Deborah Bloomfield

A man has died of his injuries, after taking a concealed weapon into a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) room.  Forty-year-old lawyer Leandro Mathias de Novaes allegedly took a gun with him when accompanying his mother to an appointment at Laboratorio Cura, concealed under his waistband. Advertisement “Both the patient and [her] companion were properly instructed […]

Colorful sand is something many of us played with as children, but while we poured artificial hues into glass bottles, there is plenty of natural variation among sand out in the wild. Iceland’s black sand beaches are a tourist highlight, Alaska’s jewel sand is stuffed full of aesthetically pleasing minerals, but in Namibia, you can […]

When you think of the Swiss Alps, you probably picture gorgeous snow-covered mountains, or maybe you’re reminded that they’re a great place to find an ichthyosaur. You don’t, we would imagine, envisage cacti covering the slopes. But that is the reality in some parts, as invasive species are spreading in the region thanks to climate change, […]

Brain matter is about the consistency of cream cheese. In fact, for humans, this gloop for a think-organ can even collapse under its own weight, so how can we ever hope to learn anything about the brains of long-extinct species? Well, a team of UK and US scientists recently demonstrated how, as they used computed […]

Many people like to drink dietary supplements for a pre-workout boost. These often contain caffeine, creatine, and other ingredients said to have benefits for exercise performance. Many come in powdered form, designed to be dissolved in liquid before consumption. However, a concerning trend sparked on TikTok and other social media platforms has seen a rise […]

There are some words that sound gross but mean something nice, like pulchritudinous (which actually means beautiful, despite sounding like a foot condition). Then there are words that pretty much fit the bill, like the recently researched action of flehmen, whereby a prospective male suitor giraffe will gargle a female’s urine like a sommelier slurping […]

Talking to Sharon McDougle really makes you feel like you too were there when history was being made. The retired NASA technician worked during the Space Shuttle Era. As chief of the Crew Escape Equipment, she managed more than 25 people in charge of suiting up the astronauts and making sure the equipment was all […]

There is a strange urban legend which says that you can’t throw rice at weddings because birds will eat it, and then the rice will expand in their stomachs and cause them to explode. The legend dates back to at least the 1980s, when it briefly became all the rage. In 1985, a legislator in […]

On February 3, a train derailed in northern Ohio, causing the evacuation of a town and threatening some of the most important waterways in North America. The story has attracted surprisingly little coverage, but that might be starting to change after images of the event have built traction on social media. On seeing reports of […]

Balloons and as yet unidentified flying objects are popping up all over the place at the moment. As well as four (so far) objects being shot down above the US and Canada, China says it is preparing to down one in its air space, while the Uruguayan air force is investigating reports and photos of […]

When you wonder which country has the most time zones, your mind probably goes to the countries with the largest area – Russia, Canada, the USA, China, etc – but that is incorrect. Instead, it’s better to think about the question in terms of history, colonialism, and global extent rather than sheer land mass. Surprisingly, […]

In the second federal probe into Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company, Neuralink has been accused of shipping contaminated brain implants taken from diseased monkeys, in violation of transport regulations. As reported by Reuters, the allegations were made by the Physicians Committee of Responsible Medicine (PCRM), an animal welfare group, to the Secretary of Transportation Pete […]

All the fun of drinking alcohol without the nasty hangover? It might sound too good to be true, but it’s something that’s currently in the works by world-renowned drug expert Professor David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist from Imperial College London.  IFLScience spoke to Professor Nutt in December 2022 for an episode of our podcast series The […]

Between 1914 and 1917, Sir Ernest Shackleton embarked on a wild plot to cross the entire Antarctic, an ill-fated journey that would ultimately fail but be remembered as one of the greatest feats of endurance in human history. When the Endurance, the ship carrying Shackleton’s party, became stuck in ice in 1915, the group of […]

To build a great empire you need a lot of people, so it’s hardly surprising that the most powerful civilizations in human history were all obsessed with the mysteries of baby-making. Each of these ancient cultures had its own methods to combat libido loss, though some of the aphrodisiacs employed by the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, […]

A small meteor about 1 meter (3 feet) in diameter burned up over the Channel between France and the UK in the early hours of this morning. The object, called Sar 2667, was discovered just a few hours previously and has become only the seventh asteroid impact that has been predicted to happen before hitting […]

The US military has shot down a fourth flying object over North American airspace in just two weeks. It’s currently uncertain what the latest object to be down was, but authorities say they’re not ruling anything out at the moment — not even extraterrestrials.  The airborne object was picked up on radar above Montana on […]

The Russian Space Agency Roscosmos has acknowledged a leak (officially a “depressurization”) on the Progress MS-21 cargo ship (Progress 82), which is currently docked to the International Space Station (ISS). Official statements indicate there is no immediate threat to the Station or crew – but with the effects of a previous leak still unresolved, the […]

In 18th-century England, an unwashed, bearded old man living at the bottom of your garden was the must-have fashion accessory for wealthy elites. The hermits-for-hire would be encouraged to dress as a druid and made to live in a makeshift grotto on the property where the landowner could care for them, conversate with them, or […]

The Sun is having a grand old time at the moment, flinging out plasma, solar flares, and CMEs as it starts to ramp up to the solar maximum. The latest activity saw a sunspot explode in the early hours of this morning, sending out a solar flare and shockwave through the Sun’s atmosphere. Luckily caught […]