Deborah Bloomfield

The remains of three Stone Age mammoths have been uncovered within a wine cellar in Austria, providing incredible new insights into how ancient humans may have hunted the extinct beasts. Describing the find as the most significant of its kind in over a century, researchers have said that the bones are probably 30,000 to 40,000 […]

Forget breaking into the housing market or the millionaire class – millennials have officially just reached even headier heights. Specifically, heaven. The Vatican announced recently that Carlo Acutis, a London-born and Milan-raised boy who died from leukemia in 2006 aged just 15, now qualifies for canonization – in other words, he’s ready to be declared […]

Monotremes, now known only from the platypus and a handful of echidna species, were once a much more successful order, with three new species now identified from a single geologic formation. Yet while their diversity has dwindled, the egg-laying mammals appear to be onto a good thing. Indeed, their body design has changed so little […]

Over the last few months, a small but pretty noticeable change has been creeping into plastic bottles across Europe. No longer is it as easy to throw away the lid: it’s now tethered to the bottle, and it’s all part of preparing for a new rule that’s about to come into force in the European […]

South Africa’s Witwatersrand Basin could be sitting on a bundle of “invisible gold” reportedly worth up to $24 billion – and one young scientist believes he knows how we can get our hands on it. Advertisement Witwatersrand in South Africa was the site of a giant Gold Rush in the late 19th century that was […]

A new mathematical model provides insights into what may lie under the icy surface of the most famous dwarf planet: Pluto. Sputnik Planitia, the scientific name of its heart, looks dramatically different from the rest of the distant world. New modeling suggests what is likely to lie beneath it, and its properties. Advertisement When New […]

A team of researchers analyzing previously unpublished images of Mars’s moon Phobos have found hints that the unusual moon is not what we once thought. Advertisement Mars’s moons Phobos and Deimos are a little different from the other moons of the solar system. While not as strange as the Earth’s possible “ghost moon” (aka a […]

In May 2018, Kīlauea volcano in Hawai’i erupted repeatedly in quick succession, driving ash more than 9,000 meters (30,000 feet) into the sky. Although the damage to the towns below swallowed by lava looked tragically familiar, the eruptions had features so unusual that volcanologists have been studying them for six years, eventually identifying a new […]

Eyes come in just about every form in the animal world – from unusually shaped pupils, to bright colors, and even some animals that have evolved to do without. But what about the creatures that crawl across planet Earth? When you’re used to seeing the world from the safety of a web or from behind […]

Imagine for a moment you’re a ham radio enthusiast, alone at night, idly working your way through the radio spectrum when you come across a broadcast on a disused shortwave channel, where usually there would be nothing but static. Advertisement The broadcast is a tune, or a buzz, or sometimes cartoon character Yosemite Sam saying […]

After making it through the state legislature, a bill that reschedules two medications used in abortions as “controlled dangerous substances” has now been signed into Louisiana state law, making it the first US state to make such a move. Under bill SB 276, mifepristone and misoprostol have been reclassified as Schedule IV substances – a […]

Astronomers have used the JWST to cast their eyes farther into the past than ever before, witnessing some of the earliest galaxies ever actively forming between 400 and 600 million years after the Big Bang. The space telescope was able to determine that these objects are surrounded by a lot of gas. Images from the […]

Colossal quantities of lithium – a metal that’s vital for the world of tomorrow – could be sourced from wastewater that’s been pumped out of a Pennsylvania fracking site.  In a new study, scientists at the National Energy Technology Laboratory and the University of Pittsburg worked out that 38 to 40 percent of the country’s […]

It’s easy not to give a second thought to our nails beyond keeping them clean and tidy, but keeping an eye on them can actually be pretty important. Though they only make up a small part of our body, a change to our nails might be an important sign of what’s going on inside. Growths […]

This week, a fossil of dinosaur skin has revealed it had both scales and feathers, a new study could explain why hundreds of stars have vanished without a trace, and a 1-million-year-old skull from China may belong to the “dragon man” lineage. Finally, we explore the global impact of “dark extinctions”. Subscribe to the IFLScience newsletter for […]

Although hideously ugly to humans, male proboscis monkeys (Nasalis larvatus) use their noses to woo their mates, both through the sounds they make and visual appeal, new evidence reveals. Humans have a way of appreciating nature, even if we don’t always show it. We umm and ahh at the adorability of many species, but the […]

A farmer in Canada has found an enormous piece of space junk in a field that is believed to have fallen from a SpaceX mission. The piece is 2 meters (6 feet) wide and weighs 40 kilograms (90 pounds). It landed on the farm of Barry Sawchuk in Saskatchewan province, northeast of the city of […]

The number of people who use cannabis on a daily basis now exceeds the number of daily alcohol drinkers in the US, new research reveals. Overall, more people continue to consume booze than weed across the country, yet the proportion of high-frequency stoners has skyrocketed, overtaking regular alcohol use for the first time. Study author […]

Human-wildlife conflict is one of the biggest issues relating to the ability of the world’s wildlife and people to coexist. Whether it’s living through a cicadapocalypse, having your crops stolen by hungry elephants, or the impact of war on wildlife, there are basic rules when it comes to living side by side with the creatures […]

The cicadapocalypse is now upon us, with potentially up to a trillion insects set to rise up, make a whole bunch of noise and cicada babies, and then die – all within the space of about a month. But why so noisy? That’s called seduction in Cicadaville, and it turns out we can mimic it. The […]