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In 2013, 13-year-old Jahi McMath went into the Children’s Hospital Oakland (now the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland), California, to have her tonsils removed. It was a very ordinary procedure, one that takes place hundreds of thousands of times a year across the world, but unfortunately, Jahi’s story is far from ordinary. Although the operation […]

One of the biggest controversies in human evolution just took another dramatic turn after researchers submitted their final, revised version of a study claiming that a small-brained human ancestor buried its dead. Known as Homo naledi, this prehistoric hominid rose to fame a couple of years ago thanks to a Netflix documentary that sensationalized the […]

Be honest: where are you reading this right now? If it’s on the toilet – and we know you’re out there – then things are about to get uncomfortable. A survey of adults undergoing bowel screening in the US has found that people who used their smartphones on the john had a higher risk of […]

Slowly but surely, humanity is better understanding the interior of Mars and with that, what the early Solar System was like. We know that Mars used to be a lot more like the Earth, with water on its surface. Today, Mars is a frigid desert, but deep inside it might retain similarities. One perhaps is […]

A huge project led by neuroscientists from all across the world has achieved world-first insight into what decision-making looks like in the brain. It marks the first time a single-cell, electrophysiological brain map of this size has been generated in a mammal, and it’s already challenging what we thought we knew about how decisions are […]

Growing up in Antarctica isn’t easy. The hostile conditions here have pushed animals to the extremes of evolution to overcome things the rest of us take for granted, like breathing, eating, and not freezing to death. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. […]

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has released a video containing AI-generated imagery to warn what would happen if Mount Fuji erupted in the 21st century. While there’s no suggestion the volcano is set to blow any time soon, an eruption within the next century would not be totally unexpected – and the impact on Tokyo would […]

When people think of NASA, despite all the work it does monitoring the Earth’s climate and exploring the bodies of the Solar System, most people’s minds go to the Apollo era, when the US space agency repeatedly put humans on the Moon.  But Apollo was not the agency’s first steps into space, as newly restored […]

Google has just made it easier to see your favorite media outlets more often. If you’re a fan of science – from the weird to the wild, ridiculous, and deadly serious – we invite you to add IFLScience to your favorite publishers: all you have to do is click right here and select the box. […]

A new study looking at solar flares may have solved a 50-year-old mystery about our host star, finding that solar flares may be far hotter than we realized. Solar flares are a common event on the Sun’s surface. They can be seen regularly throughout the year, and particularly during the solar maximum phase of the […]

In world-first footage, researchers have captured a wild black-coated jaguar mating with a spotted jaguar deep in the Brazilian Amazon. The big cats are notoriously elusive, hence this latest breakthrough provides much-needed insight into their courtship and mating interactions, which could inform future conservation strategies. “We hit the proverbial jackpot and captured the first ever […]

There are a few hotspots on Earth that are linked to longer-than-average human lifespans. From the sun-soaked island of Okinawa in Japan to the rugged mountains of Ogliastra in Sardinia and the coastal landscapes of Ikaria in Greece, these regions are famous for nurturing unusually long-lived populations. Thanks to new research, scientists now claim they […]

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) could potentially detect gravitational waves from an alien spacecraft as it makes its way through our galaxy, according to a team of physicists. The LIGO experiment is awesome even without the potential for finding intelligent alien life. It was aimed at detecting gravitational waves (GWs) – ripples in spacetime, […]

In elementary school, we learn that clouds form when water vapor from seas, oceans, and other bodies of water, the ground, and living things rises into the sky and condenses into a large mass of droplets suspended in the air. For simplicity, this explanation often omits the need for aerosols, suspended molecules that help with […]

A 17-year-old girl from France with an unusually rich, detailed, and accurate memory can mentally travel both forwards and backwards in time, according to the authors of a new case report.  The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. Described as a successful high-school […]

September can be an exciting time: back-to-school season, cozy fall fashion, all things pumpkin, cinnamon, and apple (choose your fighter) – and for many, an end to the horrors of hay fever. But not so fast: allergies don’t magically disappear with the turning of the calendar. Seasonal allergies can affect people pretty much all year […]

Researchers are taking thermodynamics to a whole new level: the microscopic level. The science of heat and energy exchange underpins most of our modern life, as well as the fate of the universe. Despite centuries of work, however, there are still plenty of mysteries to be solved, including how the theories actually work at the […]

In 1812, Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts signed a bill creating a new voting district in Boston, the shape of which was so Byzantine, so strange and contorted in shape, that journalists likened it at the time to a slithery salamander. In honor of its creator, the new district was termed the “Gerry-mander” – and […]

Life is a hard slog, just look at conception. There’s a goal – the egg – but there’s not enough to go around. Sperm must compete with everything they’ve got to be the one that makes it, lest they wind up a wasted warrior in the fight for life. They have to compete against their […]

From the tooth of a mammoth that roamed Earth more than one million years ago, scientists have pulled traces of the ancient bacteria that once lived inside it. The discovery marks the oldest host-associated microbial DNA ever recovered, offering a rare glimpse into the hidden microorganisms that shaped the lives (and perhaps even the deaths) […]