Deborah Bloomfield

Almost exactly a century ago, the “Greatest Cave Explorer Ever Known” entered a labyrinth of underground caverns in south-central Kentucky and never returned. The gripping story captured the public’s imagination then and it remains a cautionary tale for thrill-seeking cavers, serving as a stark reminder not to push the limits too far. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD […]

It’s a fun “fact” that many of us will have heard before: our bodies apparently replace themselves every seven years. Trouble is, that’s not true – so what actually does happen? ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE First, it’s probably a good idea to understand why this has become such a popular myth. It possibly comes down […]

An ancient oceanic plate under modern-day Iraq is breaking off horizontally, researchers have shown in a new study. This huge underground tear, stretching from southeast Turkey to northwest Iran, is affecting the way Earth’s surface bends and shifts, reshaping the landscape as it changes. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE For millions of years, as the Arabian […]

A study using network science to measure the intricacy of 20,000 pieces of music produced over four centuries has found that music is becoming less complex over time. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Music is an important part of human life, found in every society that we know of. As such, it’s pretty interesting to learn […]

The animal world has pretty much got every form of locomotion covered, from kangaroos that have a “fifth limb”, to corals that can inflate their body tissues and space-hopper themselves across the seafloor. While leaping through the trees might sound fun, take-off and landing require a certain level of precision (unless you’re a leiopelmatid frog) […]

For millions of years, tree species have spread from the Amazon to Atlantic rainforests across a region that’s too arid for them to grow. How exactly they make this challenging journey has been unclear, but now a team of scientists has put forward a new idea: the trees are constantly using the rivers as a […]

It’s thought that proteins first appeared on Earth around 3.7 billion years ago, and since then, nature has forged them into the molecules that exist today. But what if there was a way we could artificially mimic that process – only much, much faster?  ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE That’s exactly what a group of researchers […]

A vaccine that offers combined protection against flu and COVID-19 could soon be on the cards, in answer to everyone’s winter woes. A new study details an approach that uses a defunct virus as a carrier for proteins from both influenza A and SARS-CoV-2, finding that it elicited a good antibody response in a mouse […]

A new study has found surprising evidence of large bodies of magma lurking beneath long-dormant volcanoes in the Cascade Range in the USA, with potentially huge implications for how geologists predict and monitor volcanic eruptions. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Volcanoes generally come in three flavors: active, dormant, and extinct. Though it gets a little complicated […]

September 26, 1983, was a close call for us all. Whether you were aware of the tense geopolitical situation at the time or not, Hell, even if you hadn’t yet been born, your life (or potential life) nearly came to an end. It was one of those simplistic moments where the fate of so much […]

Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanically active world in the Solar System. The gravitational tug-of-war between Jupiter and its other large moons squeezes Io so that its interior is molten. That magma finds its way to the surface in lava lakes and volcanic eruptions. In its latest flyby of the moon, NASA’s Juno mission […]

During the reign of Emperor Hadrian, two Jewish outlaws stood trial for a series of crimes including the freeing of slaves without paying the required fees and inciting rebellion against the Roman Empire. Details of the gripping case were lost for almost 2,000 years, but have now come to light after researchers translated the longest […]

We love birds here at IFLScience and frankly, the weirder the better. So, when we came across the delightfully odd creature that is the oilbird (Steatornis caripensis), we simply had to find out more – and well, what we discovered was too bonkers not to share. Oilbird origins ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE If you thought […]

A new ally is emerging in the increasingly urgent battle against superbugs – and you might have encountered it before at the dinner table. New research reveals that proteins in Sydney rock oyster hemolymph (their equivalent of blood) can kill infectious bacteria and also boost the effectiveness of antibiotics. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE These mollusks […]

Papua New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse country in the world, with approximately 840 languages still spoken today – that’s over 10 percent of the world’s total. Even more remarkable is that this linguistic richness exists within a population of just 10 million people. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Officially speaking, Papua New Guinea has […]

The first human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, Gardasil, became FDA-approved back in 2006. Since then, HPV vaccines have become a part of the national immunization schedule of at least 145 countries, with the goal of reducing or even eliminating the occurrence of some cancers. One of those targets is cervical cancer; now, nearly 20 years later, […]

NASA has issued a statement on asteroid 2024 YR4, a newly discovered asteroid with an over 1 percent chance of hitting Earth within the next decade. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Asteroid 2024 YR4 was first discovered by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Chile in late December last year. In what could be […]

A team of scientists believe they’ve hit on a new quick and easy tool that could help diagnose children with autism. Using a 1-minute video game, their study found it was possible to correctly distinguish autistic 7-13-year-olds from neurotypical children with an 80 percent success rate. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE “In my opinion, our current […]

Hold onto your hats folks, it’s super pod time! Off the coast of California, in Carmel Bay, Risso’s dolphins have been seen traveling, leaping, and swimming south in a super pod more than 1,500 strong. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Risso’s dolphins might not be the most elegant or beautiful of the dolphin groups; they have […]

In 2023, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx brought back to Earth 121 grams of material from asteroid Bennu. This is the largest sample ever collected and brought back from a world beyond the Moon. Early analysis last year suggested that this asteroid originated in a water-rich world. Newly released findings expand that further, suggesting that the conditions for […]