Deborah Bloomfield

A newly discovered leg bone from Columbia is likely to be from the largest member of the Phorusrhacid family – appropriately known as “terror birds” – we have yet found, and could have stood more than 3 meters tall. The team describing the fossil thinks the individual it came from was 5-20 percent larger than […]

A massive blob lives in Utah and its name is Pando, which literally means “I spread”. The sprawling lump of quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) has lived up to its name in spreading across 42.6 hectares (105.3 acres) in Fishlake National Forest with a network of 47,000 stems that were created through asexual reproduction, essentially making […]

When energy sources are discussed, solar and wind often go together like a high school couple whose identities seem to have fused. Supporters hail them as the twin solutions to both the environmental crisis and the domination of fossil fuel markets by hostile countries, whereas opponents dismiss them as too variable, too expensive, and too […]

The peak size of the ozone hole over the Antarctic in 2024 was the seventh smallest since recovery began, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have found. Even its maximum extent was smaller than it has been in five years, since the even smaller hole in 2019. The monthly average was around […]

Ancient DNA from the skeleton of a baby who lived and died in southern Italy 17,000 years ago has painted a fascinating picture of the ill-fated infant and offers a rare snapshot into ancient life. His remains were found in such good nick that, all these millennia later, researchers have been able to reconstruct details […]

The world is full of scary things. Jellyfish and hair loss, to name just two. And while the middle of the night is clearly not the most practical time to start worrying about these threats, many of us find ourselves wide awake at 3am thinking about how we might have to pee on ourselves if […]

For all our fancy telescopes and particle accelerators, we still haven’t managed to detect even a smidgen of dark matter. In a dramatic change of course, researchers at Virginia Tech are now taking a staggeringly low-tech approach to the hunt by looking for the elusive stuff in a bunch of old rocks. While most scientists […]

At Georgia’s Fort Mountain State Park, a historical marker erected in the 1960s tells of a mysterious race of “moon-eyed” people that are said to have occupied Appalachia until they were vanquished by the Cherokee hundreds of years ago. Nearby sits an ancient stone wall, thought to be the remains of a battlement that some […]

A signal beamed towards Earth from Mars has finally been decoded after thousands of people from around the world spent more than a year examining the message. In the end, a father and daughter duo from the US managed to crack the code and reveal the contents of the dispatch, yet the process of interpreting […]

That old saying about death and taxes being the only certainties in life has been disproven by physicists, who have revealed that our existence is governed by a third – and equally terrifying – inevitability: all of our cables are doomed to become tangled. This awful discovery was made in 2007, and was recognized with […]

Microwaves are the undeniable king of convenience; bung last night’s leftovers in one and a few minutes later you’ve got a delicious hot meal. Unfortunately, they can sometimes get a bit of a bad rap, with claims that microwaving food can cause us harm. It is, however, safe – here’s why. Radiation Long before the […]

This week, an “extremely rare” fool’s gold fossil revealed the soft tissue of a 450-million-year-old new-to-science sea creature, Voyager 1 has phoned home from 24 billion kilometers away, and we ask: what is the rarest gemstone? Finally, as we celebrate the 70th year since the creation of the Godzilla franchise, we discuss the lessons learned […]

One of the complaints when it comes to solar power is that you usually have to link it to batteries. Even in areas with plenty of sun, you cannot have sunlight 24/7 all year round. At least, not on Earth. In space, however, you can. For decades, people have been considering options and possibilities of […]

“Cabin crew, arm doors and crosscheck” is the instruction delivered over the plane’s public address. In-flight staff then pull a metal lever on each door before attaching a little red ribbon across the window of every exit, and we’re all thinking the same thing: that flimsy rag can’t be doing much. In reality, though, this […]

Next time you’re staggering into a takeaway restaurant with a belly full of beer and a desperate need to raise your blood sugar levels, it’s a good idea to check the quality of the doner kebab you are about to slather in sauce and shovel into your booze-addled body. A study in 2022 by the […]

Welcome to the wonderful world of Crocodylia, or more specifically the order. Here, we’ll break down the differences between alligators and crocodiles, beyond which one will be seeing you later and which one will be seeing you in a while.  Let’s start with a little background on crocodiles Crocodiles have a pretty wide distribution: the […]

This week on Break It Down: a quantum cat experiment breaks a record for surviving over 23 minutes, Voyager 1 encountered a glitch but fixed itself with some old school tech, fossils from the Ordovician are a glittering new species, animals are getting drunk more than we thought, though we’re not quite sure why, kyawthuite […]

Every year a small town in Canada gets a sudden influx of polar passersby as the world’s largest bear (that begins life as a fluffy stick of butter) embarks on its annual migration. The big move is driven by the return of the sea ice they need to hunt, but getting to seal town involves […]

The 1988 Piper Alpha disaster has been described as one of the worst industrial accidents of its kind. While it was a tragedy of horrific proportions, the incident did spark some significant positive changes in safety standards across the world.  The hellish disaster unfolded on the night of July 6, 1988, at the Piper Alpha offshore […]

Gather round the fire, oh traveler, and listen to an ancient story. The days of the old gods are numbered; one day, catastrophe will strike and the final battle-to-end all battles will take place. Here the gods will die and the world as we know it will end. This is the story of Ragnarök, the […]