Deborah Bloomfield

On the jagged coast of Scotland lies an island that has stood deserted for decades, haunted by its legacy as a biological warfare testing ground during World War II. Gruinard Island is around 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) long and a short boat ride from the shore of Ross-shire in the Inner Hebrides of western Scotland. […]

Art critics of the world, look out – a pigeon might just be coming for your job. Well, if you’re in the business of deciding if a child’s artwork is good or bad at least, because that’s exactly what one scientist trained a bunch of pigeons to do. Watanabe Shigeru, a Professor Emeritus in psychology […]

Hundreds of scientists have gathered for an “emergency summit” in Australia to discuss the imperiled future of Antarctica. Concluding their findings in a statement published today, the polar researchers have a stark message: urgent action is needed to prevent the melting of Antarctica and catastrophic sea level rises around the world. “Nowhere on Earth is […]

A zircon crystal blasted off the face of Mars before landing on Earth as part of one of the most unusual meteorites ever found has revealed the oldest evidence of water on Mars. Moreover, it has shown that this water sometimes combined with sources of heat, presumably from volcanic activity, similar to those some think […]

Eat lots of fruits and vegetables, take regular exercise, and don’t smoke – probably the three most common health messages we all hear. The fact that smoking tobacco is a major risk factor for lung cancer – as well as numerous other diseases – is so well accepted now that it’s hard to imagine a […]

Not to sound superstitious or anything, but yet another oarfish has washed up in California. In early November 2024, Scripps Oceanography PhD candidate Alison Laferriere came across a dead oarfish, measuring roughly 2.7 to 3 meters (9 to 10 feet) in length, that had washed up on Grandview Beach in Encinitas.  The discovery follows at […]

This week on Break It Down, astronomers have taken the first-ever close-up photo of a star outside of the Milky Way, putting weight back on after losing it could be down to your fat cells’ “memories”, the mystery surrounding the Earth’s inner core “freezing”, footage shows a “giant” virus infecting a cell for the first […]

The oldest firearm ever discovered in the continental US has been found at the site of a massacre that occurred in Arizona in 1541. Brought to America by the Spanish conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, the bronze cannon was supposed to protect the residents of the first European settlement in the American Southwest, most of […]

Legends tell of gold-hungry Conquistadors encountering a steaming river of boiling water within the depths of the Amazon rainforest. Surprisingly, this sensational tale holds a remarkable degree of truth. The unbelievably hot waters of Peru’s Shanay-timpishka – also known as La Bomba or simply the Boiling River – have been known to Indigenous Amazonian communities […]

It’s one of those hidden-in-plain-sight rules of life: the opposite faces of standard dice always sum to seven. Six is opposite one; five is opposite two; three is opposite four. It’s just how it is. But have you ever wondered why? It wasn’t always such a given. High and late medieval dice were often designed […]

If you found yourself on Google’s homepage yesterday, you would have noticed that there was a fun little card game in which you match cute cards and learn about the lunar cycle. This is the name for how the Moon’s appearance changes over a month, or specifically, the 29.5 days of its orbit around the […]

There is still plenty to learn about the pyramids of Egypt. For instance, it would be nice to know what is in the massive void sealed inside the Great Pyramid of Giza 4,500 years ago, or precisely how the materials were transported to the area before construction. But let’s start with the basics: how many […]

The transition from symbols like hieroglyphics to writing may have happened much earlier than had been thought, an archaeologist has claimed. However, if the evidence stands up to scrutiny, it poses the question of why one of humanity’s greatest inventions appears to have taken so long to gain widespread use. There’s probably no way to […]

How do you work out what an extinct animal sounded like? One place we can look to is their fossils, and a new research project has set out to do just that for Parasaurolophus, creating a set of pipes they’ve nicknamed the “linophone” inspired by chambers in its skull. The name comes after its creator, […]

Another day on the internet; another disturbing urban legend threatening to ruin your entire childhood. And this time, it’s got generational juice: if what we’re hearing is right, it’ll upset not just you, but about a thousand of your ancestors, too. Of course, that’s a pretty big if. Advertisement What’s the claim? Like so many […]

Ever been told to “have a good cry”? It seems like an oxymoron, but there’s truth behind the idea that crying can make you feel better. As well as providing a release for stress and emotional pain, crying can release feel-good hormones. If you’ve been looking for a sign to stick on Inside Out and […]

In an odd turn of events, it’s not unusual for the average couple to cozy up on the sofa together after a long workday and unwind by watching a horrific story about a serial killer. Whatever floats your boat. In the spirit of this, IFLScience are pleased to announce a new series called True Crime […]

The Martian moons Phobos and Deimos may be remnants of an asteroid that got too close to Mars and was destroyed by its gravity. The explanation, backed by supercomputer simulations, could resolve a long-standing debate between two options, both with substantial flaws. The existence of Phobos and Deimos has puzzled astronomers for a long time, […]

Africa is the homeland of humanity – at least, that’s what most experts currently think. Like all families, Homo sapiens has a complicated story marked by disagreements, unanswered questions, and glaring gaps in our understanding. The idea that all members of Homo sapiens (that’s us) can trace their ancestry back to Africa is known as the “Out of […]

As a science website, it is easy to get caught up in the mysteries of collapsing civilizations and the fine structure constant, while people out there on the Internet are struggling with why flying against the planet’s rotation doesn’t decrease flight times, and what the “Muffin Man” nursery rhyme is actually about. This week, it […]