Deborah Bloomfield

Ever get told off in school for letting your mind wander? It’s time to feel vindicated. According to a new study, “zoning out” could actually be helping us to learn, so if you want to pause here and share this article with all your old teachers, we’ll understand. Done? Okay, let’s get into it. Scientists […]

Neanderthals and Homo sapiens repeatedly interbred, shared genes, and merged populations over the course of nearly 250,000 years. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), this intermingling of human species/subspecies is being revealed with never-before-seen clarity.  Scientists at Princeton University and Southeast University have mapped the gene exchange of H. sapiens (modern humans) and Neanderthals (Homo […]

Humans are a suggestible species. We see a friend yawn, we yawn. We see a stranger yawn, we yawn. We see an animated blob do something resembling yawning, we yawn. Heck, there’s a fair chance you’re yawning right now just from having read the word a few times.  Now, why this happens is a question […]

Prehistoric footprints found at the southwestern tip of mainland Europe show how Neanderthal families worked together to ambush prey on the beach. Dated to around 80,000 years ago, the trackways were discovered at two coastal sites in the Algarve region of Portugal and include prints made by adults, children, and toddlers. The older of the […]

Not that we like to tell anything to stay in its lane, but there are some animals out there showing behavior that, well… just doesn’t sit right with us. That’s particularly the case when it comes to jumping. Kangaroos, hares, toddlers who were accidentally given caffeinated cola at a birthday party – all of those […]

Two newly identified patterns in the stratospheric polar vortex can send cold air over North America to cause extreme cold snaps, but the parts of the country that suffer differ between them. Those keen to halt climate action will seize on any cold spell, no matter how brief and local, as evidence against worldwide trends. […]

When a team of scientists studied a group of olms in a Balkan cave, they were hoping to reveal new information about how these fascinating amphibians behave outside of the lab. They weren’t, however, expecting to find they were mind-blowingly lazy, with some individuals not moving from a single spot for years and years.  Olms […]

One of the best meteor showers of the year is about to commence, as comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle sends debris at Earth.  The Perseid meteor showers are the result of Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, a 26-kilometer (16-mile) wide comet that takes 133 years to orbit the Sun. This “parent” comet, around twice the size of the rock which dinosaured […]

Here’s a weird thing that people have noticed; large language model (LLM) chatbots have a weird tendency to give the same answer when asked to randomly generate a number. When asked to “guess” a number between one and 50, a lot of language models will consistently choose 27.  ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared […]

If you’re old enough to remember the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, you will likely remember the controversy that year surrounding the official ball of the tournament. Developed by Adidas, the Jabulani (“be happy” or “to celebrate” in Zulu) was supposed to be an improvement on the 2006 ball, using new methods. “The newly-developed […]

Did you know that the ocean has its own canaries? They’re a bit whiter and kind of enormous compared to the sort you see on land, but hoo boy, do they love to chatter.  Squeaks, clicks, buzzes, and babbling, little is off the cards when it comes to the remarkable complexity of beluga communication, but […]

A physics conference has received a report of the gravitational wave from the heaviest pair of black holes we’ve so far observed merging. The result is larger than theoretical models allow through straight-forward means, implying either a very complex prelude, or some astronomical phenomenon we don’t currently know about. In 2016 when the gravitational wave […]

Asia’s oldest elephant has died at the astonishing age of over 100. While elephants are known for their long lifespans, it’s exceptionally rare, practically unknown, for an Asian elephant to surpass a century. Vatsala died earlier this month at the Panna Tiger Reserve in the Central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, leaving behind a host […]

The COVID-19 pandemic was, at its heart, a serious reminder that our health can be significantly impacted by diseases from other animals. Obviously, this is not a new story; we’ve known for decades that emerging diseases often jump to humans from other species, but how long has this been going on for? According to the […]

Given all we know – and the far more we don’t know – about the brain, there’s no reason to assume that any gender should have a monopoly on mathematical ability. And yet, for many people, the idea that boys are better at math, or math-adjacent subjects like physics or engineering, is… well, it’s just […]

The letter “g” is pretty inescapable. It’s everywhere. Good. Great. Gongoozler. God. Garbage. Giggles. But according to a new study, people are really, really bad at recognizing it in the wild. You’re probably familiar with how to write lower-case “g”s, but how they appear on a screen or in print is not the same. How […]

This week, a new interstellar comet’s origin region has been tracked and it’s thought to be “much older than the Solar System”, Colossal Biosciences has announced its plans to make one of the biggest birds to ever walk the Earth the 5th “de-extinction” species, and chimpanzees have been observed sticking grass in their ears and […]

Sled dogs have been performing a vital role for people living in the Arctic for 9,500 years. In fact, the ubiquity of these dogs across the polar region is a testament to their significance. While there are various breeds of sled dog today, one breed is not only the oldest among them, it may well […]

If you were entranced by the full Moon last night, and would like to watch it rise again this evening, you’re probably aware you’ll have to wait until later in the night. But how much later? A quick check of moonrise (or set) times over successive nights reveals wide variation – sometimes the difference is […]

This week on Break It Down: just a week after the discovery of our third-ever interstellar visitor we may know where it came from, ancient enamel provides a snapshot into the lives of prehistoric rhinos, the moa becomes the fifth species targeted for de-extinction, a robot performs gallbladder surgery – no human required, chimps start […]