Deborah Bloomfield

It has come to our attention that a few people out there are a little confused as to why flying against the rotation of the Earth does not speed up flight times. In a post, admittedly by someone who denies that the Earth is spinning, a confused person writes: “Plane flying from east to west […]

For almost a century, we have known that the universe is expanding. For several decades, evidence has suggested that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Crucial to those estimates were the use of standard candles, celestial events of the same luminosity that can be used to measure cosmic distances like milestones on a road. […]

Chinese astronauts aboard the Tiangong space station orbiting the Earth have enjoyed humanity’s first-ever barbecue in space. While developing food that can be conveniently stored and eaten is space became a priority as humanity took longer missions into our Solar System, so far astronaut and cosmonaut menus have been somewhat restricted. The first person to […]

There are plenty of items that you are not allowed on planes, and usually for fairly obvious reasons. You cannot, for instance, bring ammunition on board. Nor slingshots, firearms, or harpoon guns. Flammable liquids are also a no no, as well as any item containing its own internal combustion engine. The rest of this article […]

A colossal structure in southern Mexico that dwarfs every other building in the Maya world was probably built without the use of forced labor, centuries before the emergence of the empire’s structured hierarchy or elite rulers, according to a new study. Known as Aguada Fénix, the colossal project was most likely conceived as a model […]

It could be said that we still live in an age of dinosaurs. After all, birds are dinosaurs, but they’re not the only close relatives we have to look to as analogs for extinct dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, birds, and crocodiles all sit within the Archosauria, a clade of “ruling reptiles” made up from diapsids with single […]

A new study has become the first-ever to definitively identify an ankylosaur hatchling. The specimen is around 115 million years old and belongs to the species Liaoningosaurus paradoxus, for which we’d previously only found juveniles. We’ve still yet to find a Liaoningosaurus adult, and as for why? The rest of this article is behind a paywall. […]

Beelzebufo might’ve been king of the frogs 70 million years ago, but nowadays, a different champ for “World’s Biggest Frog” reigns. It’s cat-sized, it’s quiet, it’s hench af… it’s the goliath frog (Conraua goliath). The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. Yes, cat-sized – […]

New observations of comet 3I/ATLAS have shown that our interstellar visitor may have lost a significant amount of mass following its close encounter with the Sun. For those who haven’t heard of 3I/ATLAS, on July 1, astronomers at the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) spotted an object zipping its way through our Solar System […]

The Mississippi River floodplains are home to one of Earth’s most impressive river monsters: the alligator gar. Known to science as Atractosteus spatula, it is the largest of the gar species alive today and among the largest fish in North America. Dr Solomon David, AKA “The Gar Guy”, has had more experience than most with […]

Our blue planet may be the most habitable we know of, but it still contains pockets of toxicity here and there. The Atacama Desert, for example; deepest Antarctica; worst of all, the crushing pressure, ice cold, and extreme salinity of the ocean floor.  Nevertheless, as a renowned mathematician once said, “life, uh, finds a way.” […]

In a dank cave below the Albanian-Greek border, scientists have uncovered a spider web that’s technically big enough to catch a whale. Stretching 106 square meters (1,140 square feet), the spindly structure is likely to be the biggest web of its kind ever found.  The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign […]

Evolution has a funny way of leaving the residue of past adaptations in strange places on animals’ bodies, and chestnuts on horses’ legs are a fine example. Nobody’s quite sure what horse chestnuts exactly are, but they’re believed to be a remnant left behind from horses’ five-toed ancestors. The rest of this article is behind […]

Possums living in the Greater Melbourne area have levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS, often known as “forever chemicals”) in their livers high enough that their health may be affected, according to a new study. The findings raise questions about animals that occupy similar niches in other urban environments, and what may be in […]

It’s a question probably every child has asked at one point: why don’t we have tails? Our pets do; in fact, they’re found on the end of most vertebrates, and at least superficially on some invertebrates too. We even sometimes euphemistically refer to our own “tails”, or suffer through the agony of a bruised tailbone […]

Nobody turns down a trip to Loch Ness, a chance to visit the supposed home of the world’s favorite cryptid (sorry, Bigfoot, I will not be taking questions). Do I believe in Nessie? No. Did the trip raise more questions than I was anticipating? Yes. Because, as a journalist preparing for an investigation, I do […]

A month ago, we were talking about C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) as one of the three green comets then visible in the sky. It was the dimmest of the trio, so it did not get as much focus as C/2025 A6 Lemmon and C/2025 R2 Swan. It was also expected to be destroyed during its close […]

After 55 years missing from the Karakum Desert, it was suspected that the Turkestan long-eared bat (Plecotus turkmenicus) had likely gone extinct or become very rare. Nobody had seen the species since 1970 and there were no photos or recent descriptions to suggest otherwise. Until now. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. […]

There’s plenty of rough sex in the animal kingdom, but dinosaur copulation may have been so violent that it literally broke the spine of the female. Ironically, though, that’s wonderful news for palaeontologists, as the love scars left behind by these prehistoric couplings may finally enable us to distinguish between male and female specimens. The […]

New research has thrown a spanner in the works for giraffe conservation, after analyzing the genetics of giraffes kept in human care in North America, and finding that most of those studied are in fact hybrids. If we were talking about this prior to August 2025, there wouldn’t necessarily be a problem; before that point, […]