Deborah Bloomfield

With the release of Netflix’s 3 Body Problem, based on the acclaimed novel series by Liu Cixin, we have seen many people ask what exactly the three-body problem is. So join us on a trip into physics and math that started at the very beginning of modern science and continues to vex scientists and thinkers […]

The eruption of the Toba supervolcano is thought to have been the largest in our species’ existence. Inevitably, it changed the climate of the planet for a period. Findings from Ethiopia have now led some anthropologists to think Toba could also be key to one of the great mysteries of human evolution: what caused our […]

Human composting has joined burial and cremation as one of the ways in which we can now dispose of our dead, taking a corpse and turning it into the black gold known as compost. It doesn’t require fuel, returns us to the nutrient cycle, and produces comparatively little in the way of emissions. So, is […]

Getting astronauts into space requires an incredible amount of fuel. The Saturn V rocket that launched the Apollo missions into space, for instance, carried 770,000 liters (203,400 gallons) of kerosene fuel, as well as liquid oxygen to allow combustion to take place. Scientists have dreamed of alternative methods of escaping our atmosphere, including concepts such […]

If you want to perform surgery on the brain, first you need to get access to it. That means cutting through the protective membranes that surround it and keep all that watery stuff inside where it belongs. But how do you seal the membrane back up again? Scientists think they may have a solution that […]

A 16th-century “vampire” who was buried with a stone brick in her mouth has been resurrected thanks to the work of a facial reconstruction expert. Discovered in a mass grave for plague victims, the long-dead woman may have been suspected of spreading the disease through her bloodthirst, hence the need to bung up her evil […]

Behold, the rarest fish in the world! The red handfish, Thymichthys politus, is known from just two small patches of reef off the coast of Tasmania, thought to be home to around 100 adults. Habitat degradation and climate change have threatened them with extinction, but thanks to a breeding program, they welcomed 21 hatchlings in […]

Diamonds are famous as the hardest substances in existence, a status that has recently met with some challenge. In theory, a variation in the way carbon atoms are arranged should make for something harder still, but so far no one has achieved the pressures required to make a so-called “super diamond”. That could be about […]

Galaxies grow by snagging material from intergalactic space as well as just gobbling up other galaxies. We see that happening in the universe and we know that it must have happened in the past with our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Thanks to the Gaia observatory, astronomers have now found two of the oldest mergers […]

The journal Archaeological Prospection has retracted a controversial study which claimed that humans had begun constructing a “pyramid” in Indonesia as far back as 25,000 years ago. In November 2023, the study garnered a lot of media attention (including from IFLScience) for its extraordinary claim that a mountain in Indonesia is actually the world’s oldest […]

The next few decades will see a dramatic drop in the number of children being born in most parts of the world, sparking a “staggering social change” to the planet.  The slump in fertility rates will be so profound that over three-quarters of countries will not be able to sustain their population size by 2050. […]

The icy crust that protects Europa’s ocean from the cold of space is at least 20 kilometers (12 miles) thick, an analysis of data from the Galileo mission suggests. The conclusion sheds no light on the question of whether that ocean contains life, but indicates how hard it will be to find a conclusive answer. […]

When we think about anatomy today, various images come to mind. Perhaps you’re taken back to high school, when dissecting pig organs or a frog was your earliest window into the body’s interior. Or perhaps you envision a cold, sterile hospital environment where greying cadavers lay on chrome tables, waiting to be examined by eager […]

Our brains are the consistency of tofu, and gross as that may be to grapple with, it makes finding naturally preserved specimens that date back thousands of years all the more fascinating. Once thought to be incredibly rare, new research challenges the view that brains don’t preserve well, revealing we’ve found a great abundance of […]

Freshwater dolphins in the Amazon and South Asia have captured hearts around the world with their unusual pink skin and status as some of the world’s most threatened mammals. But how did these unusual creatures come to live there? New fossil evidence of a 16.5-million-year-old freshwater river dolphin has helped answer these questions. The skull […]

The Neolithic sailors of the Mediterranean traveled aboard sophisticated vessels that already contained many of the nautical solutions seen on modern boats. The quality and complexity of these prehistoric crafts indicate that several major advances in sailing were achieved during the late Stone Age, paving the way for the spread of the ancient world’s most […]

If you want a quick and easy way of learning just how many curse words a person knows, try standing on their foot. Being in pain can do interesting things to our language, but could that volley of obscenities actually be helpful? New research suggests that both rude words and gestures could have a pain-reducing […]

Black holes are objects at the limit of our physical theories, so the better we understand them, the better we can test our knowledge of the universe. And while astrophysical black holes are studied in so many ways, it would be much easier to analyze one in the lab. Unfortunately, having one in a lab […]

Belugas may be known as the “canaries of the seas” for their noisy nature, but that’s not the only way these cetaceans communicate. According to a recent study, they also change the shape of their heads in what scientists believe could be a form of visual communication unique among toothed whales. Communication comes in all […]

The next time you find yourself eyeing up the snack cupboard 10 minutes after finishing dinner, it might help to know that a simple overactive appetite may not be the culprit. A new study in mice has found a brain circuit driven by cells dedicated to seeking out tasty food, and scientists suggest it could […]