Deborah Bloomfield

Anytime global warming or climate change get mentioned online, you can expect a bunch of comments claiming to be able to disprove the whole concept, at least in relation to human activity. Most of these have been debunked, not just in detailed scientific papers, but by plenty of popular science websites, IFLScience included. There’s at […]

Did you know the world’s largest waterfall is underwater? Us neither – every day’s a school day as they say. The tallest waterfall on Earth stands at a massive 3.5 kilometers (2.2 miles), next to which Angel Falls, the tallest uninterrupted waterfall over land, pales in comparison. So, where is this underwater behemoth? The rest […]

There are few things more difficult than studying the end of the world, and how humanity would react before it. If you try when the world isn’t ending, then you probably won’t get an accurate impression, given that the world isn’t really ending. If you try while the world is actually ending, people won’t be that interested in […]

Issue 40 (November 2025) of CURIOUS is out now, bringing you science highlights for the month plus deep dives into intriguing topics, interviews, exclusives, diary dates, and explanations for some of Earth’s most perplexing natural phenomena and landscapes. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the […]

Fridges are kind of a triumph of design. There are shelves; there are crisper drawers; there are little spaces for individual eggs; a light that comes on only when you open the door and, if you’re feeling fancy, even an ice machine. But not everything about your fridge is so well thought-out. The shelves inside the […]

Mars is a desert planet with dunes, canyons, and surprisingly fast winds. It is very cold, though, so it does not often get compared to desert planets of fiction, like Tatooine of Star Wars or Arrakis of Dune. But a mysterious feature made astronomers consider a parallel with the Dune planet, gullies carved in Martian […]

This week, almost 90 percent of US adults have at least one risk factor for a newly defined medical condition, the ancient Jomon of Japan might be one of the only groups of people outside Africa who had virtually no Denisovan DNA, and Iceland records its first-ever sighting of mosquitos in the country, meaning there’s […]

Even in this modern world, there are still so many things science can’t explain. What goes on inside a black hole? Are we alone in the universe? What’s the secret to human happiness? And perhaps most importantly of all: why doesn’t spaghetti disintegrate when we cook it? It’s not a trivial question, even if it […]

Languages evolve over time, prompting a great question: How far back in time could you go and still understand English?  If you were to speak to someone from the 1800s, or read a book from the same period, you would likely be fine. Sense and Sensibility (1811) remains comprehensible, for example, with some even claiming to be […]

The first people to enter the Americas may have sailed from Japan around 20,000 years ago, according to a new analysis of prehistoric stone tools from 10 sites across the US.  Until now, researchers had only uncovered a few tantalizing hints that humans had reached the American continent by this time, with ancient footprints in […]

A new study by scientists investigating the impact of 2023’s record-breaking marine heatwave on Florida’s coral reef has revealed that the event drove two of the area’s key coral species to functional extinction. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. The corals in […]

A newly discovered planet sits in the habitable zone of its star, where temperatures are right for liquid water if the atmosphere is appropriate. Based on the available data, GJ 251c is thought most likely to be a “super-Earth”, a rocky planet somewhat larger and more massive than Earth, but a sub-Neptune can’t be entirely […]

A zoo in the UK has welcomed the arrival of a critically endangered Bornean orangutan. Born in the early hours of October 7, keepers report the newest member is doing well.  The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. The baby orangutan was born […]

It is, these days, an overwhelmingly familiar sight: adorning every packet of food or drink, the little table of nutritional information. Snacks today are duty-bound to relate their concentrations of certain vitamins; to warn us of how much sugar and fat they contain; most of all, looming large above all other attributes, they must inform […]

In a matter of days, Comet 3I/ATLAS will reach its closest point to the Sun. The third known interstellar object will reach its peak of activity, releasing gases and dust like it might not have done in tens of millions of years, or maybe even longer. Comparison between this interstellar interloper and the previous two […]

For the first time ever, we’ve been able to prove that some dinosaurs had hooves, thanks to two remarkably well-preserved mummified dinosaurs retrieved from Wyoming’s Badlands. The specimens are the duck-billed dinosaurs Edmontosaurus annectens that, thanks to a “fluke preservation event” are near-perfect 66 million years later. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please […]

“So,” begins a popular if now ancient (at least, in internet years) meme. “Apparently the numbers on the toaster are minutes? I’ve thought for years it was degree of toasty-ness.” It’s immediately clear why the quip took off. It’s funny, sure – after all, what kind of measure is “toastiness” anyway? What scale would we […]

NASA’s Artemis III is going to take humanity back to the Moon in the middle of 2027. The Orion spacecraft, launched on the Space Launch System, will rendezvous with SpaceX Starship in lunar orbit. Two astronauts will board Starship and fly down to the Moon. At least, that is the plan – but it is […]

 They say we know more about the surface of the Moon than we do about the bottom of the ocean, which is what made it so incredibly exciting when scientists decided to do what the rest of us are too chicken to, dive down to the seabed to get a look at what’s lurking there. […]

What do you get when 100 million cubic meters (3.5 billion cubic feet) of land suddenly plunge into an icy Alaskan fjord? Some big-ass waves, it turns out – including one that was taller than all but one of the highest buildings in New York City. That’s what happened back on August 10 this year, […]