Deborah Bloomfield

A short sail away from the idyllic canals of Venice, there’s a rectangular island with a dark and strange history. Called the Lazzaretto Vecchio, or Old Lazzaretto, it was built during the Renaissance to isolate the sick souls who had fallen ill with the plague.  Learning lessons from the Black Death a century prior, the […]

You might already be aware that the name “strawberry” is a misnomer, as strawberries aren’t really berries at all. Well, it seems strawberries are full of surprises, or rather covered in them because those seedy-looking white dots aren’t actually seeds. The strawberries’ pitted accessories are called achenes, and they are in fact the plant’s fruit, with each […]

We’ve had cocaine bear, the depressing story of a bear that ate 31.8 kilograms (70 pounds) of cocaine lost during a drug deal. Now, get ready for something just as depressing: cocaine sharks. In a documentary for the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, an environmental scientist from the University of Florida, Tracy Fanara, and marine biologist […]

A gorilla in Ohio just pulled off a grand reveal that left zookeepers reeling when Sully the “male” gave birth to a baby girl. The birth was, understandably, not expected of the gorilla who was believed to have male reproductive organs, but marks a surprise win for a critically endangered species. So, before we get […]

In further evidence asteroids are not as tough as they seem, the Hubble Space Telescope has spotted large rocks escaping from Dimorphos after it was hit by the DART mission. Although we only have a sample of one, this adds to a picture of asteroids being only weakly bound together, making them vulnerable to human […]

Researchers have presented a new material called LionGlass that promises to halve the carbon footprint of the standard soda lime silicate glass. It is also at least 10 times as crack-resistant as regular glass. The new material could be revolutionary. The new glass reduced the carbon footprint in two ways. Regular glass is made by […]

The existence or not of a theoretical object or phenomenon doesn’t stop physicists from studying it. First of all, it builds the foundation for explaining different known events and it is possible that because math allows it, the universe does too. Black holes are such objects. For decades, they were mere oddities causing problems in […]

If you go down to the kelp forest today you’re sure of a big surprise – which is exactly what biologist Forrest Galante received when filming for a new TV show as part of Shark Week on Discovery. In a kelp forest off the coast of South Africa, Galante and the team managed to film […]

If you’re after some great new science books to while away the summer days, then look no further. At IFLScience, we’re always on the lookout for fascinating new releases and have been interviewing the authors of some of the most enlightening, informative, and entertaining new popular science books in our monthly free e-magazine, CURIOUS. You […]

Just as the Bible warned, the Euphrates River is drying up. However, unlike supernatural explanations like the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, there is a very real environmental phenomenon driving this problem: chronic droughts and climate change.  The Euphrates River is found alongside the Tigris River winding through present-day Turkey, Syria, and Iraq before emptying […]

Parts of the world, known as “Blue Zones”, seem to hold the secret to a long and healthy life. With many residents living for over 100 years, called centenarians, their above-average life expectancies are causing many to question what it is that makes these regions so special.  The term Blue Zone came from the study […]

Stretching for almost 500 kilometers (300 miles) across Egypt and Northern Sudan, Lake Nasser is one of the largest human-made lakes in the world. The lake was formed as a result of the Aswan High Dam structure on the Nile, and the area’s interesting geology gives the east and west banks vastly different appearances. Made […]

Parasite cleanses that promise to evacuate the worms living it up in your intestines are doing the rounds on TikTok, but as is often the case when health advice starts circulating on social media, a lot of the advice is misinformed and – in some cases – even dangerous. From claiming parasites cause schizophrenia to […]

Not all planets orbit stars. There are worlds that go rogue; kicked out of their star system, they roam interstellar space without a stellar companion. In fact, our galaxy may be full of them. They are likely outnumbering stars in our galaxy 20 to one, according to new research. With the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman […]

In this age of climate change, habitat loss, and destruction of the natural world, we take an in-depth look at one endangered species in particular: the northern white rhino. Just two females remain in the world and neither are capable of carrying a pregnancy. With such constraints in place, we ask the experts if it’s […]

Electromagnetic waves are packets of energy travelling all around us. Some of these waves have lots of energy, and some have less. We call the lowest energy electromagnetic waves radio waves. There’s a good chance radio waves are moving around you right now, shining out of wifi routers, laptops and mobile phones. Advertisement The most […]

White dwarfs are the exposed burned-out cores of dead stars that have gone through the red giant phase but are not heavy enough to go supernova. This is the destiny of our Sun. Astronomers have now announced a totally weird white dwarf, which sports two different faces. One side is covered in hydrogen, and the […]

Divers off the coast of Taiwan have filmed a rare encounter with a giant oarfish, a fish seen so rarely there are legends that their appearance precedes major earthquakes. Oarfish generally live at depths of around 200 meters (656 feet), though they have been found at depths of 1,000 meters (3,280 feet), making it rare […]

A finely crafted hunting weapon produced by an ancient hominid species sheds new light on the surprising woodworking abilities of our extinct ancestors. Analyzing the killing tool using a series of imaging techniques, researchers have revealed how the manufacturer of the 300,000-year-old object selected and treated the raw material before carving and sanding it into […]