Deborah Bloomfield

Researchers have created the heaviest system put into superposition yet. The crystal weighs 16 micrograms, or about one-fifth of an eyelash, and has been placed in a quantum state that has been popularized by a famous thought experiment: Schrӧdinger’s cat. In the experiment, an imaginary cat is placed in a box. Inside the box, there […]

There is only a star we are pretty sure we’ve got the right age for, and that is the Sun. Getting that value for every other star, from the very young to the very old, is a matter of clever modeling that tries to fit stars into a nice neat mold. And while it works […]

A totally new type of virus has been found living on the sunlit surface of the seas and oceans. Dubbed mirusviruses – “mirus” meaning wonderful or strange in Latin – the microbes are related to both giant viruses and herpesviruses. As such, the discovery might help to illuminate the murky evolutionary history of herpes. In […]

The most effective strategies for improving intimate relationships have been revealed by a new study, indicating the best behaviors to strengthen your feelings with your partner. Taking an array of different strategies, the research used two different studies to understand how each is perceived by the other partner, and the relationship outcomes, in an attempt […]

The butchered remains of 20 young men at a Maya pyramid in southern Mexico indicate that the site may have been a monument to the forces of death. The sacrificial victims were deposited in two distinct graves that may have been dug up to 1,200 years apart, suggesting that the macabre monument probably served the […]

Yesterday, the most powerful rocket ever built and the first to be completely reusable took to the sky and flew for almost four minutes. At that point, SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster and mega-rocket Starship were supposed to separate. Starship would have then continued to travel for another 86 minutes. Instead, it exploded – but this […]

This week, the most powerful rocket launch vehicle ever built exploded before it could reach space, a new breakthrough Parkinson’s biomarker test reaches 90 percent accuracy, and we look at the mystery surrounding the Shroud of Turin and its detailed depiction of Christ. Subscribe to the IFLScience newsletter for all the biggest science news delivered […]

An archaeological excavation in Badajoz, southwest Spain, has rewritten what we know about pre-Roman Iberian culture. With the discovery of five stone busts dating from the fifth century BCE, the previously accepted narrative on the local Tartessian culture has been turned on its head – showing clearly that the ancient inhabitants of the area were […]

A Simpsons fan has used his audio-editing skillz to process an old Simpsons clip and reveal a lost joke. Video editor Andrew “Ewzzy” Rayburn found the hidden joke in season 3 episode “The Otto Show”. In the episode, Bart is about to attend a Spinal Tap concert, when Marge declares “I hope The Spinal Taps don’t play […]

Endometriosis is a debilitating condition which affects 10 percent of women worldwide. The condition can have a serious affect on a person’s quality of life, often causing a range of symptoms including chronic pain, fatigue and pain during sex. Despite how common endometriosis is, most women wait on average 7.5 years for a diagnosis in […]

NASA has said a mysterious flash over Kyiv, Ukraine, was not the result of their Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) satellite falling to Earth. On Wednesday night, a bright flash was seen in the sky over the city, prompting an air raid alert. Advertisement The head of Kyiv’s military administration, Serhiy Popko, […]

Regarding incredible meteor showers, none can compete with the Lyrids! In 1803, a journalist in Richmond, Virginia, reported them coming down at a whopping 700 an hour. Two thousand years prior, the Zuo Zhuan, an ancient Chinese narrative history, described a Lyrids meteor shower where the “stars fell like rain” in 687 BCE. This meteor […]

Recent research has investigated the historical role religion has played in politics and how it can still be used to legitimize and justify political power in some societies.  It would not be surprising to know that religion has played a historical role in political economy across the world. The Code of Hammurabi, a Babylonian legal […]

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has said in an interview that the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) systems had begun “teaching themselves skills that they weren’t expected to have”. Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Senior Vice President of Technology and Society at the company James Manyika told CBS in an interview that their AI had shown “emergent […]

Giving cannabinoids to nematodes causes the tiny invertebrates to go on a wild feeding splurge, just like people do when they’ve had a few puffs of a joint. And like humans with the munchies, the miniature worms tend to binge only on the tastiest snacks when they’re stoned. “Cannabinoids make nematodes hungrier for their favored […]

Ancient Egyptian copper coffins that have been sealed for over 1,500 years have been “digitally cracked open” using fancy new imaging techniques to reveal their mummified contents. Although many of the innards have not fared well over the past centuries, it appears that mummified lizards wrapped in linen were placed in the coffins. Why, however, […]

A few years ago, a group of researchers made a strange discovery: No matter where they are on Earth, Cook pine trees lean toward the equator. Cook pines (Araucaria columnaris) have a distinct lean to them. In fact, according to the researchers that discovered the equatorial lean, “when grown outside of its native range, this […]

Archaeologists have uncovered part of an ancient necropolis in the heart of Paris, revealing 50 graves of men, women, and children dating back to the second century CE. While part of the necropolis was already known from investigations in the 1800s, the new dig has revealed an area previously untouched by excavation works, revealing relics […]

Astronomers from the National Astronomical Observatories of China have detected the heaviest single element in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. The planet, MASCARA-4, is what’s known as an ultra-hot Jupiter. It’s 3.1 times the mass of our gas giant, but with a temperature in the thousands of degrees – and its extremely hot atmosphere shows […]

The 1986 Chernobyl power plant accident was the world’s largest nuclear disaster. The subsequent fallout from the fires that burnt for ten days after the explosion released radioactive chemicals that spread through much of northeast Europe, across the continent, and even over into North America. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), a 2,600 square kilometer (1,615 […]