Deborah Bloomfield

Traditional chemistry is so last year. Welcome to the world of mechanochemistry, where reactions that were thought impossible – indeed, that are impossible when attempted in more conventional ways – become possible, and where brand-new avenues of exploration are opening up.  Even if the last time you entered a chemistry lab was way back in high […]

Earth’s rocky crust can sometimes seem like a drab, dull, and lifeless place (sorry, geologists, we know it’s more interesting than that… sometimes). However, with a drill, a microscope, and a bit of luck you’ll see that beneath the surface lies a hidden world of history and life.  The term “endolith” – deriving from the […]

A curious phenomenon has been reported among people who have undergone heart transplants. For some, they believe that they may have received more than just an organ in the exchange, as they report altered emotions, tastes, and even memories that seem to belong to the person who donated it. Could it be that these organs […]

The land bridge across the Bering Strait that lasted through much of the last Ice Age was likely very different from what has been imagined. Instead of a mix of grassland, tundra, and ice sheet, the connection between Asia and North America consisted of boggy wetlands punctuated by rivers and higher ground, a new study […]

When you bake a loaf of bread or a batch of muffins, you put the dough into a pan. As the dough bakes in the oven, it expands into the baking pan. Any chocolate chips or blueberries in the muffin batter become farther away from each other as the muffin batter expands. The expansion of […]

There are a lot of things that people are good at guessing just by taking a look, like whether something is sturdy enough, or well-balanced. But it seems that knots are something that eludes most of us. Once a good sturdy knot is placed among similar but worse ones, our brains can’t immediately recognize the […]

In a world that still contains some potent predators, you might think the deadliest animal would be something like a great white shark, or a grizzly bear, or another similar beastie. You would certainly be forgiven for thinking so, given how much media attention a rare big animal attack gets these days. However, the world’s […]

Nature has a nifty way of throwing unexpected collaborations into the mix, and on that topic, might we introduce you to the panda dolphin. Known to science as the Commerson’s dolphin, it rocks an unusual pattern in black and white and has a curious habit of swimming upside-down. Panda dolphins are divided into two subspecies, […]

In the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, collisions occur where, for a fraction of a second, the conditions that existed right after the Big Bang happen once more. In the deluge of particles that form during those moments, physicists are keen to find the most peculiar, as they help probe the limits of our physics. […]

Many of us remember growing up with questionable toys that would not make it onto the shelves today – whether they would not be deemed appropriate for kids today or contained potentially harmful materials that made them a health risk. Now, a vintage toy set that was once listed as one of the “most dangerous […]

So-called dark comets exist in two classes, large objects in the outer Solar System and smaller ones closer to the Sun, a new paper reveals. Dark comets are not a form of dark matter, but objects with no visible tail or outgassing, but whose orbits reveal comet-style acceleration. It’s a category that includes ‘Oumuamua, the […]

Nuclear energy is a controversial subject for many people. Although traditional nuclear energy, derived from uranium or plutonium, has been hailed as a reliable, low-carbon energy source, it has also raised significant objections from environmentalists, the public, and policymakers alike. Many of these objections have related to nuclear energy’s overall safety, its high costs, limited […]

Seeing a fish floating vertically might normally be cause for concern, but in the case of Aeoliscus strigatus – better known as the razorfish or coral shrimpfish – swimming snout down is nothing to be worried about. So why exactly do they do it? Masters of disguise The answer lies in where these characteristically long, […]

A bunch of fishermen in the Dmanisi region of Georgia picked up an unexpected catch recently when they hauled in a stone tablet bearing an ancient inscription in a language that has never been seen before. Researchers aren’t entirely sure when the mysterious text was engraved or by whom, but suspect it probably dates back […]

It can be tricky to see sponges as animals, stationary and plant-like as they are, but they represent some of the longest-living animals on the planet. Arguably the most impressive can be found in Antarctica, where scientists estimate one specimen may be as old as 11,000 years. The sponge in question belongs to the species […]

On April 14, 1986, the Gopalganj district in Bangladesh was hit by a deadly hailstorm that would kill 92 people. According to the World Meteorological Organization’s World Weather and Climate Extremes Archive, the hailstones that fell from the sky that day weighed as much as 1.02 kilograms (2.2 pounds), earning the giant balls of ice […]

There are a lot of areas of physics that appear counterintuitive, with some of the most famous examples including wave-particle duality and time dilation. But you may feel like you have a pretty intuitive understanding of fairly simple macro objects, for instance, a pole. So here’s a question; when you take a long metal pole […]

From 1990 to 2020 the world got hotter and most of it also got drier. “Most” here not including the oceans. Areas meeting the definition of drylands have expanded by an area equal to almost three times that of India. The trend has been described in a United Nations report as revealing; “A global, existential […]

Scientists from the European Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) are ready to say that 2024 is going to be the hottest year our planet has experienced since records began. This is both surprising and concerning. Surprising because these records are usually awarded after the period has ended. Concerning because even without including data from December, […]

The expression “it’s like learning to ride a bike” is often used in situations where you never really forget the lesson. Once you know how to ride a bike, that’s it, you just know. But while you may know instinctively how to ride a bike, you probably don’t know the physics of it. For instance, […]