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Astronomers have reconstructed the global chemical composition of our galaxy to understand how it compares to other galaxies in the Universe. It turns out that it is not unique, but it is certainly unusual. This is something that alien astronomers would be able to pick up, and that we can use to understand the peculiar […]

Stars have been seen to die in three ways. Small ones turn into white dwarfs after having exhausted their fuel and swelling up into red giants. Bigger ones explode in supernovae, forming black holes or neutron stars, or even leaving nothing behind. And then star and stellar remnants in binary systems can merge and go […]

Your average ape-admirer will probably have a hard time spotting the difference between a bonobo and a chimpanzee. In fact, until relatively recently, bonobos were simply known to scientists as “pygmy chimpanzees” and their own name wasn’t widely used until the 1950s. However, it’s now clear that there are some notable differences between these two […]

There are, in certain corners of the Internet, people out there who believe that the Smithsonian Museum are covering up evidence that Ancient Egyptians came over to the Grand Canyon, leaving hieroglyphs and mummies hidden for thousands of years. The conspiracy theory goes back further than most, to 1909, when readers of the Arizona Gazette […]

From the solstice onward, the length of day and night change. If you are in the Northern Hemisphere, yesterday was the summer solstice, which means that the day length is slowly but surely going to decrease over the next six months. But if you are a lover of sunsets, you might already know a particular […]

The largest glacier in Iceland can be found in the Vatnajökull National Park, and a “snake” lurks within it in the form of an ice cave. Its spectacular nickname is the Anaconda Ice Cave for its long and winding shape that mirrors that of the world’s girthiest snakes. It’s also known as Crystal Ice Cave […]

Two cultured meat companies have announced that US regulators have given them the green light to begin selling to the public, marking a huge milestone in the future of no-kill meat. Made only from animal cells, both Good Meat and Upside Foods have stated that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved their lab-grown chicken […]

If you’ve ever heard that Earth’s tilt influences the number of daylight hours we receive throughout the year, but never really understood how, then this beautifully made animation is for you.  It was created by Simon Proud, an Earth-observation scientist at the UK’s National Center for Earth Observation, in celebration of the summer solstice in […]

An ancient Maya city has been found by researchers, deep inside the Balamkú ecological reserve in Campeche, Mexico. The site, which contains “pyramidal structures” up to 15 meters (49 feet) high, was first spotted using airborne laser scanning (LiDAR), and then investigated by a team of researchers led by archaeologist Ivan Ṡprajc.  Advertisement “The biggest […]

The blob is coming for Colorado, only it isn’t one organism but instead colonies of individual living things. Known as slime mold, the curious goo is famous for its “intelligence”, capable of storing memories, problem-solving, and making decisions. Slime mold is the informal name given to a group of eukaryotic organisms that exist as free-living […]

The current and former CEOs of two major social media companies – Meta and Twitter respectively – have agreed to fight each other in a cage.  Yesterday, Elon Musk responded to rumors that Facebook is creating a Twitter-like platform. Advertisement ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites. A Twitter user warned Musk […]

Hot yoga also known as Bikram yoga (more on that later) has gained significant popularity in recent years as a fairly ferocious form of exercise. It combines yoga poses and breathing exercises and is practised in a heated studio – with room temperatures close to 40°C. This style of yoga is designed to replicate the […]

Whether you’re a photosynthesizing triffid seeking out the rays or just a vampire, you may have wondered at some point: Where on Earth gets the most and least sunlight? Well, the team at timeanddate.com have an answer for you, and it comes with a few surprises. For instance, it turns out that Bodø in Norway […]

The gradual loss of the Y chromosome as men age may give cancer the opportunity to grow, according to new research. The findings identify a new, but still unknown, role of the male sex chromosome in helping the immune system fend off cancer, and show that its loss spelled disaster for some cells.  During development, […]

While cancer can develop in nearly every organ in the body, it’s rare to ever hear about the disease impacting the heart. That’s pretty surprising when you think how fundamental the heart is to the body. Despite this lack of conversation, it is possible for people to develop primary cancer of the heart – although, […]

If we had powerful enough telescopes in the 1820s, looking toward the center of the galaxy, we would have seen a bright flare. Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole at the core of the Milky Way, launched its last known flare about 200 years ago, and we know that happened because an x-ray […]

The seismic-in-more-ways-than-one eruption that shook Tonga in January 2022 triggered an electrifying lightning marathon that saw over 192,000 flashes illuminate an ash cloud. The electrical storm lasted over 11 hours and not only produced the most intense lightning storm ever seen but also the largest lightning rings ever observed. On January 15, 2022, the Hunga […]

A gallery of 57,000-year-old fingerprint cave art found in France is the oldest known engravings made by humans, according to a new study. However, Homo sapiens were not the human species behind the art – it was our close cousins, Neanderthals. The intriguing engravings were found in La Roche-Cotard of the Centre-Val de Loire in […]

The world’s first at-home pregnancy test that uses saliva rather than the more traditional urine has been developed and is now on sale to the public. It represents the first big shakeup in pregnancy testing since at-home tests became available in the 1970s. The kit, called Salistick™, was developed by Israeli startup Salignostics, and is […]

Not all stellar flares are the same. They are usually a brief brightening of a star – but for FU Orionis (FU Ori), located 1,200 light-years from Earth, the brightening has turned into an 85-year-long emission that is a trillion times more powerful than the largest Solar flares ever detected, and there is no sign […]