field. Now, they have discovered an unusual zigzag in our […]

Whether you sleep alone, with someone else, or buried under a cat or dog, you will also share your sleep space with a world of tiny creatures, from bacteria to bed mites. A dirty bed could worsen our health when we’re sick, keep us from having a good night’s sleep, and is also just a […]

Many users of the psychedelic drug dimethyltryptamine (DMT) report intense experiences. One of the feelings they most commonly go through is a loss of their sense of self, or “ego death”. Researchers interested in these drugs’ potential medical benefits, as well as those studying consciousness, have tried to pinpoint exactly what is happening in the […]

The world we live in today is a far cry from the one our ancient ancestors evolved in, and while modern life obviously has its advantages, some researchers think that our bodies are not designed to operate in industrialized habitats. Intuitively, this is something most of us probably agree with, as pollution and urban strife […]

Did you know the tallest mammal in North America is also the largest species of deer in the entire world? Moose all fall under one species known as Alces alces, but there are several subspecies within the group. The largest of them is the Alaska moose (Alces alces gigas), which can be 1.8 meters (6 feet) […]

Yet another barrage of bad luck has struck the last remaining Spix’s macaw in the wild. A significant number of the super-rare, sky-blue parrots have tested positive for a highly contagious and fatal viral disease, marking a heartbreaking setback for the species’ rehabilitation. The infected birds are part of the Spix’s Macaw Reintroduction Program, a […]

Colorful creatures are all over planet Earth, from those with incredible coats that blend into the surroundings to bright feathers and even feet. In the world of arachnids, the jumping spiders get a lot of credit for being the colorful ones, but the rose hair tarantula can hold its own. It’s not just Wednesdays that […]

It’s time to say hello to an old friend again. The first near-Earth asteroid ever discovered by humans, 433 Eros, will have a close fly-by of Earth this weekend, and it should stay visible for a few weeks for anyone with a half-decent telescope. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign […]

Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus is currently the best place to look for life elsewhere in the Solar System. We don’t know if this distant work is habitable, but it has several characteristics that make us hopeful. Excitingly, the European Space Agency has just announced it’s going ahead with a unique mission to find that answer […]

Thought this week’s celebrations had ended with the Hungry Hungry Hippos-themed festivities for the birthday of the world’s oldest pygmy hippo? Well, you’d better put your gladrags back on and get yourselves back on the party train, because it’s time to celebrate Lazzie, the world’s oldest little penguin, who’s just turned a whopping 25 years […]

The European Space Agency (ESA) has a bold plan for human exploration in space, and it seems like the member states are ready to back it. This week, IFLScience is reporting from the agency’s Ministerial Council for 2025, where its budget and its priorities have just been approved. Both low-Earth orbit and deep space exploration […]

Winter is coming, and that means sweater season. But perhaps you’ve had a nasty surprise when you pulled them out of storage recently: tiny holes dotting your wool, silk, cashmere, or other natural fiber-based (and often expensive!) garments. The culprit? Moths. But fear not: these little blighters can be avoided – and it’s not even […]

Domestic cats the world over can trace their ancestry back to North African wildcats that lived around 2,000 years ago. It was from these feral felines that the very first domestic cats were produced, yet their cuteness and companionship were so coveted by humans that within a few decades they had spread to all corners […]

The Black Death of the 1300s would have been an undeniably sucky time to live, the year 563 CE was pretty dire, and the first half of the 20th century saw more than its fair share of misery. However, when looking at terrible times to be a human, the dreadfulness of the 17th century is […]

Why do so many barnacles end up hitching a ride on whales? Speaking to IFLScience, Professor Geoffrey Boxshall, an expert on tiny crustaceans at the Natural History Museum London and Fellow of the Royal Society, explained several intriguing reasons behind the unlikely alliance between marine mammals and small, shelled sea beasts.  Firstly, it might have […]

If you’ve grown up in the modern era of microwaves, aka the “science oven“, you may have stumbled across a fairly common myth that they heat your food using the “resonant frequency” of water. How prevalent is this myth? Well, it’s still going around today, nearly 78 years after the first commercial microwave became available […]

Over on Reddit, people are once again asking some interesting physics questions with equally intriguing answers. Today is the turn of Redditor gothreepwood101, who asks “if I had a metal pole long enough to reach from the English coast to the French coast. And a person holding it at each end. If one person pulls […]

Plenty of animals are masters of camouflage, but the genus Poltys needs a special shout-out. Pay close attention or you’ll undoubtedly mistake these strange spiders for a crunchy leaf or a fallen twig. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. Poltys is a genus […]