Deborah Bloomfield

A team of physicists has outlined a possible way of sending probes deep into interstellar space within a reasonable timescale, using relativistic electron beams. Advertisement Space is that annoying combination of “really cool” and “really big”. We can see really awesome stuff going on out there, but unless we come up with ways to significantly […]

Our Moon is surprisingly massive compared to Earth, but that ratio is dwarfed if we consider Pluto and Charon. The latter is about 12 percent of the mass of Pluto and technically doesn’t orbit it. The pair of them orbit around a common center of mass outside of Pluto. They are dancing – and this […]

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is the first light that was able to freely move across the Universe. Released around 400,000 years after the Big Bang, it is a map that has been used by astronomers to understand the cosmos. To see it in full you have to go to space, measuring it all across […]

January is a good month for interesting planetary alignment. You will have a lot going on in the night sky. For most of the month, six out of the eight planets will be visible in the heavens. Mercury is currently on the other side of the Sun and you are standing on number eight (unless […]

Saturn is one of the nicer objects to gawp at when you have access to a telescope or binoculars, being large enough to get a good look at, and having a pleasing ring structure around it. In early 2025, you will get a chance to have an even more unusual view: Saturn, without its rings […]

Officials from the Louisiana Department of Health have announced the death of a patient hospitalized with H5N1 bird flu, the first such case in the United States. Advertisement The patient – who was over 65 years old and reported to have underlying medical conditions – had previously become the first known person in the US […]

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Nicky Fox, the agency’s associate administrator for science missions, will host an audio-only media teleconference to update the public on the Mars Sample Return mission. Advertisement NASA, together with the European Space Agency, has had an ambitious plan. Collecting samples of Martian soil and rocks, putting them in a spacecraft, […]

High levels of human metapneumovirus (HMPV) have been reported in parts of China. The news has sparked some concern, no doubt reminding people of a certain virus that erupted from this part of the world almost exactly five years ago. But do you really need to be worried about this latest disease outbreak? Here’s everything […]

Lunar samples collected by NASA astronauts during the Apollo Moon landings have a curious habit of being destroyed, stolen, or lost. In a bunch of newly released documents from Ireland, the story of one ill-fated moon rock has been revealed in new detail. Advertisement Documents from the National Archives in Dublin explain that one of […]

An oil spill in the Black Sea is believed to have resulted in the death of over 30 cetaceans, including several members of an endangered subspecies. Advertisement The spill, which occurred after two Russian oil tankers were damaged in a storm in mid-December 2024, spread out into the Kerch Strait – a strip of water […]

January 5, 2005, is an astronomical anniversary that is not really marked but should be. It saw the discovery of dwarf planet Eris and how those very observations led to a new way to describe the Solar System and heralded the eventual change of Pluto’s planetary status. Advertisement On that fateful January day, the team […]

What do you think the loudest animal on the planet is? An elephant? An army of Taylor’s Swifties? Well, you’d be wrong if you took relative body size into consideration, because for that, the award goes to the tiny water boatman: Micronecta scholtzi. It was crowned in 2011 when a team of researchers presented their […]

We are constantly learning more about the deep ocean and the creatures that live in these remote places, from sleeper sharks to disco worms. Underwater technology can give us a look into previously inaccessible places under the waves, and one team has now revealed the first-ever record of a roughskin dogfish swimming about deep in […]

Just over 25 years ago, the British Medical Journal published a study that suggested a single cigarette could shorten a smoker’s life by 11 minutes. Unsurprisingly, this caught the attention of the media, and the figure spread far and wide – the trouble was, the study had some pretty significant flaws. Now, new research has […]

Sex is disposable in the most literal sense for the sea slug Goniobranchus reticulatus (formerly Chromodoris reticulata). In a 2013 study, it became the first known animal to reproduce using “disposable penises” that could be jettisoned after mating and replaced with a new one, but the magic doesn’t last forever. It’s thought that these nudibranchs […]

It’s no secret that our gut microbiome can influence our physical and mental health in many ways, but what’s the best way to have a favorable composition? Does one diet rule above them all? A study looked at biological samples from over 21,000 individuals to find out, revealing key differences among dietary preferences, and that […]

Until around 50,000 years ago, the island of Flores in Indonesia was inhabited by a peculiar species of miniature humans called Homo floresiensis – popularly referred to as the Hobbit people. Previously, researchers thought that these Tolkien-esque characters died out when they came into competition with our own species, yet more recent research suggests that […]

After a re-emergence sparked a national emergency in Costa Rica in February of last year, New World Screwworm (NWS) fly larvae (Cochliomyia hominivorax) have once again reared their tooth-covered heads, this time in southern Mexico – with the potential to cross the border into the US. Advertisement Despite being found in just one cow in […]

Tahlequah, an orca well-known for having carried her dead calf for over two weeks back in 2018, has been struck by a heartbreaking event once again. After it was recently announced that the orca had given birth, the new calf has since died – and Tahlequah has been spotted carrying this calf too. Advertisement The […]

Atoms forged in stars take a gigantic meandering path before they become incorporated into a future generation of stars and planets, new research reveals. This path is so indirect it takes these atoms outside the conventional definition of the galaxy. This means that some of the residue of long-lost stars passed outside the galaxy before […]