Deborah Bloomfield

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has laid out possible priorities and practicalities of a human mission to Mars. As well as setting out a key priority for such a mission – searching for extinct or even extant life on the Red Planet – the report delves into what […]

Humans have loved chocolate for millennia. The cacao tree was first domesticated around 5,300 years ago in the upper Amazon region of northwest South America, but it wasn’t until 1847 that the world saw its first true chocolate bar. The British chocolate company Fry & Sons were the first to work out that you could […]

The very first artifacts from the “holy grail of shipwrecks” have finally been brought to the surface after lying on the seabed for over 300 years. Among the treasures recovered from the ship are golden coins, pieces of fine porcelain, and a massive cannon that looks as if it came straight out of a pirate’s […]

UK health authorities have identified a new strain of the mpox virus in an English individual who recently returned from travel to Asia. The strain, which has not yet been officially named, appears to contain elements of two other virus strains known as clade Ib and clade IIb. Mpox, previously known as monkeypox, is a […]

Crashing sardine stocks off the coast of southern Africa have pushed penguins to the brink, starving tens of thousands to death. In an especially devastating eight-year stretch, up to 62,000 breeding birds perished – nearly 95 percent of the population. The findings come from new research that looks at how African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) were […]

Galaxy NGC 3783 is gorgeous, with well-defined spiral arms that make it almost the platonic ideal of spiral galaxies. That beauty hides a powerful secret; at its core lies an extremely active supermassive black hole, and it is releasing winds at a speed like nothing we have seen before.    The rest of this article […]

It’s literally the oldest trick in the book, although it’s one you’ve probably never seen before. And while no beautiful assistants are sawn in half, this ancient illusion – performed for the Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu – is death-defying in the truest sense of the word. Long before the rabbit-in-the-hat trick was even conceived, an unknown […]

It was 1959, and Dmitry Belyayev had a plan. He was going to take the silver fox – a wild animal prized for its fur but naturally (and understandably) hostile to humans – and domesticate it. Critics called the plan overambitious. “The audacity […] is difficult to overestimate,” wrote Tecumseh Fitch, an animal behavior expert […]

A study from 2000, which concluded the herbicide glyphosate was safe for humans, has just been retracted, after documents unearthed during a US court case revealed that Monsanto staff members were undisclosed “ghostwriters”.  The paper, Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans, was originally published in […]

Researchers have calculated one of the most precise estimates for the expansion rate of the universe today, and it turns out we still have a massive problem. This new value continues to strengthen the dilemma known as the Hubble tension. Different methods have produced distinct numbers for this one single value, and we just got […]

It’s a tough time to be a tiger. Habitat loss, poaching, and depleting resources have seen their numbers drop across the globe, but new research has shown that even small pockets of protected habitat can have a positive impact on their survival. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or […]

In an ideal world, we’d all be sleeping by 10pm, snoozing uninterrupted until 6am, and basking in that post-exercise glow long before responsibility comes knocking. Thing is, life is rarely so predictable. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. Work, childcare, illness, and […]

Hundreds of animals were recently discovered at the bottom of the eastern Pacific, but that was before a deep-sea mining operation churned through the seabed. Once the machinery arrived, biodiversity in this alien-like world dropped by roughly a third. Parts of the seabed are loaded with critical metals vital for batteries and other technologies driving […]

A study of almost half the population of France has shown that young and middle-aged people who had been vaccinated against COVID-19 with mRNA vaccines have been 74 percent less likely to subsequently die from COVID-19. More notably, those who had been vaccinated were a quarter less likely to die in the following four years […]

Opening shot: distant stars are visible against an ink black background. In the foreground, something bright: a planet, a spacecraft, both. Cue the music, epic crescendo, unsettling tones, the action is about to begin. The title appears, you know it is already the best space movie ever made. What name popped into your head? Maybe […]

The giant steel dome that encloses the ruins of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine has suffered “significant structural damage” after a drone strike in February and is no longer fit for purpose, according to an update from the UN’s nuclear watchdog. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or […]

Christmas Day marks the birth of a wise man who revealed eternal truths to humanity and reshaped the course of history: Isaac Newton. Well… sort of. Had he been born elsewhere in Europe, rather than in England, his birthday would have fallen on January 4. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please […]

A decade consists of 10 years, a decagon has 10 sides, and a decathlon comprises 10 sporting disciplines – so surely December should be the 10th month of the year. That it sits in 12th position is a quirk of Roman timekeeping and the combined fault of various emperors and popes. The exact origins of […]

One of the longest trackways created by a single dinosaur shows it completing a full loop. Drones have been used to map all 95 meters (315 feet) of the footprints, which show some intriguing behavior, but don’t tell us what made the sauropod change its mind on where it was going. At West Gold Hill, […]

Create an IFLScience account to get all the biggest science news delivered straight to your inbox every Wednesday and Saturday. Nitrous Oxide: Inhaling “Laughing Gas” Could Be Surprisingly Effective For Treating Severe Depression Nitrous oxide (N2O), also known as laughing gas, could be a game-changing treatment option for severe depression, according to a new meta-analysis. […]