Deborah Bloomfield

In 1897, mining engineer and archaeologist Jacques de Morgan made a map of several catacombs at Anubis, North Saqqara, Egypt. On this map was the first modern reference to a Tomb de Chiens, or tomb of the dogs. The name was somewhat of an understatement, for when the catacombs were investigated later in 2015, it […]

The sclera isn’t something you tend to think of when imagining animals, but looking at a photo of a chimpanzee with white eyes you might get the feeling that something’s slightly off. This is because most primates have a dark sclera, which in human eyes is the white that surrounds the iris and pupil.  The […]

Artificial intelligence (AI)-generated imagery has moved on impressively in the last decade, from 2014 when the most cutting-edge technology could produce a picture that looked like it was taken on a Game Boy Color. Now it can even win state fair art competitions.  However, there are still a few things that all the main leaders […]

A study has contradicted a prevalent belief that people on the autism spectrum are “indifferent to pain”, by finding that these individuals may actually experience pain more intensely than neurotypical people. The research team hopes that the results will lead to better pain treatment for autistic people. It is very common for autistic people to […]

Ancient history is full of people doing weird stuff, which is good news for archaeologists on the hunt for interesting artifacts or the leftovers of strange archaic rituals. Every now and then, though, researchers dig something up that leaves them utterly bamboozled, as appears to be the case for a team of scientists in England. […]

The latest issue of IFLScience’s free digital magazine CURIOUS is out now, bringing you science highlights for the month plus deep dives into intriguing topics, interviews, exclusives, diary dates, and explanations for some of Earth’s most perplexing natural phenomena and landscapes. Join us as we put curious questions to top experts, share excerpts from the […]

The 12,000-year-old prehistoric site of Göbekli Tepe has become showered with attention in recent years – and rightly so – but it’s lesser known that southern Turkey is also home to a very similar “sister site” known as Karahan Tepe. Located just over 45 kilometers (27 miles) east of Göbekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe was first […]

Every two to seven years, the equatorial Pacific Ocean gets up to 3°C warmer (what we know as an El Niño event) or colder (La Niña) than usual, triggering a cascade of effects felt around the world. This cycle is called the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) because every El Niño is naturally followed by […]

Finance can be a tool in the climate crisis, but how and where we spend the money will decide how powerful it is. Carbon credits and earth technologies that have existed for billions of years could see historically undervalued parts of the planet make well-deserved money while simultaneously securing a future for humans across the […]

It all started with a smartphone, then earbuds, and finally, a smartwatch. Your electronic life has become complicated. Don’t get us wrong, we know that you need ALL of your devices. Where would you be without them? But, how do you charge all of your devices at the same time to ensure you are ready […]

I think all craters are cool, I’m just going to start with that. I am very biased. Impact craters occur on every planetary body in our Solar System, no matter the size. By studying impact craters and the meteorites that cause them, we can learn about the processes and the geology that shape our entire […]

This week, a scene from Terminator 2 becomes reality when a tiny person-shaped robot manages to liquefy and re-solidify, researchers claim AI could reach the singularity within seven short years, and we investigate Earth’s only known sample of the rarest crystal on the planet.  Advertisement Shape-Shifting Robot Escapes Miniature Prison Cell By Liquifying Before Re-solidifying […]

Escherichia coli bacteria sometimes organize themselves into sets of four known as rosettes, a trait usually associated with multicellular organisms like ourselves, as a step towards becoming biofilms. The finding blurs what is considered perhaps the most important division among living things, and also raises questions about how we missed something so important in such […]

Picture the scene: a beautiful bright clear California day, the sun is shining, the sky is blue, the ocean is pink. Wait, what? Well, thanks to scientists at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Washington that’s exactly what you’ll get if you go down to San Diego beach in January […]

Authorities in Western Australia have warned the general population that a radioactive capsule used as a gauge in a mining operation has been lost on a stretch of road that is about 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) long. The risk to the population is considered minimal, but people need to be warned of what to do […]

The town of İznik, in northwest Turkey, may not be as well-known as nearby Istanbul, but it has a history just as long and storied. Once ruled over by followers of Alexander the Great, it eventually became one of the most important urban centers in the Roman Empire, where, renamed Nicaea, it found its major […]

When you think of primates in their natural habitat, your first instinct probably isn’t to imagine them hanging out in the Arctic. But the new discovery of two previously unknown species of prehistoric near-primates, dating back a whopping 52 million years, has shown the unexpected existence of almost precisely that: the oldest evidence of primatomorphans […]

A lot of planes, especially airliners, are painted white. There are a lot of reasons why that is the case, which have to do with comfort, efficiency, and safety. But online, there are also rumors that the white paint is not only lighter in color but also lighter in weight, making the adoption of such […]

Astronomers have known of “spider” star systems for a while. In these systems, a star is being slowly eroded by its companion: a pulsar. Pulsars are the extremely dense and quickly spinning remains of stars after going supernova; they release a lot of radiation, and it is that radiation that kills the partner. Some of […]

Humans are nothing if not an arrogant species. It’s understandable: out of all the various hominid species, we’re the only ones that managed to make it – we fought, foraged, fluked, flu-ed, and fornicated everybody else straight out of the gene pool. But just because we won the war, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some […]