Deborah Bloomfield

This article first appeared in Issue 16 of our free digital magazine CURIOUS.  A dramatic sight awaits anyone drifting near the shores of the Isle of Staffa where a unique sea cave is carved into the rugged coastline. Known as Fingal’s Cave, its name comes from an Irish myth in which Fionn MacCumhaill, nicknamed Fingal for “white […]

Five people with Alzheimer’s disease developed the condition as a result of a medical procedure decades earlier, a new study reports. While the procedure that has been implicated is no longer in use, the findings could provide important insights into how the disease progresses, and represent the first evidence of Alzheimer’s being transmitted to living […]

A donkey-ass hybrid from Bronze Age Mesopotamia is the earliest known example of a hybrid animal bred by people. The bones of the horse-like creatures date back 4,500 years and put to bed decades of dispute surrounding the ancient equids’ identity. After meticulous DNA sequencing, the team from the Institut Jacques Monod (CNRS/Université de Paris), […]

If you’ve ever dreamed of going on safari to see Africa’s big five, allow us to present a different kind of opportunity. The government in the Indian state of Odisha has announced the world’s first black tiger safari in a bid to provide tourists with a chance to catch a glimpse of the only black tigers […]

In recent years, the once-hypothesized landmass in the Southern Hemisphere, now known as Zealandia, has become increasingly popular for scientific research. In fact, as of the end of 2023, Zealandia became the first continent to be completely mapped out, even though 95 percent of the newly identified continent is underwater. And yet Zealandia is not […]

An X (Twitter) thread has been widely-shared over the weekend, in which Radiolab host Latif Nasser explained how he investigated the mystery of a moon labeled “Zoozve” on his 2-year-old’s astronomy poster. Having noticed the label, he of course Googled it, and found the NASA-confirmed fact that Venus has no moons. Advertisement ⓘ IFLScience is not […]

Imagine a sprinkler system with S-shaped arms. The water comes out and the sprinkler moves – so far, it seems pretty straightforward. Now imagine the complete opposite version: Your sprinkler is submerged and sucking in water. The question that physicist Richard Feynman asked was the following: in which direction does it rotate? We now have […]

Plants have been up to some pretty weird tricks already this year and now a tree fern species (Cyathea rojasiana) has joined the party. Well, in order to join in it first has to die and then come back from the dead to help its mother. Let us explain. Cyathea rojasiana is a tree fern […]

The term zero-G has been, for a long time, a popular way to explain the apparent lack of gravity in space. But it is an incorrect term. There’s nowhere in the universe where there is zero gravity. The term microgravity is actually what is now being used to more correctly describe what is going on. […]

Astronomers at The Virtual Telescope Project have captured incredible footage and images of asteroid 2024 BJ as it made a close encounter with Earth on Saturday.  The asteroid whizzed past the Earth, making its closest approach of 353,000 kilometers (220,000 miles), just 10 days after its discovery. At its closest approach, the asteroid was around […]

Despite weighing around 25 tons each, the enormous sarsen stones of Stonehenge were somehow transported over incredible distances when the monument was constructed almost 5,000 years ago. The majority of these colossal monoliths came from a spot known as the West Woods, around 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) from the site itself, yet new research has […]

With 200 billion trillion stars (ish) stars in the universe and the 13.7 billion years which have elapsed since it all began, you might be wondering where all the alien civilizations are at.  This is the basic question of the Fermi paradox, the tension between our suspicions of the potential for life in the universe […]

The speed and voracity with which our innate immune system responds to invaders is great – until it turns against us. That happens in autoimmune conditions like lupus, and researchers have been trying to better understand how the system gets so out of control. In a new study, not only have scientists identified a new […]

Scientists have had to stop using the Corbassière glacier in Valais, Switzerland, as a record of the changing climate, because the climate has changed too much.  Much of what we know about the Earth’s climate, we have learned from ice. Glaciers capture bubbles of air that reveal atmospheric concentrations of gasses when the ice formed. […]

The rate at which the rare but crucial quantum phenomenon known as tunneling occurs has been measured experimentally for the first time, and found to match theoretical calculations. The theoretical estimates in this area had been regarded as highly uncertain, so confirmation in one specific case allows for greater confidence in estimating the frequency of […]

You may have heard of the Fermi Paradox, but if you haven’t, here it is in a nutshell: Given the high probability that alien life exists out there in the universe, why has nobody got in touch?  If there are so many other civilizations out there, possibly at far more advanced stages than we are […]

Issue 19 (February 2024) of CURIOUS is out now, bringing you science highlights for the month plus deep dives into intriguing topics, interviews, exclusives, diary dates, and explanations for some of Earth’s most perplexing natural phenomena and landscapes. In This Issue… Advertisement OUR COVER STORY: Is Hypnosis Real? Or is it all just an act? Find out […]

The 12,000-year-old prehistoric site of Göbekli Tepe has become showered with attention in recent years – and rightly so – but it’s lesser known that southern Turkey is also home to a very similar “sister site” known as Karahan Tepe. Located just over 45 kilometers (27 miles) east of Göbekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe was first discovered […]

A  study by psychologists at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology claims to have found the most effective flirting techniques for men and women. The researchers looked at college students in the US and Norway, all of whom were heterosexual. The volunteer participants were sent questionnaires, asking them to rate how effective 40 different […]