Deborah Bloomfield

If someone were to invent “smellovision”, it seems we might all end up watching the same show slightly differently – researchers have discovered that our sense of smell can affect how we perceive color. Humans are constantly bombarded with sensory information: the whirr of the computer fan as you work; the bright white of that […]

Octopuses, squids, and other super-smart cephalopods may soon receive the same legal protection in the US as other animals used in scientific research, such as monkeys and rodents. Last month, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) put out a call for information to help shape their proposed guidelines for the protection of cephalopods used in […]

Earth’s worst day at the start of the Permian extinction saw the planet’s surface transformed into a fiery hellscape. However, at other times in its history, Earth has become a ball of ice and snow. “700 million years ago, Earth was a giant snowball cloaked in ice from pole to pole – a global deep […]

Ordinary wave reflection off a suitable boundary is a familiar part of life. We witness it every day when we look in the mirror, hear it in echoes, and can watch ocean waves bounce off a breakwater if we want to see the process on a more graspable scale. Time reflections, also known as temporal […]

One of the greatest battles an animal lover faces is wanting to see living things up close but needing to accept that in many situations this is neither practical, possible, or ethical. While zoos and aquariums can play a vital role in safeguarding populations that are vulnerable in the wild, there are many species that […]

When and how humans first settled in the Americas is a subject of considerable controversy. In the 20th century, archaeologists believed that humans reached the North American interior no earlier than around 14,000 years ago. But our new research found something different. Our latest study supports the view that people were in America about 23,000 […]

The Lake Victoria of today is relatively young at just 16,000 years old, but within this tiny timeframe, some 500 different species of cichlid fish have managed to evolve here. Remarkably, this explosion of diversity is primarily thanks to hybrids born as a result of inter-species breeding. In a new study, scientists at the University […]

This week we investigate the curious case of a killer whale that swallowed seven sea otters whole, 23,000-year-old human footprints are the earliest known in North America, and a surprising number of animals glow under UV light. Finally, we learn about the scholar who claimed Jesus was actually a hallucinogenic mushroom. Subscribe to the IFLScience […]

For the last five years, astronomers have been spotting peculiar stellar explosions that don’t behave like any other known. These rare events are known as Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients (LFBOT) – you may even remember the first one, nicknamed the “Cow” (AT2018cow). Already strange, they just got stranger as Hubble has observed one happening […]

For the first time, scientists have managed to deflect lightning, to the relief of anyone afraid of thunder and lightning storms but probably the chagrin of Zeus. They managed to show that lasers can act as virtual lightning rods, redirecting the direction in which bolts jump. The Franklin lightning rod was a major scientific advance […]

Scientists in China have begun digging a 10,000-meter (32,808 feet) hole into the Earth, the deepest ever attempted in the country. Digging down through 10 layers of rock, the team hopes to reach rocks from the Cretaceous Period, the layer known as the Cretaceous System, which dates back up to 145 million years. The project, […]

If you don’t already visit IFLScience daily, there’s a whole new reason why you should – because researchers have found that awe-inspiring science can have a positive effect on your sense of wellbeing. The recently published paper covers three studies that examined how people view science in a spiritual way, similar to religious spirituality, and […]

The desert: on the face of it, not a particularly appealing place to live. For starters, it’s full of sand, which as we all know is coarse and rough and gets everywhere. Add to that a distinct lack of water and food sources, and you’ve got a recipe for seriously inhospitable surroundings. But some animals […]

Let’s start with a point a few people may not like. The Bible, the collection of texts that make up the holy book for Christians across the world, was not created in the state we have it today. The whole thing is a compilation of different narratives, instructions, prophecies, and poems written by different people […]

On October 14, there will be an annular solar eclipse seen widely across the Americas. The Moon is near its apogee, the most distant point in its orbit; as it moves between the Earth and the Sun it will not cover our star completely, and the so-called “ring of fire” will remain visible. However, it’s […]

Wetlands are full of surprises, but one thing you don’t typically expect them to do is go bubblegum pink overnight. That’s the scene unfolding in the Boondall Wetlands in Brisbane, Australia, where residents were surprised to find the water had mysteriously turned pink. It’s a bit late for this, Barbie marketing team. Officials did consider […]

Italian luxury brand Prada has joined Axiom Space in the development of the next lunar spacesuits. The Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) is going to be donned by the next moonwalkers, ideally in late 2025 when Artemis III is supposed to get to the Moon. The NASA prototype for the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Units (xEMU) […]

In a schematic view, an engine uses a thermodynamic change to produce work. For example, when a gas is ignited, it expands and so pushes a piston. Now, researchers have been able to develop a similar kind of engine but instead of using the relationship between temperature, pressure, and volume, the new device uses quantum […]

Japanese and Thai researcher have identified four species of luminous snails in what is only the second discovery of this kind in 80 years. Bioluminescence is actually quite rare among animals. To date, scientists have only identified around 7,000 species of animals that can glow this way, most of which are located in the world’s […]