Deborah Bloomfield

Everest is the highest mountain above sea level, summiting at an air-thinning 8,848 meters (29,029 feet). It’s a place few of us will ever stand upon, and even fewer still attempt to get down any other way than scrambling on your feet. French snowboarder and mountaineer Marco Siffredi had a different idea. In 2001, Siffredi […]

Dozens of the busiest cities in the US are sinking into the ground. A bunch of them are subsiding by a few millimeters every single year, with certain localized spots sinking to a degree of several centimeters. The culprit is water – or rather, the removal of it. Dense urban areas, packed full of humans, […]

Ever wondered what a nearly 200-year-old condom might look like? Probably not, but thanks to a rare specimen now on display at a museum in Amsterdam, you’re about to find out anyway. Curators from the Rijksmuseum were at an auction six months ago when they spotted an unusual lot – a condom dating all the […]

The animal world is full of an impressive array of sounds, from singing whales, to those capable of mimicking humans. One species in particular is named after the noise it makes – but have you ever stopped to consider how a rattlesnake’s rattle actually works? First of all, rattlesnakes are venomous reptiles with a segmented […]

Word of a curious worm phenomenon has spread among scientists over the years. Words like, “they’re living in giant towers, Jim.” An understandably perplexing concept, but one that we can now confirm thanks to the first-ever recordings of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans forming towers in nature. Turns out, there’s a lot more to them […]

A new study has reported its findings from a rather curious experiment: getting a bunch of chimpanzees to watch a disembodied android head yawning. The results revealed that the head, both alien and familiar in its appearance, had the capacity to make them yawn and even start gathering bedding materials. The findings reveal new insights […]

Researchers have just shown that pregnant female mice with low iron levels can lead to the development of male embryos that develop ovaries, regardless of their genetics. This discovery could have significant implications for our understanding of sex determination, and it’s thought to be the first time environmental factors have been documented to influence the […]

In the Everglades of Florida, a decapitated Burmese python is offering a glimmer of hope for the ecosystem. A victorious bobcat was later spotted snooping around the body of the defeated snake, suggesting that the native wildlife is able to take a stand against the invasive species. Burmese pythons, as their name suggests, are not […]

A team of physicists have proposed a new cosmological model – dubbed the “black hole universe” – that suggests that our universe did not begin at the Big Bang. For a long time the universe was assumed to be static, a potentially infinite pool of space that is neither expanding nor contracting. But during the […]

Physicists have created a “nano-violin” so small that it could fit within the width of a human hair. This is not only good news for anyone feeling sorry for themselves – it also demonstrates the capabilities of a new nanolithography system that allows researchers to build and study nanoscale structures. It will help researchers identify […]

Some images stay with you forever. For one person, it might be the first time they laid eyes on their child. Another, their spouse waiting at the other end of the aisle. For this writer, it’s that time a frog got launched into the stratosphere by a rocket launch. I don’t mean that literally, of […]

The world’s largest time capsule – located in Seward, Nebraska, and containing over 5,000 items – is set to be opened in under a month’s time. In 1975, Seward local and former store owner Harold Keith Davisson, then a senior citizen, constructed a 45-ton vault on the front lawn of his store. “He wanted his […]

“The female of the species is more deadly than the male”, wrote Rudyard Kipling in the early 20th century, and indeed it was once proposed that female T. rex may have been larger and more terrifying than their opposite sex. However, more recent research has suggested that this probably wasn’t the case, and in fact […]

Goosebumps are one of those things, like the taste of your own spit or those weird noises your belly makes after you eat spicy food, that is so intrinsically part of our bodies you kind of forget how weird it is. But it is, right? You get a bit cold, or creeped out, and your […]

Astronomers using data from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and other observatories around the world have discovered the most energetic explosions to occur since the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. Black holes, being one of the more annoying space objects, cannot be seen by our observations except when something else interacts with them. […]

You know the situation is bad when someone suggests detonating a nuclear weapon will make things better. That’s the idea proposed by one scientist who believes a controlled nuclear explosion on the seafloor could help reduce atmospheric carbon, lessening the effects of climate change. Climate change is a big deal and is probably one of […]

A bloated submarine volcano on the West Coast of the US is about to blow, and a good snippet of the event is set to be livestreamed straight to your screen.  The Axial Seamount is an underwater volcano in the Pacific Ocean around 480 kilometers (300 miles) from Oregon’s beaches. The submerged feature towers at […]

Celiac disease affects millions of people worldwide and yet popular understanding of it is often riddled with myths and misconceptions – so let’s clear some of them up. 1. It’s “just” an allergy/intolerance/someone being fussy First things first, both allergies and intolerances aren’t to be taken lightly; the latter might not be life-threatening, but they […]

On June 5, the private Japanese company ispace will attempt to land its Resilience spacecraft on the surface of the Moon, after launching from Earth on January 15, and you can watch it happen. The team expects the lander to make touchdown at around 3:17 pm EDT (7:17 pm UTC), though this could be subject […]

Is the modern world, with its sprawling cities, hyperconnectivity, and fast-paced demands, a healthy place to live? Do you feel like it promotes a sense of wellness in its citizens, or is it more likely to produce “unwellness”? And if the answer to these two questions is negative, what do you think is a good […]