Deborah Bloomfield

Eating sticks of butter, doing a spot of face yoga, swilling coconut oil around your mouth – the wellness side of the internet abounds with all kinds of unusual trends with some questionable claims about how they can benefit our health. One that’s been doing the rounds for a while now is navel pulling, but […]

Pop quiz! How long is the average year? If you said “365 days”, then congratulations! You’re wrong. If you said “365.25 days”, then gratulationes – you’re also wrong, and probably a Roman. The average year is, in fact, 365.242 days long – just so long as you’re not talking about the sidereal year. So what’s […]

Evolution is generally considered to be quite a slow, clunky process. However, dogs living in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant have undergone rapid evolution in the forty years since the disaster. In a study IFLScience reported on earlier this year, researchers analyzing blood samples from dogs roaming the power plant with those in surrounding areas […]

A new paper has confirmed and refined an inscription long thought impossible to pin down – and it seems to be a dedication to an ancient Mother goddess. For 2,600 years, a lonely statue has stood at the south edge of a small valley in the midwest of Turkey. Known as Arslan (or Aslan) Kaya, […]

Were you to time travel to Asia in the late Middle and early Late Pleistocene periods, some 300,000 to 50,000 years ago, you would discover a melting pot of different human species – from the diminutive Homo luzonensis in the Philippines to the Homo longi (or ‘dragon man) inhabiting the frigid climes of Northern China. Now, […]

This week, 1.5-million-year-old footprints in Kenya suggest two ancient human relatives walked together, fossilized dinosaur vomit and poop reveal their rise had surprisingly green origins, and on Monday, March 23, 2178, Pluto will complete its first full orbit since its discovery in 1980. Finally, 50 years on, we look back at the discovery of Lucy […]

Removing water from the air can make places more comfortable, and it can also provide a vital resource when water is scarce. However, the process is more laborious than it might seem at first, and different techniques have different drawbacks. Polymers have been used to efficiently remove water from the air, but getting the water […]

A new study has suggested we may be looking for the wrong kinds of signatures in our hunt for intelligent civilizations out there in the universe. Perhaps we should be looking for “star eaters”. When searching for intelligent life, we are limited somewhat by the laws of physics, and our own circumstances and imaginations. We’ve […]

It’s one of the most enduring questions that we humans have been asking ourselves throughout the ages: What makes for a happy life? Some argue that it’s money; some, a fulfilling career; some point to the role of family and children. But while it’s fun to speculate and compare ideas, there is actually a body […]

Two years ago, an unusually bright meteor – in lingo a fireball – burned in the sky over the Niagara region. Just hours before, researchers had determined that this asteroid was going to hit our planet. Data from the object in space and as it burned through the atmosphere have allowed it to be characterized, […]

This week on Break It Down: killer whales have been wearing salmon hats (again) and sucking out the livers of the world’s largest shark, 1.5-million-year-old footprints reveal Homo erectus co-existed with a now-extinct protohuman, fossil dinosaur poop and vomit indicate their rise to power began with plants, we have a date for when Pluto will […]

Let me tell you about my chickens. I built them a warm, safe coop, yet they voluntarily sleep outside where the foxes prowl, always turning up unscathed in the morning. They bully the hell out of my cats and steal their food. I wish they would lay their eggs in their nesting box, but heck […]

It’s that time of year again when many turkeys will be adopting an unfortunate position at the dinner table, as is the fate for many other birds classed as poultry. As domesticated animals, we use the products of poultry for bedding, clothing, and food, with perhaps the most common example being eggs. It got us […]

The question of what protons or neutrons are made up of has an apparently simple answer: quarks and gluons. However, when it comes to atoms’ third component, electrons, the answer is not as easy. That’s because, as far as we know, electrons are fundamental particles. In other words, they have no smaller components. That’s not […]

The fossilized remains of a marine crocodile that is up to 12 million years old have been discovered. The fossilized croc is the youngest known specimen of this species to be discovered so far. The discovery was recently unveiled by a joint team consisting of researchers with Peru’s Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Institute and the […]

Iceland’s recent bout of volcanism is still going strong, with new imagery and drone footage showing the ongoing volcanic activity on the Reykjanes Peninsula in all its beautiful and terrifying glory. The eruption began from the Fagradalsfjall volcanic system between Stóra-Skógfell and Sýlingarfell at 23:14 on November 20, according to the Icelandic Met Office. By […]

Earth’s long history has seen an uncountable number of species come and go – but one of the most famous extinction events we know of is the one related to the dinosaurs. This event occurred across the world and witnessed the loss of around 75 percent of all species of animals during a very narrow […]

Obsidian is perhaps best known in its role as the dark black blade atop ancient spears and axes – but what if we wanted to add a little bit of pizzaz to our prehistoric weaponry? Look no further than rainbow obsidian. What is rainbow obsidian and why is it colorful? As we’ve just mentioned, obsidian […]

If you thought that the Milky Way was just your average run-of-the-mill galaxy, you’d be wrong. Turns out that it’s quite the freak and we shouldn’t consider it a standard example of how spiral galaxies evolve. Multiple results suggest that something unusual is afoot when it comes to the Milky Way’s satellites, the smaller galaxies […]