The ghostly blue flame stunned researchers when it first showed up unexpectedly in a laboratory experiment. Now scientists have determined the structure of this “blue whirl.” Four separate types of ...

Fire may be one of humanity's original innovations, but it is still surprising us hundreds of centuries after the first manmade flames. In 2016 scientists at the University of Maryland stumbled upon ...

In the early 2000s, researchers tested breast milk samples from U.S. mothers and found high levels of toxic compounds used as a common flame retardant in household items. The compounds, polybrominated ...

A new type of flame produced on the International Space Station (ISS) doesn’t just look cool with its spherical blue glow—it is cool. Cool flames, which burn at temperatures much lower than ...

Lightning struck a bourbon warehouse, setting fire to a cache of 800,000 gallons of liquor in the Bardstown countryside of Kentucky in 2003. Some of it spilled into a nearby creek, spawning a massive ...

Hydrogen flames can propagate even with very little fuel, within surprisingly narrow gaps and can extend breaking up into fractal patterns. That is the unexpected physical behavior of this gas when it ...