IFLScience

03/06/2026

New research that taught octopuses how to use a mirror has demonstrated they exhibit a kind of spatial cognition that had previously only been documented in vertebrates like mammals and birds. In pursuit of a reward, the octopuses were able to orientate their attacks using information from a mirror that revealed where behind them a crab was lurking. That’s right, they gave octopuses rear-view mirrors.

03/06/2026

Hurricanes are relentless, unstoppable, and unforgiving, unless they come across Earth’s equator.

03/06/2026

Radio astronomers have released the largest-ever map of the magnetic fields between stars, as well as the ones that stretch between galaxies. The map, five times larger than all previous efforts combined, will help uncover the role of magnetism in the formation of cosmic structures.

03/06/2026

Hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons regularly churn through the tropical regions of our planet, unleashing chaos wherever they strike. Yet curiously, they seldom come near the equator and, more surprisingly, they never cross it.

03/06/2026

How did they light their way? Researchers recreated the perilous mission to find out how these prehistoric explorers pulled it off.

03/06/2026

Thousands of hours of supercomputer simulations have been used to investigate an unstable period in our Solar System's past that may have led the planets to migrate to their present positions – and potentially yeeted a fifth giant planet out of the Solar System entirely.

03/06/2026

There have been plenty of unusual crimes over the years, and serial killers that turn out not to have existed at all, for instance. But few crime stories are as unusual as the Lindow Woman, in which a 1,600-year-old bog body led to the successful conviction of a man for murdering his 20th century wife.

03/06/2026

03/06/2026

In Africa there is an antelope of near-mythical status. Known as the “Ghost of the Forest,” the bongo is camouflaged to slip unnoticed amongst dense vegetation – the kind found in the remote and inaccessible forests of Maasai Mau in Kenya. Bongos were thought to have disappeared from the region having not been documented in half a decade. Now, that’s all changed.

03/06/2026

This man perished over 5,300 years ago, but his microbiome may still be tingling with life. Scientists have managed to recover bacteria, fungi, and other microbes from the frozen body of Ötzi the Iceman. Remarkably, some of the ancient yeasts were even able to grow and reproduce, raising the extraordinary possibility that life still lingers within the famous mummy.