Deborah Bloomfield

Researchers in Poland have published a cartometric map that shows the distribution of supernatural beings from Polish folklore along the Polish-German border. The map is beautifully designed to resemble Renaissance maps, and depicts various reported phenomena, including devils, spirits, the wild hunt, gnomes, will-o’-wisps, giants, dragons, mermaids, ghosts, werewolves, and nightmares. Advertisement The map, which […]

It is undeniable that 2024 was a tough year in the fight against climate change, but it is not all doom and gloom. Good news, for example, comes from the United Kingdom where, in terms of energy production, renewable energy is going from strength to strength. The amount of electricity produced using fossil fuels in […]

The delightfully bizarre golden nugget that is the southern marsupial mole is one of nature’s most cryptic species. It’s rarely seen, not actually a mole, and has a bunch of unusual traits that until now, scientists have been unable to determine much about. However, thanks to new research that has studied its genome for the […]

Nanocrystals have been made that can switch between glowing and darkness fast enough that they could be used in computing. Some of the ingredients used in the initial demonstration may impede widespread applications, but the findings are a significant advance down the long road to lower-energy IT as processing demand skyrockets. So much solar power […]

Winter is here and it can be a difficult time for many wildlife species as they try to find food in the cold. However, if you’re visiting any of the US’s multitude of national parks, officials have a clear message for you: don’t feed the animals. Advertisement “We want to remind the public that feeding […]

When researcher and bird expert Jack Dumbacher was mist-netting in New Guinea, his team accidentally caught a lot of hooded pitohui while looking for the Raggiana bird-of-paradise. No problem, except that when they freed them, the birds gave them a nip. Without band-aids, they used the trusty old finger suck to tend to their wounds, […]

Do you know someone who, from the moment they open their mouth, you know you’re about to be taken on a captivating ride through some aspect of their life? The person could be recounting something as trivial as buying milk, but their delivery is entertaining and engaging. At the same time, there are people who […]

One of the most prolific meteor showers of the year peaks immediately in January. Tomorrow, Saturday 4, the Quadrantids will peak with an expected 25 meteors an hour for most, and a maximum rate of 120 streaks across the sky. Advertisement As showers go, they tend to lack persistent trains so they fizzle quickly, but […]

This week on Break It Down: one of the most significant mammal recoveries ever recorded (and four other wildlife wins), a once-in-a-lifetime event is about to kick off in space, spookily accurate predictions made by a “professor” 100 years ago, an undersea volcano is about to erupt, scientists achieve a world-first embryo milestone on the […]

When a quarry worker in Oxfordshire, England, noticed some “unusual bumps” beneath the site’s clay surface, he could never have dreamt that he was in fact following in the footsteps of dinosaurs. As it happens, the lumpy anomalies were made by some of the Middle Jurassic period’s largest beasts – including the ferocious Megalosaurus – […]

A party trick performed using fruit in a microwave oven could lead to more sensitive detectors of microwave radiation, with applications in fields such as dark matter detection, quantum computing, and satellite communication. Adding a pair of grapes either side of a doped diamond might seem an eccentric habit, but it could signal a low-cost […]

Academic math, you’d probably assume, is a kind of dry topic, filled with tedious equations and the like. Not so, if a new paper is to be believed: in fact, it’s an area in which you hack a common schoolyard game by teaching robots to hula hoop. Advertisement “We were surprised that an activity as […]

Welcome to True Crime in Science. Over six episodes, we have discussed some well-known true crime cases, as well as some cases you may not have heard of, and then looked further into the science and the forensic details behind them. Watch our sixth and final episode now. In episode one we covered Colin Pitchfork, episode two examined the case […]

For a long time, archaeologists interpreted the many bones of small carnivores they found in early Neolithic settlements in the Levant as coming from fur hunters, but new analysis suggests they were exploited for other purposes – foxes and wildcats were actually on the human menu. The results indicate that these small predators should be […]

For thousands of years, thinkers argued about whether light is made of particles or waves. At the beginning of the 20th century, scientists realized it was both: massless particles and waves. An even more upsetting realization came a few years later though, when Louis de Broglie put forward the idea that all matter also has […]

The Earth is a wondrous place, but some of the most stunning things sometimes come from off-world. Take, for example, pallasite meteorites – extra-terrestrial rocks that are strung through with gemstones, offering tantalizing glimpses into our Solar System’s deep history. Advertisement Oh, you haven’t heard of them? Well, you’re in for a treat. Advertisement What […]

A plane full of jet setters was given the rare opportunity to ring in the new year twice this week after their flight set off in the early hours of 2025 and landed in the last moments of 2024. Cathay Pacific flight CX880 took off from Hong Kong International Airport at 12:21 am local time […]

While there may be no magic number for minutes of exercise a day to keep us all healthy, new research has found that people who report doing over 150 minutes of vigorous exercise a week do appear to have a significantly reduced risk of developing 19 chronic diseases. Amounting to just under 22 minutes a […]

This year – 2025 – marks the beginning of a new generation. All kids born from now until 2039 will be branded as Generation Beta, a band of humans that will see a mind-boggling integration with technology and huge cultural shifts. Advertisement That’s according to Mark McCrindle, the social researcher and futurist who coined the […]

Identifying individuals of wild, free-roaming animals is a tricky and time-consuming task. Visually confirming this is also more difficult for species that live elusive lives, such as solitary big cats, or that might be nocturnal, or live in hard-to-reach areas. Given the need to protect and conserve species such as leopards, scientists have come up […]