Deborah Bloomfield

After over a year of observations, the National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope has completed the first cycle of its commission phase. To mark the occasion, eight new images have been released showing some highlights of the work undertaken there. The images focus on the photosphere, the region commonly referred to as the […]

A woman who underwent a heart transplant at 22 years old has visited her old heart, now on display at the Hunterian Museum in London. At university, Jennifer Sutton realized she was struggling with moderate exercise, the BBC reports. Soon, she was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy – a rare condition where the heart’s chambers stiffen […]

For the first time, scientists have been able to detect chronic pain as it happens, using electrodes implanted in the brains of four human volunteers. The detected brain signals could accurately predict an individual patient’s pain levels, and could one day lead to a solution to chronic pain where other treatments have been unsuccessful. Chronic […]

Almost 54 years ago, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the Lunar Module Eagle and landed on the Moon. After less than a day on the surface of our natural satellite, they lifted off, to meet up again with Michael Collins in the command module Columbia. Once back on Columbia, the Eagle […]

Steeped in mythology and peculiar plant life, Socotra is arguably among the most unique places on the planet. Unfortunately, this island of beautiful natural landscapes has since fallen on hard times after becoming entangled in the messy civil war of Yemen, one of the globe’s worst humanitarian crises. Socotra is located in the Indian Ocean […]

WhatsApp has revealed a new “Chat Lock” feature that will allow users to hide personal conversations in a folder that’s sealed with a password or biometric authentication. While the company said it’s been designed to add “one more layer of security” to its instant messaging platform, many have dubbed the update as a “feature for […]

During the late 19th and early 20th century, in the seaside town of Eden, Twofold Bay, Australia, there was a very curious and smelly “cure” for rheumatism. This cure relied on locating a dead whale, making a hole in the skin, and crawling inside as if it were a slimy, meaty, rotting sleeping bag for […]

Fungi found feeding on plastics have given researchers fresh hope that we may one day be able to clean up the new habitats humans have made on Earth by leaving anthropogenic trash laying around. These “plastispheres” have been recognized as a habitat for marine organisms, but new research looking at these unique ecological niches on […]

Jupiter is a very pretty planet. Whether seen with a small telescope or up close by spacecraft, the planet’s colorful stripes and storms are a stunning defining feature. They are the product of a complex atmosphere always churning, which can regularly lead to stripes changing color. The reason for it has been quite the cosmic […]

DNA left behind in the surrounding environment could act as an invisible fingerprint, identifying the exact people to have been there previously, according to new research. The findings suggest there may be no place to hide from future scientists or law enforcement, posing a new ethical dilemma of how such information could be gathered and […]

On September 13, 2005, a disease began to spread in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft. An update to the game had introduced a new area for higher-level players, known as Zul’Gurub. In the area, there was a boss called “Hakkar the Soul Flayer” (warning: this article may contain words used […]

In 1999, a plane took a strange course across the United States. It had climbed to its designated altitude as usual, but instead of heading towards Dallas, it began flying straight over the US towards Canada. No contact could be made with the crew, and military jets scrambled to intercept the phantom flight, fearing the […]

Sounds may be physical phenomena, but to humans they also carry meaning and certain qualities. For instance, some sounds are more pleasing than others, while some are more ominous or unsettling, relaxing and soothing, or just plain noise. Now a group of Swiss researchers have discovered that our brains show a preference towards pleasing sounds […]

Mad cow disease – or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) – has made a rare appearance in the US, although the detection of the condition in a single cow in South Carolina does not pose any danger to people. According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the animal was identified and isolated before it had […]

A medical case report documents the time a man drank a big bottle of NOS Octane Booster, believing it to be an energy drink. The 54-year-old man showed up at the emergency department in Washington, Seattle, after experiencing seizures and a state of agitation. Usually the onset of seizures would require a bit of investigation, […]

The Statue of Unity is the tallest statue in the world, towering so high that the Statue of Liberty’s outstretched arm barely reaches its belly. Standing at 182 meters (597 feet) tall, the giant statue can be found gazing over the Narmada River near the town of Kevadia in Gujarat, India. It depicts Vallabhbhai Patel, […]

If you own a telescope, now might be a really good time to take a look at a famous galaxy in Ursa Major. If you don’t, but know someone who does, see if they’ll let you take a look – it’s not often you get to watch a giant star explode before your eyes and […]

An eating disorder awareness group is raising awareness of artificial intelligence (AI) image-generators and how they propagate unrealistic standards of beauty like the data on the Internet they were trained on. The Bulimia Project asked image generators Dall-E 2, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney to create the perfect female body specifically according to social media in […]

This week, we explore the gravity anomaly at Hudson Bay, Canada, find out the estimate for the maximum number of T. rexes to ever walk the Earth, and investigate whether you can actually sniff out an oncoming downpour. Subscribe to the IFLScience newsletter for all the biggest science news delivered straight to your inbox every Wednesday […]

The flood story you may be most familiar with is probably Noah’s Ark, but it’s far from the only tale of a great flood sent by a god to destroy a civilization. There are eight basic plots in storytelling, not seven: Overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy, rebirth […]