Deborah Bloomfield

It’s not unusual to see elk in Estes Park, a Colorado town shadowed by the Rocky Mountains. As of late, however, there’s one elk in particular that’s been catching people’s eyes, thanks to its rare – and very pretty – coloring. The female elk (also known as a cow – yes, really) in question doesn’t […]

Where does the Sun end and the Solar System begin? The answer is not clear-cut. The Sun’s atmosphere – the corona – extends far into space, and its processes shape the solar wind that streams in interplanetary space, affecting planets, moons, and more. To better study these interactions, NASA launched a mission made up of […]

Erect-crested penguins (Eudyptes sclateri) might be a little under the radar when it comes to the penguin world. However, they have one pretty cool and unusual trick up their little penguin sleeves. These birds lay essentially one and half eggs each year in a bizarre breeding strategy.  The least studied of all the penguin species, […]

The weather likes to throw some pretty spectacular curveballs every once in a while, from impressive thunder and lightning to blood rain and pancake ice. Now, mesmerizing footage has been recorded of a “fog tsunami” rolling over Lake Michigan.  The time-lapse video was recorded by South Haven-based photographer Scott Johnson, who suggested that a nearby […]

The results are in, and we finally know what happens to human cells exposed to 5G signals. In a sealed experiment at Constructor University in Germany, scientists bombarded human skin cells with electromagnetic waves that were ten times stronger than the recommended exposure limit, way above those produced by 5G towers, for up to 48 […]

It is obviously unfair that while we wait for Betelgeuse to go supernova (it won’t anytime soon), the good people living during the Early Modern Period had not just one, but two supernovae visible in the night sky: one in 1572 and one in 1604. The explosive death of a star, from a safe distance, […]

Our planet is a water world. Around 71 percent of Earth’s surface is covered by sea – and this view of the world really hits that home.  The image from Google Earth shows the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the largest and deepest ocean on Earth with a total area of over 155 million square kilometers […]

There’s been a murder most foul – or, should we say, most marine-mammalian – in North Carolina: a bottlenose dolphin, found dead and decapitated last month on the state’s Lea-Hutaff Island. Worse still? It was sick – and whoever took the head may be at risk.  A headless dolphin, lying dead on the shore, makes […]

Solar storms can be scary. They have the ability to disrupt our tech, cause blackouts, and even impact us directly. Still, nothing directly observed nor in living memory might quite compare with new findings from researchers – a peak of radiation, consistent with an extreme solar particle event (ESPE) more intense than anything previously known […]

The photograph of the Earth taken from lunar orbit, sometimes known as “Earthrise”, is one of the most famous ever taken. However, while its beauty is widely agreed on, it gives little sense of scale, let alone brightness. So how bright did the Moon look to the Apollo astronauts? Is there anything useful future lunar […]

Humans are desperately in need of new antibiotics, so you can imagine the surprise when a team of scientists uncovered a new molecule wielding formidable antibiotic power against superbugs inside a Chinese mine. The star of the story is saarvienin A, a brand-new glycopeptide antibiotic produced by an unusual strain of Amycolatopsis, a genus of […]

An infant with a life-threatening and incurable genetic disease has become the first human to successfully receive a personalized gene editing therapy. This is a massive achievement and could represent a platform for the rapid development of treatments for other genetic diseases. The child was diagnosed with carbamoyl phosphate synthetase 1 (CPS1) deficiency shortly after […]

Doctors in Montana will now be allowed to recommend and sell treatments not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), thanks to a new bill that just passed in the state. Once it’s signed into law by the governor, any drug produced in the state will be able to be sold after going through […]

Homo sapiens are incredible things. In humanity’s longest prehistoric migration, groups of daring people walked over 20,000 kilometres (12,427 miles) from North Asia across to North America and down to the southernmost tip of South America. In a new study, scientists have traced this momentous journey using  DNA sequence data from 1,537 people from 139 […]

A startup high-speed flight company from Houston, Texas, has successfully tested its Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE) ultimately aimed at allowing travel at four to six times the speed of sound taking off from a conventional runway. RDRE has been talked about as an alternative propulsion mechanism since the 1980s, providing theoretical advantages over traditional […]

Forty years ago today, a trio of UK scientists reported that something strange and very unexpected was occurring over Antarctica. They didn’t know it at the time, but they had “accidentally” (their words, not ours) made one of the greatest geophysical discoveries of the 20th century and started one of the most important scientific stories […]

On the border of two South American countries, miners have discovered a hoard of valuable metals that’s been described as “one of the world’s largest copper, gold, and silver resources.” A new survey estimates that the Vicuña Mineral Resource in the San Juan Province in Argentina and the Atacama Region of Chile contains up to […]

When new rules or measures are introduced, they often spark resistance in people who feel like their personal freedoms are being eroded. This type of resistance, referred to as reactance, can be so severe that it actually discourages policymakers from making important decisions, especially concerning delicate subjects. However, new research suggests reactance is short-lived and […]

Richmond, a small port city in California’s Bay Area, is currently at the center of a bizarre phenomenon that’s baffling both residents and officials alike: an unexplained spate of exploding birds. First reported by ABC7 News, residents told the outlet that they first noticed birds turning up dead several months ago, and have since witnessed […]

Brain fog has become one of the most familiar, and most feared, symptoms associated with long COVID. In a new study, scientists say they’ve identified two biomarkers that are altered in people with long COVID compared with people who recovered fully from the infection, indicating that there may be more we can do to identify […]