Dracula's Chivito is more than just a great name. It's the largest planet-forming disk we have found, and it seems a system like that comes with chaotic features we didn't expect and don't understand. www.iflscience.com/hubble-teles...

I tried to check the claim that there are 2 (and only 2) places on Earth where you can walk directly on the mantle, and how that could be the case. It seems other places have legitimate claims, but those two are the best for that experience. www.iflscience.com/is-it-true-t...

We keep finding more and more examples of multiple species of hominins living in the same region and time. Here's another - a previously undescribes species that lived besides Australopithecus africanus. We don't know which are our ancestors www.iflscience.com/unidentified...

One increasingly dominant strand of Zionism demands that diaspora Jews prioritize the (claimed) interests of Jews above their own welfare, basic humanity and the health of the whole planet. But that's not enough. Now we're expected to place Netanyahu's interests over the nation's.

This year has seen the largest number of Aboriginal deaths in custody since records began in 1980. This is a national shame and tragedy. How many more First Nations people will die before the federal government acts?

It's always best to not rely on a single study until it's replicated, or there is other confirmation, but if this stands up it indicates mRNA vaccines are even better than we thought. French residents 18-59 who were vaccinated had 25% lower mortality over 4 years. www.iflscience.com/enormous-new...

It's bad enough that LLM's tell you lies. While this is hilarious, it also shows that they deny reality even when served it on a plate. How anyone can think they are safe to use for pretty much anything is beyond me.

I'm not familiar with this guy's previous work, but he's nailed this problem really well.

It's wonderful another person has had their HIV eliminated through stem cell transplants, but this currently doesn't scale. However, the fact this worked when it shouldn't (unlike previous cases) suggests there's something we don't understand, and there hope lies. www.iflscience.com/7th-person-c...

I learned about this on Bluesky, but I don't think much media has caught on - a volcano where three plates meet has erupted for the first time in thousands of years. www.iflscience.com/an-ethiopian...

There's so much here. Even if you don't find something you want straight away, keep looking - odds are the right thing is there.

On the old Twitter I followed a couple of people who, while center-left, spent a lot of time criticizing others of similar politics. They mocked warnings about the economic damage Brexit would do, saying they were too large to be credible, and would undermine the Remain case. Hmmmm.

As usual, @astrokatie.com doesn't just get to the truth, but in the last line puts it better than the rest of us have managed.

Yikes. Cutting more jobs than Abbott should not be something any Labor minister should be able to do and look at themself in the mirror.

🙃🙃🙃 cannot believe how short sighted this government is, honestly. Now is the time to be POURING money into research, not cutting it.

As an English speaking country (with nice beaches to boot) for the cost of a small tax on fossil fuel exports or high incomes Australia could invest in science, recruit researchers fleeing the US and become the knowledge powerhouse of the 21st Century. Instead we're doing this.

Releasing the files is good. But if we just listened to the survivors about who abused them, that would tell us what we really need to know.

In normal times I would think that this was either incompetent drafting or an ambit claim, and the worst aspects would be removed before passing, but these are not normal times. Will those who called people asking for their pronouns to be respected a war on science act? Don't hold your breath.

Think Australia's animals are weird today? For tens of millions of years we were three times as biodiverse as we are now, and that made for some amazingly strange and scary creatures.

Few people know me here, and if friends of Tess Deveze are on here, I haven't connected with many of them. Still, I am trying to establish a health care fund for the staff at one of my favourite orgs in Tess's memory and you can contribute (or just learn) here www.classy.org/fundraiser/6...

40 years ago we’d have congressional hearings falsely accusing metal bands of putting backwards messages in their songs that told kids to kill themselves & now we have a planet-killing chatbot that’s all like “bet you won’t commit suicide chickenshit bitch” & the government is like here’s $5 billion

For anyone now - or 25 years ago - tempted to take Bjorn Lomborg seriously on climate change.

When it comes to suffering created, the cuts to USAID have been the most harmful thing Trump has done, and nothing else is close.

I'm a bit skeptical that the use of (dried) mushrooms as IT storage and processing devices will ever scale, but it's fun to think about. (Including all those suddently obsolete data centers and the energy facilities built to power them). www.iflscience.com/mushrooms-co...

Besides my exclusively Jewish heritage from both parents, I'm Jewish enough when I push back against criticism of Israel I consider simplistic I cop antisemitic abuse, but when I express horror at Israel's current activities or support for progressive candidates, suddenly I'm also not a real Jew.

I'm sure there are a great many things that went into this, but surely one of them is that the federal LNP keep saying you can't run an electricity grid on solar, wind and batteries and South Australians are mostly aware they are about to.

It’s really something, the cognitive dissonance of watching our scientific community be dismantled while every day there’s an announcement of a new, unimaginably cool and useful discovery

Anyone else reminded of John Connor escaping the Terminator? Lots of them without magic running speed, but the same vibe.

This could lead to a life-saving improvement in diagnostic imaging for many medical conditions, and an even more life-saving reduction in cost. But my favourite aspect is that it's a spin off of solar power research. www.iflscience.com/perovskite-c...

Franklin uttered the phrase on this very date (September 17), the last day of the Constitutional Convention, in 1787

I just saw a TikTok like “the motivations of assassins don’t make sense anymore” but boy have they never. Hinkley shot Reagan to impress Jodi Foster. Oswald was such a complete mess people just assume the CIA did it. Guiteau killed Garfield because no one would make him an ambassador.

Frydenberg, like so many others, wanted to pin the murder on the left because he regards his enemies in the culture wars on things like the environment and trans rights as worse than neo-Nazis, which is quite something when you think about it.

The more I think about it, the more decisions like the North West Shelf indicate to me that the Feds have made a calculated - and maybe even correct? - decision that they can afford to take the piss with the goodwill the Australian electorate has for them. The task ahead is to prove them wrong.

Everyone talks about various things being a distraction from the Epstein files, but in a very real sense, everything else is a distraction being dragged in front of us to stop us noticing this.

NEW from @sourcenm.com: A Santa Fe school evacuated Thursday afternoon due to a bomb threat at New Mexico Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth’s Museum Hill neighborhood home nearby. www.newsfromthestates.com/article/bomb...

Worse than a crime, it was a mistake.

I was alerted to this work by an optimstic media release, but after I wrote it I saw one from NASA that is much more downbeat. Perhaps I would have written it a bit differently if I'd seen that first, but honestly, I want to believe TRAPPIST-1e has an atmosphere www.iflscience.com/earth-20-hin...

Regarding Putin’s proposal to hold talks with President Zelensky in Moscow, history offers a cautionary lesson from Hungary, 1956. /1 Pal Maléter (1917–1958) was a Hungarian general, a key leader of the 1956 Revolution, and briefly Minister of Defence in Imre Nagy’s government.

BREAKING: ICE is sending Russian dissidents back to Russia. When the dissidents arrived in Russia, the Russian authorities were given documents relating to their asylum applications in the US which under US law are confidential. This seems to be part of a secret agreement between Trump and Putin.

I got the complaint in the horrific OpenAI self harm case the the NY Times reported today This is way way worse even than the NYT article makes it out to be OpenAI absolutely deserves to be run out of business

For just £20,000,000, I will lead an expedition to the cave of wonders, where a magic lamp is located! Once I use it, I will be able to give you back your investment and more!🧞‍♂️

This was made possible in substantial part by Dr Fauci, and RFK Jr considers that a reason to hate him, and still has not admitted that these medications work, or even that AIDS is caused by a virus.

Republicans’ top constituency is people who hate their children.

I don't know if insurance covers meteorite strikes. Hopefully if not this guy can get the cost of repairs back either from the museum and research institutes that took the pieces, or from selling tickets to look at the damage. www.iflscience.com/meteorite-th...

Safe social distancing (at least in queues, but probably for other purposes) depends on room temperature, this work indicates. It's preliminary (started out as an undergrad project) but suggests at high and low temperatures 2m is safe, but in between it's not www.iflscience.com/dont-stand-s...

Most of us knew Vance was never going to drain the swamp. But literally flooding the lake so his family could enjoy boating more is a remarkably literal raised finger to those who didn't.

My baby boy's first wonky media mention. www.newsweek.com/donald-trump...

A comparison of the structure of leopard seal songs to those of other mammals has found the closest counterpart to be nursery rhymes. www.iflscience.com/beneath-anta...

This is easily the most detailed analysis of such an ancient tattoo, as it’s rare for skin this old to be preserved. www.iflscience.com/siberian-mum...

Motherfucking wind farms…