Deborah Bloomfield

If you pick up a mirror and look at the inner corners of your eyes, you’ll notice some pink stuff. The bigger bit right at the edge is the lacrimal caruncle, a structure that protects the glands that are crucial for keeping our eyes nice and moist. Just next to it is a thin strip […]

This week, the oldest equatorial dinosaur in the world was discovered dating back 230 million years, the world’s oldest 3D map may be accompanied by sexually suggestive cave art, and we ask: what is “Nobel disease”, and why do so many Nobel Prize winners seem to develop it? Finally, we investigate the mysterious metal that ancient […]

The Atacama Desert in Chile is home to some of the most pristine dark skies on the planet. Among the astronomical sites, Cerro Paranal has the darkest and clearest skies – it is no accident that some of the most advanced observatories are located there. Now, all of them are being threatened by a new […]

Archaeologists have found a medieval spinning whorl in Tønsberg, Norway, which has some distinct symbols on its surface: three swastikas. But while we may associate this symbol with the Nazis, it actually has a much older history among various cultures and was used as a decoration in the Iron Age and Middle Ages. Throughout the […]

For BepiColombo,  2024 was a turbulent year. The mission is a joint project by the European and Japanese Space Agencies – ESA and JAXA – and a thruster problem forced the ground team to change plans for the probe’s arrival into orbit around Mercury. After a risky maneuver in September, BepiColombo has now completed its […]

This coming Monday (January 13), grab your telescope, layer up in every piece of clothing you own, and head outside. Why? Because it’s lunar occultation time, baby – and this time, it’s hungry like the wolf. Advertisement Okay, there aren’t actually any wolves. It’s just that it’s occurring when there’s a Wolf Moon, a non-astronomical […]

If you’ve ever shared a bed with someone with nocturnal lagophthalmos, especially if they didn’t warn you in advance, it’s possible you found the experience a tad… disconcerting. People with the condition do not fully close their eyes while they sleep, which to those who’ve only ever experienced closed-eye sleeping can be a shock to […]

Back in 2023, just 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) off the eastern coast of Azerbaijan, a new island was born. This wasn’t just any island though – it was formed by the eruption of a mud volcano and soon, it’ll have completely disappeared. Advertisement The mud volcano in question is known as Kumani Bank and, as […]

Update 10/01/2025: Further information has been added to this story following the publication of additional climate reports from NASA, NOAA, the UK Met Office, and the World Meteorological Organization. Advertisement It’s official: 2024 was the hottest on record, signaling a dramatic shift that is already inflicting misery on “millions of people.” Advertisement For the first […]

Much of the world has been treated to beautiful auroras recently, accompanied by the knowledge of a hint of danger in the solar storms that cause them. In Tasmania the New Year sky show coincided with a continuing outbreak of bioluminescent Noctiluca scintillans in waters off the east coast. Some photographers have captured the two […]

Being a human being is exhausting. You’re responsible for ensuring you take in the right amount of food and water, and then you’ve got to deal with the consequences of it coming out the other end. It’s a panic that leads many of us to habitually pee every time we’re about to leave the house, […]

Unless it happens to contain your birthday, we’re willing to bet that January is probably not your favorite month. The holiday fun is over, but the Northern Hemisphere winter has barely begun, and for many of us that means several more weeks of dark nights and bad weather. Oh, and another thing: it’s the peak […]

Frogs are pretty impressive little creatures – but they don’t always tend to have accuracy and physics on their side when it comes to locomotion. By looking at the cricket frog, researchers have discovered the secrets to their strange locomotion, and it has all to do with some high-speed bellyflops. Advertisement Cricket frogs (Acris crepitans) […]

Almost 200 years ago, the Sun looked as if it had turned a strange color, ushering in two years of freakishly cool weather across the globe. Scientists have long believed that the strange effect was caused by an eruption, but they’ve never been able to pinpoint the responsible volcano – until now. Advertisement It’s known […]

An interdisciplinary team of researchers has found that a skull long thought to belong to Arsinoë IV, the sister of Cleopatra, actually belonged to a young boy. The results show that the individual was probably between 11 and 14 when he died, and he may have had a pathological developmental disorder. But while the study […]

There’s a recipe from Rome and its surroundings that is deceptively simple and sinfully delicious. It has three ingredients (plus a secret one): Pasta, pecorino cheese, and pepper. Together, these ingredients make Pasta cacio e pepe, a delicious, creamy dish that is truly a marvel of Italian cuisine. Advertisement However, as we said, it is […]

Researchers at ETH Zurich have found traces of arsenic in particulate matter, clouds, and rainwater. Using new optimized measurement techniques, they have identified various ways that the toxic substance is transported into the atmosphere. Among these is a surprising route that involves previously underappreciated biological processes. Advertisement Arsenic is a naturally occurring but highly toxic […]

This week on Break It Down: unexpected and unexplained structures have been discovered hiding under the Pacific Ocean, the oldest equatorial dinosaur fossil in the world dates back a whopping 230 million years, a painted dog penis bone has been found in a ritual shaft in England (some puns write themselves), cave art from France […]

We’ve all heard some variation of this rumor: the average person “eats” eight spiders a year. And this isn’t a reference to the FDA’s standards for bug bits in food – this delicacy purportedly comes courtesy of the critters themselves, who apparently offer themselves up freely by crawling into our mouths as we sleep. We […]

The renowned physicist Richard Feynman is reputed to have once said that “physics is to math what sex is to masturbation”. Exactly what comparison he was making, he didn’t clarify – but if the orgasm gap is anything to go by, he presumably meant that math is often more fun, more effective, and better at […]