Deborah Bloomfield

The Moon was volcanically active for a long time, but if we look at its mysterious far side, we now know exactly how long that was the case. Thanks to samples collected by the Chinese Chang’e-6 probe, researchers have been able to estimate that this volcanic period lasted for at least 1.4 billion years. Chang’e-6 […]

We’ve all been there: you wake up one morning, the sun is shining; you open your mouth to greet the world and out comes a glorious… croak? Losing your voice is a pretty common predicament – but what’s going on, physiologically, to cause your sudden silence? And should you ever be worried about it? Where […]

What will you take away? When choosing the best scientific event to attend each year, people shouldn’t just look at the list of exhibitors and featured topics, but at the added value a person can gain once the show is over. Not simply what the convention provides, but what the tradeshow promises you will take […]

Fraud might be a crime, but it’s hard to deny it inspires some creativity – and in the case of an alleged insurance fraud scheme that took place in California earlier this year, “creativity” can mean dressing up in a bear costume, ruining your own car, and ending up in handcuffs. That’s according to the […]

A rare deep-sea shark has been caught off the coast of Albania exhibiting an unusual skin pigment disorder that has turned it ghostly white. It is the first known case of this species of piggy-faced shark having leucism. The angular roughshark (Oxynotus centrina) is an odd sea beastie. They look like someone smashed the idea […]

If you’ve ever shared a bed with someone who grinds their teeth in their sleep, you’ll be familiar with the unmistakable and unsettling sound of enamel on enamel. Alternatively, perhaps you’ve woken up with an aching jaw, only to be told by your partner that it was your grating dentition disturbing the peace in the […]

The recent death of a red panda kit at Edinburgh Zoo has prompted fresh calls for tighter restrictions on fireworks in the UK, after veterinary experts concluded that it was likely her death was due to stress caused by fireworks. Three-month-old kit Roxie had recently lost her mum, Ginger, but appeared to be doing well. […]

The fossilized remains of an entire prehistoric ecosystem, complete with footprints of extinct animals, have been discovered by accident in the Italian Alps. Dating to 280 million years ago, the creatures that created these vivid impressions were alive during the Permian period, a time long before dinosaurs emerged in the Triassic period. The stunning find […]

Some animals have a curious way of emitting light that we humans can see when we shine a blacklight on them, a pastime that community science website Finding Fluorescence is no stranger to. They recently reported that they’d identified 15 new species that exhibit biofluorescence, providing new insights into its possible ecological functions. When light […]

Here at IFLScience, we like to answer all manner of questions about the world around us. Sometimes that means tackling the big stuff, and other times it means violating the purity of our internet history to find out how snails have sex. You’re welcome. Finding a partner The vast majority of land snails are hermaphroditic, […]

Galaxy 2MASX J21240027+340911 has been known to have an active nucleus for a decade or so. At its core, a supermassive black hole was feeding on some interstellar material, gas or dust, that got too close. Recently, astronomers have discovered a repeating signal from this object, suggesting more complexity: It is not one but two […]

Although it may sound like hyperbole, measles cases really have surged across the world in the last few years. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 10.3 million cases were reported in 2023, which represents a 20 percent increase since 2022. The organization has said that this rapid and widespread rise is due to […]

This week on Break It Down: turns out the one time we saw Uranus it was having an uncharacteristically windy moment, new meanings behind the Amazon’s most incredible rock art, the world’s largest coral found lurking off the Solomon Islands, a ~35,000-year-old saber-toothed baby comes complete with fur, whiskers, and toe beans, and amber found […]

A major realization of Einstein’s general relativity is the fact that massive objects warp space-time in a way that is similar to a lens, magnifying and shifting the light of background objects. This was a crucial test for relativity just four years after it was proposed, and it has been seen in countless examples. Today, […]

With a love of human sacrifice, warfare, and towers made out of human skulls, the ancient Aztecs certainly knew how to have fun. Just to add to the excitement, the pre-Columbian empire-builders may have conducted some of their favorite activities to the sound of skull-shaped whistles, which produced a horrifying “death scream” that sent chills […]

For the first time, scientists have recovered the mummified, frozen body of a juvenile saber-toothed cat from the Arctic permafrost in Siberia. Despite being over 35,000 years old, the sub-zero temperatures have kept the specimen in a remarkable state of preservation, with its fur, head, torso, and limbs still intact. The frozen carcass of the […]

The movements of the planets in the Solar System are pretty difficult to get your head around, even before we get started on the dark matter which seems to keep galaxies together and rotating with ridiculous speed. One common question people seem to have about the planets’ orbits is why the planets are drifting away […]

The Hubble Space Telescope has taken a look at the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a nearby dwarf galaxy, being stripped of its gas by the far more massive Milky Way. The LMC is a dwarf galaxy, relatively close to the Earth (in galactic terms) at around 160,000 light years away. That may sound distant, but […]

Statistically speaking, you – yes, you, reading this right now – are probably not some kind of militant vegan. Chances are pretty much equally low, however, that you’re a complete psychopath – which means that you’ll probably get a bit uncomfortable if we inform you of how every year, thousands of mice, rats, cats, dogs, monkeys, and […]

Islands play a distinct role in the evolution of the animal species that inhabit them, providing different ecological niches and cutting off populations from other individuals. These conditions give rise to a whole host of adaptations, some which are more unusual than others – and some of which lead to especially hairy legs.  The Viñales […]