Deborah Bloomfield

Hinduism is often considered the oldest surviving religion in the world, although there are some competing ideas that make this a very knotty (and fascinating) question to answer. What is the oldest religion? The first glimmers of what would become Hinduism emerged in the Indus River Valley around 4,000 years ago. However, its origins are […]

Strange dragons can be found lurking at the bottom of a lake in Mexico. Known as achoque salamanders, these mysterious amphibians are among the rarest in the world, found only in Lake Pátzcuaro. Now, an ambitious new project has microchipped these creatures for the first time, making it easier to identify individuals. Something that really […]

The “alien mothership” hypothesis for interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is about to have a key test, as it hits solar conjunction and perihelion. What does that mean, and why is a Harvard professor of astronomy telling people to book their vacation ahead of October 29? Let’s find out. On July 1, astronomers from the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact […]

In the 1980s, a combination of persecution and habitat loss led to America’s red wolf being declared extinct in the wild. Conservation efforts to restore their numbers in the eastern United States have been up against it as debates about everything from livestock safety to their hybridization (they’re not hybrids, FYI) have tried to derail […]

Every year, around Halloween, fireballs fall down from the sky. Rather than a sign that God is displeased with us, or we are wearing too many dinosaur costumes, these fireballs are the result of “parent comet” 2P/Encke. Though far less settled, the comet is also proposed as the origin of the swastika symbol here on […]

A United Boeing 737-8 MAX flying from Denver, Colorado, to Los Angeles, California, was diverted to Salt Lake City on October 16, following an incident in which the glass of the windshield cracked. While an investigation is underway, it has been widely reported online to have been caused by a piece of space debris. This […]

A new study highlights just how flexible the human body can be by demonstrating that in adult transgender women receiving gender-affirming hormone therapy, several key proteins became altered to more closely match their forms in cisgender women. As well as changing the way someone’s body looks on the surface, the results show that feminizing hormones […]

People are ever so slightly horrified after learning the truth about how cranberries are grown and harvested. Every now and then on the Internet, people discover something about food that they thought everyone already knew. Hey, we’re all learning, right? Recently it was the turn of paprika and allspice, but now it’s our old friend […]

Back in 2017, scientists finally described what became the world’s newest great ape species: the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis). It should’ve been cause for celebration, but at the same time, the new species became the most endangered great ape of them all. There are estimated to be fewer than 800 Tapanuli orangutans left in the […]

Polar Bears International (PBI) is serious about protecting bears, and in the pursuit of reliable data, has gone to some extremes in the past. From burying scientists alive out in the snow to novel collar-camera setups that have enabled them to predict when polar bear moms and their new cubs are going to emerge from […]

The world of botany is usually pretty good at following certain rules. It was previously thought that because the Fibonacci sequence is present in the structure of so many extant plant species, it must have evolved in some of the earliest living plant species. However, an ancient species, one of the first examples of a plant with […]

A record-breaking goldfish has been caught in Champagne, France, back in 2022 when an angler dragged a 30-kilogram (67-pound) specimen from BlueWater Lakes. The carp fishery released the behemoth, known as The Carrot, 20 years ago and it has since grown to be one of the largest in the world. The rest of this article is behind a […]

A gene that was carried by both Neanderthals and Denisovans causes mice to develop larger heads, twisted ribs, and shortened spines, according to the results pushlished in the journal Frontiers. Researchers used CRISPR gene editing technology to insert the ancient genetic code into rodents in order to understand how it might have contributed to the body shape of our […]

It seems every year lately is a world-beater. As in, the violent kind of “beating”: we’ve seen new record high temperatures again and again and again; groundwater is disappearing faster than ever before; and ever-increasing numbers of people are being exposed to wildfires and deadly pollution. Overall, we’re basically running out of planetary health measures […]

A pair of showers is triggered by the Earth passing through a meteoroid stream left behind by Comet Encke. These are the Southern Taurid and Northern Taurid showers, named because their path origin appears to begin in the constellation Taurus.  The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to […]

Airborne lasers have revealed four long, low dry-stone structures on the Karst Plateau in Italy and Slovenia. The team that discovered them believes the walls were used to herd wild animals for easier hunting. Although they have not been dated with precision, these walls speak to the level of coordination in societies previously thought to […]

Over and over again IFLScience and other popular science websites report on the discovery of an element or molecule in space, whether in a star, a comet or the atmosphere of planet beyond our Solar System. No doubt many people wonder how we can tell, since we haven’t been there to collect a sample. Such […]

Scientists have imaged and quantified the toxic protein molecules that are thought to drive Parkinson’s disease for the first time. The finding will help researchers understand how this neurodegenerative disease begins at the molecular level.  The brain cells of people affected by Parkinson’s disease are stuffed with toxic proteins. Aggregates called Lewy bodies are classic […]

Many non-avian animals are capable of some form of flight. Here, we take a look at these soaring species and how they make it off the ground.  The Gliders Let’s get one thing straight. All the animals in the first part of our list are really only capable of gliding. They use various evolutionary adaptations […]

A  mitochondrial DNA study points to at least two waves of migration linking the Americas, China, and Japan- one during the last Ice Age, and another as the ice began to retreat. The research team traced a rare Native American founder lineage across the continents and time, looking at mitochondrial DNA passed down through females. […]