Deborah Bloomfield

Life can be pretty busy and finding the time to exercise in amongst work, socializing, and sleep isn’t an easy task. So, for some people looking to lose weight, the prospect of a drug that could speed up and simplify the process might sound appealing. But does such a quick fix really exist? What are […]

NASA’s Perseverance rover has given us a twirl and created a beautiful 360° panorama of a Martian region known as Jezero Crater. It’s believed this vast basin was once flooded with water, making it a promising location to search for evidence of life.  The video is a mosaic of 993 individual images captured by Perseverance’s […]

Pierce Brosnan, the former James Bond actor, has reportedly been charged with going off the prescribed trail near the Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park. As a result, Brosnan is due to appear at a Wyoming court on January 23. This may sound like a trivial situation – wandering off the path in a […]

Imagine being able to virtually “chat” with a deceased friend or relative: a gift to the grieving, or a dystopian nightmare come true? With the recent acceleration in development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology like ChatGPT, the idea of a “digital resurrection” is no longer just the muse of science fiction writers. But are people […]

Almost 3,000 years after the supposed destruction of a major Philistine city, the event – which is mentioned in the Old Testament – has finally been corroborated thanks to a new technique that detects ancient magnetic fields in burnt bricks. In addition to confirming that a building in the area was indeed ravaged by a […]

The first discovery of an in-situ megalodon tooth was made during a three-week expedition aboard Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus. Researchers were piloting the remote-operated vehicle Hercules when they stumbled across the Otodus megalodon tooth at a depth of around 3,090 meters (9,842 feet) within the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. The megalodon tooth is […]

This week evidence of 518-million-year-old giant predatory worms was discovered in Greenland, the Zoo Hypothesis is the unnerving answer to the Fermi Paradox, and evolution may not be as random as previously thought. Finally, we ask: what is Munchausen by proxy, and how does it affect others? Subscribe to the IFLScience newsletter for all the […]

Hypnosis is a legitimate tool that can be used as part of treatment for various psychological conditions, but not everyone is susceptible to being hypnotized. In fact, only around 15 percent of adults are considered “highly hypnotizable”, although scientists may have just found a way around this: A short session of mild electrical brain stimulation […]

Arachnophobes, look away now. Rarely do we believe at IFLScience that some small part of spider ecology or behavior can’t overcome the horror felt by even the most fearful of spider-phobes, but this one might be a step too far. Behold Hercules, the largest ever male specimen of a Sydney funnel-web spider (Atrax robustus). Not […]

Tennis is the fourth most viewed sport in the world, with the BBC’s 2023 Wimbledon coverage smashing digital viewership records with 54.3 million streams. But amidst all the grunting, have you ever stopped to wonder why tennis balls are so different from other sports balls? And why are they so damn hairy? A history of […]

New analysis of the busiest areas of the world’s oceans has revealed that we know much less about what’s going on out there than you might think. The 2,000 terabytes of satellite data revealed that around three-quarters of industrial fishing vessels, and up to 30 percent of transport and energy vessels, are not publicly tracked, […]

An antibiotic belonging to an entirely new class of drugs has been discovered, and it has already shown promise against one of the greatest bacterial threats to human health. Clinical trials have begun, and if they go well, it could mean the addition of a much-needed new tool to our antimicrobial arsenal. The antibiotic, identified […]

The long-lost remains of an ancient mangrove forest that disappeared over 22 million years ago have been discovered on an island in the Panama Canal. Scientists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute recently discovered 121 fossilized wood specimens in a stream on Barro Colorado Island in the middle of the human-made Panama Canal. The fossils […]

Many of us spend our lives chasing the wrong narratives, only to realize what really matters when faced with our own mortality. Unfortunately, by this point, it’s too late to start over, which is why many people end their days heavy with regret. Of course, no two people share the same life history and it’s […]

The theory of evolution by natural selection is robust and well-evidenced, but that doesn’t mean we are not learning new things about how life develops and changes over time. A new study has found that evolution may not be as unpredictable as previously thought. The implications could open the door to novel ways to tackle […]

A new paper has taken a fresh look at the Fermi Paradox, arguing that if we continue to find no evidence of advanced alien life as our technology progresses we will soon be left with two options: The Zoo Hypothesis, or nothing. If you haven’t heard of the Fermi Paradox, it goes something like this: […]

In the galaxy next door lies an intriguing nebula we call Tarantula. Inside, stars have been born and have died for millions of years. The closest supernova in the last 50 years comes from its outskirts, Supernova 1987A. But another supernova remnant in this nebula has caught the eye of the researchers lately: 30 Doradus […]

Egg laying was the go-to for snails for millions of years – but at some point in the last 100,000, a group of marine snails ditched eggs in favor of live birth. The switch happened in the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms, and scientists have now discovered that it was driven by around […]

In 1812, Friedrich Mohs created a scale to measure the hardness of substances. There were problems with the scale, which have inspired other scientists to invent alternatives. Nevertheless, these have issues of their own, and the Mohs scale continues to be the most widely used. It is, however, sometimes misinterpreted, so time to explain what […]

The diversity of humanity’s languages is dying. In the wake of cultural globalization and global trade, our languages are becoming increasingly homogenized. Today, almost half of the world’s population speaks one of only the top eight most-spoken languages. Nevertheless, some 7,000 languages are still currently spoken and signed, many of which are unbelievably unique and […]