Deborah Bloomfield

Scientists have discovered a brand-new species of deep sea-dwelling fish, sporting a unique facial feature that led the team to name it after a character from the animated film Princess Mononoke, a cult classic produced by Studio Ghibli. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE The fish – which belongs to the family Branchiostegidae, commonly known as deepwater […]

Cast your mind back 56 million years. Can’t? Allow us to refresh your memory: it was the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, a 200,000-year period of rapid carbon release and global warming that turned Earth’s oceans acidic and saw terrestrial animals suddenly get much, much smaller. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Some whittled down to just 30 percent […]

Four years after it was first discovered, a team of Czech scientists have finally confirmed that they’ve found the world’s largest underground thermal lake. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Nestled within the limestone of Vromoner in southern Albania, the body of water – now named Lake Neuron, after the foundation that sponsored the team – was […]

In a new study, scientists have been able to use peptides taken from an ancient hominin to determine its sex – and at 3.5 million years old, they believe it to be the oldest such specimen to have been successfully analyzed in this way. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE As palaeoanthropologists have discovered more and more […]

Star Trek, as well as being a great sci-fi show, is known for either predicting or inspiring real-world technology. Scientists are putting artificial intelligence in “holodecks” for training purposes, are making progress towards a tricorder, and are honing in on whether a warp drive would be possible with real physics. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE But […]

Over the last few weeks, Asteroid 2024 YR4 has become a staple in science news columns. This space rock has a fluctuating but small chance to hit our planet around 12 pm UTC on December 22, 2032. This chance will likely drop to zero in the coming weeks, but the possible size and current risk […]

Can you get organic compounds in a fossilized bone? There was a time we thought not, but a new study that used a novel combination of techniques has provided the best evidence yet for collagen within dinosaur remains. So, the question becomes, what else could we find? ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE “This research shows beyond […]

In 1920, a farmer plowing a field in Grootfontein, Namibia, hit a sudden roadblock below the surface of the soil. Curious about what had stopped his plow, the farmer dug around and found a very strange sight. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Beneath the soil was a giant slab of metal. In fact, at 60 tons, […]

We’re eating too much sodium. That’s the message from the World Health Organization (WHO), which recently published new guidelines on the use of lower-sodium salt substitutes.  ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE According to the guidance, announced in January 2025, 1.9 million deaths every year are attributable to a high sodium intake. Despite public information campaigns and […]

If you’ve ever seen a beauty influencer don one of those mildly creepy red light masks, you might have wondered if they actually do anything for your skin. Is red light therapy really the answer to all of our skin woes, or does it just make us look a little bit silly (and/or like a […]

Plants are among Earth’s oldest and largest organisms. The 80,000-year-old Pando – a vast colony of quaking aspen covering 42.6 hectares (105.3 acres) – is believed to be one of the oldest and largest living organisms. Meanwhile, the ocean harbors two of the largest single-celled organisms in the form of algae. While the world’s tallest […]

If you take a glance at maps produced in the 17th and 18th centuries CE, you may notice something unusual about California. For centuries, it was depicted as an island. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Old maps are pretty fascinating things to take a look at. If they don’t have phantom islands or warnings of lizard […]

What’s your favorite dinosaur? If you said “pterodactyl”, then oof – we’ve got bad news. The same goes for anybody who went for a plesiosaur: they weren’t dinosaurs, and neither were their flying pals. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE “You may think that an animal is a dinosaur because it’s large and scaly,” paleontologist Danny Barta, […]

The second law of thermodynamics underpins all of classical reality. It is the reason why it’s easier to make things messy, why you can’t have perpetual motion, why you age, and maybe even why time only moves in one direction. There have been considerations that the quantum world might escape the constraints of this law. […]

Pittcon is where science meets innovation. This fantastic annual event brings together researchers, innovators, and industry leaders from around the world, and, for the first time, it will be held in Boston, USA, from March 1-5 this year. With a legacy spanning over 75 years, Pittcon first took place in Pittsburgh, organized by the Society […]

Every parent who has ever sifted through their child’s hair with a nit comb has had the temptation to just grab the electric razor and be done with it. Yet while a kindergarten full of hairless toddlers may eliminate one local infestation, what would happen if we expanded the anti-lice campaign on a global scale? […]

Around the galaxy exist stars that have been given a push, and orbit much faster than the vast majority of their stellar companions. These are known as hypervelocity stars, with some moving faster than the escape velocity of the Milky Way of around 600 kilometers (373 miles) per second. There is another star that is […]

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It’s not unusual for species to have a few tricks up their sleeves that we never knew about. Blue whales can sing low enough to remain undetected by killer whales, tarantulas can run just as fast with six legs as they do with eight, and now research has revealed that Amazon river dolphins (Inia geoffrensis) […]