Deborah Bloomfield

Montana has become the first US state to pass legislation banning TikTok from nearly all devices. There are still some uncertainties about how the ban will actually work, but many suspect other states might be looking to roll out similar laws to prohibit the social media platform.  Montana’s House of Representatives voted in favor of […]

A gene that’s only expressed in the testicles of various mammals, including humans, could be the key to an effective, reversible, non-hormonal form of contraception for men. A new study details how manipulating the Arrdc5 gene in mice led to infertility in males, and scientists say that a drug targeting this gene could be a […]

Starship is finally ready to take the sky. The launch window opens at 7 am Central Time (12 pm UTC) and Elon Musk promises that while it might not be successful, it will be anything but boring. Starship is a huge project for SpaceX, quite literally. It is going to be the biggest rocket ever […]

This week, AI sharpens the first-ever image of a black hole with incredible results, it turns out it’s pretty easy to die from soy sauce consumption, and we weigh up just how many organs the human body can afford to lose. Subscribe to the IFLScience newsletter for all the biggest science news delivered straight to […]

Finding life on other planets might well be the holy grail of astronomy, but the hunt for suitable host planets that can sustain life is a resource-intensive task. The search for exoplanets (planets outside our Solar System) involves competing for time on Earth’s biggest telescopes – yet the hit rate of this search can be […]

A strange circular structure in the cold, harsh highlands of Bolivia may once have hosted rituals designed to control the region’s hostile climate, researchers have suggested. Reporting the discovery of the unusual pre-Hispanic ceremonial center, the study authors say the “surprising” construction is unlike any other ever found in the Andes. The ruin was located […]

Deep in the Canadian Arctic, you can find a 51-square-kilometer (20-square-mile) pileup of fallen trees and ancient wood. Scientists have recently mapped this woody pile-up – the largest “logjam” in the world – and believe it’s likely to be having a massively underappreciated impact on the planet’s carbon cycle. The pile-up is located in the […]

Some of the oldest windmills in the world are found in Nashtifan, on the windswept plains of northeastern Iraq. These vertical-axis windmills are thought to have been built over 1,000 years ago. They still work today and could be used to mill grain into flour.  Advertisement Credit: Great Big Story Deborah BloomfieldSource Link: The Ancient […]

Despite the fact that the largest silver nugget ever found weighed around the same as an adult bison it is thought that all the silver in the world would be able to fit into a 55 by 55 meter (180 by 180 foot) cube. Just FYI, this cube is bigger than the gold one, which […]

Scientists have found a strange warm liquid spewing out from the seabed “like a firehose” near Oregon, which they suspect could provide some hints about earthquake activity in the Pacific Northwest. Researchers led by the University of Washington named the first-of-its-kind discovery Pythia’s Oasis. Located around 80 kilometers (50 miles) off the coast of Newport, […]

When a result has been around for as long as the one we now know as the Pythagorean Theorem – it’s maybe 4,000 years old at least, at last count – you might expect there wouldn’t be much new to say about it. But as two high school students from New Orleans may now have […]

The 2022 underwater eruption of the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai (HTHH) volcano released energy equivalent to 20 megatons of TNT in five explosions, the largest of which was 15 megatons. That puts it well behind Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear bomb ever tested, but far ahead of America’s largest nuclear bomb, the 1.2-megaton B83. It also […]

Around 5,500 children with rare genetic diseases can put a name to their condition for the first time, thanks to a decade-long study. Sixty of the diseases diagnosed are brand new to science, and three-quarters of the genetic mutations identified were not inherited from the children’s parents. Understanding the genetic causes of their conditions means […]

This beautifully blue speck of zircon crystal is dated to around 4.4 billion years old, making it the earliest confirmed piece of the planet’s crust and providing some clues about how life on Earth came to be. The ancient crystal was found in the sticks of Western Australia at a remote rock outcrop called Jack […]

Get ready icy moons of Jupiter, Europe is coming for you. Today the first-ever European mission to Jupiter, JUICE, successfully launched from French Guiana, and is now on its peculiar flight towards the Jovian system. It will reach the gas giant in July 2031 and once there will provide new insights into its three large […]

In 1900, three lighthouse keepers posted on a remote Scottish island in the Outer Hebrides went missing and were never seen again. The account of the crew of the Flannan Isle Lighthouse has become a popular story that evokes all the tropes of a gothic mystery, and has generated a plethora of explanations ranging from […]

In an unexpected and unintentional ode to Aquaman, a rather unusual biomaterial has been trialed in Brazil, where it’s been used to great success in the treatment of burns. If something seems fishy to you, that’s probably because it is: the secret ingredient in all this is tilapia, the freshwater fish native to Africa but […]

The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), sometimes called China’s “artificial sun”, has broken the world record for the longest confined plasma reaction, according to reports. The researchers claim to have maintained an ultra-hot plasma for 403 seconds, breaking their previous record of 101 seconds in 2017, and hope the milestone is another step towards the […]

Childhood in Ancient Egypt was something of a mixed bag, with some kids enjoying the luxury of becoming Pharaoh before turning ten while others struggled with iron deficiency and poorly oxygenated blood. According to a new analysis of child mummies, anemia was a common problem for the Egyptian youth, leading to high rates of skeletal […]

Since humans (and our ancestors) began traversing the waves thousands of years ago, we’ve been mapping islands and landmasses along the way. But many of the islands discovered centuries ago seem to have disappeared from the oceans without a trace. Termed “phantom islands”, these landmasses may have vanished for a number of reasons, or never […]