News

One of the best meteor showers of the year is about to commence, as comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle sends debris at Earth.  The Perseid meteor showers are the result of Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, a 26-kilometer (16-mile) wide comet that takes 133 years to orbit the Sun. This “parent” comet, around twice the size of the rock which dinosaured […]

Here’s a weird thing that people have noticed; large language model (LLM) chatbots have a weird tendency to give the same answer when asked to randomly generate a number. When asked to “guess” a number between one and 50, a lot of language models will consistently choose 27.  ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared […]

If you’re old enough to remember the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, you will likely remember the controversy that year surrounding the official ball of the tournament. Developed by Adidas, the Jabulani (“be happy” or “to celebrate” in Zulu) was supposed to be an improvement on the 2006 ball, using new methods. “The newly-developed […]

Did you know that the ocean has its own canaries? They’re a bit whiter and kind of enormous compared to the sort you see on land, but hoo boy, do they love to chatter.  Squeaks, clicks, buzzes, and babbling, little is off the cards when it comes to the remarkable complexity of beluga communication, but […]

A physics conference has received a report of the gravitational wave from the heaviest pair of black holes we’ve so far observed merging. The result is larger than theoretical models allow through straight-forward means, implying either a very complex prelude, or some astronomical phenomenon we don’t currently know about. In 2016 when the gravitational wave […]

Asia’s oldest elephant has died at the astonishing age of over 100. While elephants are known for their long lifespans, it’s exceptionally rare, practically unknown, for an Asian elephant to surpass a century. Vatsala died earlier this month at the Panna Tiger Reserve in the Central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, leaving behind a host […]

The COVID-19 pandemic was, at its heart, a serious reminder that our health can be significantly impacted by diseases from other animals. Obviously, this is not a new story; we’ve known for decades that emerging diseases often jump to humans from other species, but how long has this been going on for? According to the […]

Given all we know – and the far more we don’t know – about the brain, there’s no reason to assume that any gender should have a monopoly on mathematical ability. And yet, for many people, the idea that boys are better at math, or math-adjacent subjects like physics or engineering, is… well, it’s just […]

The letter “g” is pretty inescapable. It’s everywhere. Good. Great. Gongoozler. God. Garbage. Giggles. But according to a new study, people are really, really bad at recognizing it in the wild. You’re probably familiar with how to write lower-case “g”s, but how they appear on a screen or in print is not the same. How […]

This week, a new interstellar comet’s origin region has been tracked and it’s thought to be “much older than the Solar System”, Colossal Biosciences has announced its plans to make one of the biggest birds to ever walk the Earth the 5th “de-extinction” species, and chimpanzees have been observed sticking grass in their ears and […]

Sled dogs have been performing a vital role for people living in the Arctic for 9,500 years. In fact, the ubiquity of these dogs across the polar region is a testament to their significance. While there are various breeds of sled dog today, one breed is not only the oldest among them, it may well […]

If you were entranced by the full Moon last night, and would like to watch it rise again this evening, you’re probably aware you’ll have to wait until later in the night. But how much later? A quick check of moonrise (or set) times over successive nights reveals wide variation – sometimes the difference is […]

This week on Break It Down: just a week after the discovery of our third-ever interstellar visitor we may know where it came from, ancient enamel provides a snapshot into the lives of prehistoric rhinos, the moa becomes the fifth species targeted for de-extinction, a robot performs gallbladder surgery – no human required, chimps start […]

Do you ever get that thing where you bump into a relative you haven’t seen for a while and don’t immediately recognize them? Maybe it’s little Timmy who you haven’t seen since he was yay-high, or perhaps Jennifer with the new hair. Or maybe it’s Homo floresiensis, “the hobbit” of Homos that went extinct around […]

We don’t really know if there is other life in the universe, but due to one failed Moon landing in 2019, we know there is terrestrial life on the Moon… kind of. One small cockup by “man”, one giant spill for tardigrade kind In February 2019, SpaceIL, a private Israeli non-profit that worked in partnership […]

When you’re tucked away in the safety of your home tonight, spare a thought for these two ancient human relatives whose lives in East Africa ended around 1.8 million years ago in a deeply undignified fashion: mauled to pieces by a crocodile and, somehow, chewed over by a leopard-like carnivore. The pair belonged to the species Homo […]

Taman Negara National Park is a critical habitat for Malayan tigers. It was once home to the densest population of tigers in Malaysia, but their numbers have since crashed, and now the park forms a vital corridor connecting two separate groups. This information, however, hasn’t escaped the knowledge of poachers, who lay snares to illegally […]

Who’s a good boy? Oosagoodboyyy?! That’s right! Your dog is a good boy! But how he got that way is a puzzle that’s long plagued archaeologists and palaeontologists. Simply put: we know dogs were once wolves. We know they’re not anymore – in fact, in some cases, they could hardly be further from the keystone […]

Orcas are easily recognized by their jet-black bodies punctuated with striking white markings, most notably the “eye patch” on their head, which makes them appear like an ominous masked supervillain. But these markings aren’t just eye-catching to humans – they’re an ingenious evolutionary tool. The black-and-white coloring of orcas is primarily a matter of camouflage. […]

After more than 40 years of exploration and excavations at the ancient Maya city of Caracol, researchers have finally unearthed a tomb belonging to one of its rulers. Even more significantly, the burial happens to contain the remains of Te K’ab Chaak, the very first king of this pre-Hispanic powerhouse and founder of its royal […]