Deborah Bloomfield

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 […]

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 of a yet-to-be-published study. 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 […]

Rarely is a creature so beguiling as Earth’s largest living land carnivore: the polar bear. From popular culture appearances in movies to unusual and impressive behaviors recorded by scientists, polar bears continue to fascinate. Unfortunately, they are also synonymous with climate change, tied to their dependence on sea ice to hunt their prey and raise […]

It may have crossed your mind while at the beach or in a desert that you don’t really know what you’d reach if you kept digging. Would you find sand, rock, soil, or just piles of treasure guarded by the genie Jafar? The answer, of course, varies based on where you are. Some sand dunes, […]

Stars form in large molecular clouds, where the gas gets cool enough for it to contract and then, under gravity, to collapse into stars. But as these stars start to shine they heat up the gas, forming large bubbles, or superbubbles, that can be spotted by astronomers. And now you can see the first detailed […]

A giant planet twice the mass of Jupiter has been detected after previous searches failed to find it. The planet was predicted to explain swirling arms within the protoplanetary disk around a very young star, but was missed because its light is at unexpectedly long wavelengths. Just as the planet’s discovery solves the spiral arms […]

Harry Houdini led what you’d call a busy life, debunking spiritualists, starring in movies, and escaping from handcuffs, straitjackets, and water torture cells.  One feat he performed on the side, as if his CV wasn’t quite varied enough, was to allow people to punch him as hard as they could in the stomach. According to […]

What do a sunken canoe and armadillo remains have to do with the underworld? Well, a recent discovery by archaeologists in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula may mark a site that the Maya believed led to the otherworldly realm. In 2021, a team of underwater archaeologists with the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) found […]

On Monday, we reported that the Earth’s average temperature had reached a record high, making it the hottest day since measurements began. But that’s now old news having been beaten on Tuesday, and again on Wednesday, as temperatures soared to an average of 17.18°C (62.9°F). These record conditions were reached on Tuesday, July 4, and […]

Human toes, no longer given the glamorous task of clinging to trees, are largely only paid attention to when you stub them or make the mistake of wearing sandals. Losing the ability to grip branches with them may seem like a backward step, given how much cooler our commutes would be if we swung into […]

Threads, a new rival to Twitter, has finally arrived amid an avalanche of users signing up to the platform – that includes everyone’s favorite source of popular science news, IFLScience. So what is it, how does it work, and how do you get it? The new social networking service was officially launched on Wednesday, July […]

Many stars that were born in the first billion years of the universe are now dead and gone. Some exploded in supernovae, some changed into other objects – but not all of these early stars have stopped shining. Some are still around, and researchers have reported the discovery of a population around the core of […]

The extinct apex predator Anomalocaris canadensis just got a rebrand, as new research shows these weird shrimp-like animals weren’t as tough as we used to think. Their bizarre arachnid-like front legs were thought to be absolute weapons, but modeling has now demonstrated that they might’ve struggled with crunchy prey. If you think we’re being mean by […]

A new technique for decoding the smell of a person’s hand could be used to help forensic investigators catch criminals. Testing out their method on 60 volunteers, a team of scientists successfully identified the sex of more than 96 percent of participants, revealing how the approach may help to narrow down the identity of felons. […]

Active black holes are surrounded by disks of material and can spew powerful jets. These jets, in turn, can release powerful X-rays. And some of those X-rays will shine downwards towards the black hole and disk. In the disk they can get reflected, creating an echo that astronomers call X-ray reverberation. Such a signal can […]

In the spring of 1993, a peculiar mystery gripped Taos, New Mexico. Residents began reporting an unsettling noise that nobody could quite put their finger on, and so it became known as the Taos Hum. The phenomenon became so widely known that a week-long study was conducted to try and pinpoint the source of the […]

Henry Cort, a British entrepreneur born in Lancaster around 1740, has long been regarded as discovering a metallurgical technique that was crucial to the Industrial Revolution. However, a new study has shown that Cort actually stole the practice from Black metal smiths in Jamaica.  The traditional story Cort is a somewhat unknown figure despite the […]

The United Nations (UN) nuclear watchdog has officially approved Japan’s plan to release treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear disaster into the Pacific Ocean. While the plan has been deemed safe by a variety of agencies and some experts, the idea of dumping tainted water in the sea is not sitting well with everyone. […]

Japanese scientists are reportedly set to start human trials for a drug that can regrow teeth. All being well, the clinical trial will start next year and a tooth regeneration therapy could be ready for people with holey smiles as early as 2030, according to Japanese media. Back in 2021, a team from the Graduate […]