Deborah Bloomfield

Scientists these days are generally obliged to abide by high ethical standards, requiring them to prevent harm and conduct experiments morally, for instance, seeking informed consent from experiment participants. But stricter guidelines and ethics boards are a relatively recent development, and were often built in response to ethically dubious and morally abhorrent experiments conducted in […]

Around 2 million years ago, prehistoric humans in East Africa turned the tables on the carnivores that had previously terrorized them, learning not only to fend off these predators but also steal their kills, thus replacing them at the very top of the food chain. Generally, the ancient species Homo habilis is credited with making […]

The composition of crystals in volcanic rocks changes with their ages in ways that correlate with the Solar System’s movements around the Milky Way, scientists have reported. If the relationship is a real one, the findings would help us understand both our planet and our galaxy better, and prove a link between the two. The […]

Astronomers have seen something they did not expect: an Einstein Cross with not just the standard four images, there was an extra one. This unprecedented present might allow astronomers to better understand dark matter, the hypothetical substance believed to permeate the cosmos, outweighing the regular matter that makes us by a factor of five. What […]

Last week, NASA called a press conference for the Perseverance rover team to make an exciting announcement; the “clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars”. Further analysis continues on the potential biosignatures, attempting to rule out non-biological explanations, but while we wait there is plenty of time for speculation on what such […]

The longest-living mammal is the bowhead whale, a giant, Arctic-dwelling species that’s bigger than a bus, with evidence suggesting they can live over 200 years. That means there are currently bowhead whales swimming around Alaska that were alive when Moby-Dick was written in 1851.  Researchers know about the longevity of bowhead whales thanks to several […]

An entirely new kind of virus has been detected in bats in Queensland, Australia, during routine monitoring of flying foxes. The virus is a kind of henipavirus, and only the fourth of its kind to ever be isolated and grown in a lab. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in […]

On February 13, 2023, the sky across France and England was briefly illuminated by a small meteor burning. It was slightly less than 1 meter (3 feet) across, and then known as Sar 2667. It is now asteroid 2023 CX1, the first cosmic object that we have tracked from its discovery to its destruction, and […]

Scientists digging in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert have discovered a new species of pachycephalosaur. Normally, a new species would be exciting news enough, but this fossil is reshaping what we know about the history of these dinosaurs. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. […]

The ozone hole over Antarctica is healing. The latest update from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) shows the ozone layer remains on track to fully recover within this century, all thanks to science and international action. The latest WMO Ozone Bulletin says the ozone hole in 2024 was significantly smaller than in previous years. While […]

Of all the myriad weird and wonderful species that populate this planet, it’s probably not the humble sweet potato that you’d pick as being the most mysterious. It may surprise you, therefore, to learn that it’s only now, in September 2025 of the Common Era, that scientists have decoded its genome – meaning we finally […]

Every now and then, somebody on the Internet will look at population statistics and ask, “Why is Canada so sparsely populated?” or even more specifically, “Why is the top of Canada so empty of people?” The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. Despite […]

There’s a problem with that “March of Progress” picture that’s so often used to illustrate our species’ development: it ends. Human evolution, the image implies, began in apehood and finishes here, with us. We’re done. It’s poetic, but it’s wrong. Evolution, famously, has no end goal – and there’s no reason to assume we’re already […]

As both evolution and classic literature have taught us, everyone poops. And yet not everything about that experience is universal: European bathroom stalls have doors that reach all the way across, for example (revolutionary, we know); in Japan, toilets come with their own soundtrack; in America, the water level comes almost up to your butt […]

In a basement in Frederiksberg, Denmark, two bottles had been collecting dust for over a century. Last year, in a stroke of luck, researchers from the University of Copenhagen stumbled upon them once more, and found a suspect white powder lurking within. This residue, they would go on to uncover, contained bacteria from the 1890s […]

Necklaces dating back to the Upper Palaeolithic have been recreated from caves in southern Spain, with some of the beads made from the shells of fossilized marine mollusks. Curiously, however, the makers of these ancient adornments appear to have specifically selected two species of scaphopods – or tusk shells – despite the abundance of 24 […]

The 20th Century had its fair share of ups and significant downs, but an absolute highlight has to be how humanity went from being a largely ground-based species to one that can fly and leave the planet to visit others. A huge driver of this progress was not just the pursuit of knowledge, or doing […]

Stumble across a feisty feline, piss off a snake in the wild, or get a little too close to a family of geese, and you’ll likely be greeted with the same sound: a sharp, angry hiss. From reptiles to mammals to even certain birds, hissing shows up all over the animal kingdom. But why do […]

In the waters off Washington State, a mother orca has been seen pushing her dead newborn calf, seemingly in mourning. It isn’t the first time this grieving behavior has been documented in this killer whale pod, a population that’s imperiled with an uncertain future.  The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign […]

For many, early autumn might mean cozy blankets, pumpkin spice lattes, and pulling your favorite jumper out after a long hiatus – but not for arachnophobes.  In Europe and North America, late August through mid-October often brings a noticeable uptick in house spider sightings. What Is Spider Season? Is It A Real Thing? At the […]