Researchers reported this week a deadly outbreak of plague in Siberia 5,500 years ago, revealing that Yersinia pestis evolved lethal genetic traits far earlier than suspected. A drug developed for heart tissue repair may also help kidney tissue repair and reg…
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A modelling study published in Communications Earth & Environment in June 2025 found that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could begin an irreversible collapse at ocean temperatures between zero and 0.25°C above current levels — meaning the threshold may have alr…
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Saturn's icy moon Titan is extremely abundant in important hydrocarbons, making it a great place to settle, a NASA scientist argues.
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Cassini found Enceladus venting its hidden salty ocean into space, complete with organics, hydrogen pointing to hydrothermal vents, and phosphorus. Modelling suggests the ocean could be long-lived and warm. But habitable conditions are not the same as life, a…
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IFLScience has confirmed with NASA when Voyager 1 will be a cosmic record-breaking 1 light-day from Earth.
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A single failed memory chip corrupted about 3% of Voyager 1's flight data subsystem in November 2023. Engineers relocated the affected 1970s code around the damage, sent the fix across 24 billion km, and got readable data back on 20 April 2024 after a 45-hour…
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Here's a question that sounds like science fiction but is being asked in deadly earnest by serious philosophers.
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Point Nemo, the oceanic pole of inaccessibility, lies more than 2,688 km from the nearest (uninhabited) land. When the ISS passes overhead at about 400 km, its crew is often the closest humans. The same emptiness makes it the chosen graveyard for deorbited sp…
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A rare daytime lunar occultation unfolded Wednesday as Venus briefly disappeared behind the Moon in a celestial event visible across much of North America.
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The 1908 Tunguska event flattened ~2,000 sq km of Siberian forest and left no crater. The reason is an airburst: a stony asteroid that disintegrated several kilometres up. What the evidence shows, what is still argued, and why a century-old blast still drives…
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An object known as (612533) 2002 XV93, lies in the Kuiper Belt and is 500km (310 miles) wide. And astronomers found an atmosphere round it.
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Cockroaches tend to be thought of as the creatures that keep on living through anything, in part due to their DNA – which can code for all kinds of useful survival tricks, from neutralizing toxins to limb regeneration.
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A team led by Thomas Evans-Soma of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg has published observations of the exoplanet WASP-121b that complicate the existing picture of how chemistry moves through an ultra-hot atmosphere. Using the James Webb Spa…
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Need some good news on a Friday after a long week? The Earth may not be engulfed by the expanding fireball of the dying sun, which has long been assumed to be our home planet's ultimate fate, according to scientists.
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A tropical butterfly from the Heliconius tribe has evolved to live a maximum lifespan of 348 days, nearly 25 times longer than its relatives.