Deborah Bloomfield

There’s a new COVID-19 variant on the block, called NB.1.8.1. It’s being monitored by the World Health Organization (WHO) after cropping up in a number of countries, and now the USA has joined that list. But at the same time, there are some big changes afoot, with some of the historical recommendations around booster shots […]

SpaceX’s Starship continues to miss its goals. In a test that Elon Musk’s company called a “partial success,” Starship was able to reach orbital velocity thanks to the powerful booster – but several failures, including a fuel leak, led to a loss of altitude. It disintegrated over the Indian Ocean instead of attempting a landing […]

The launch of JWST almost three and a half years ago has opened a new window into the most distant universe. A window that revealed there are a lot more bright galaxies in the first few hundred million years of the universe than astronomers expected. The “Mirage or Miracle” survey aims to study whether these […]

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Deep within the flooded chambers of a remote Mexican cave, explorers initially mistook a glinting object for a piece of 21st-century trash. But what they had actually uncovered was something far more special: a centuries-old Mesoamerican bracelet, carefully placed atop a stalagmite as part of a mysterious fertility ritual. Squeezing through caverns barely bigger than […]

To live a longer and healthier life is a common human want. We’re constantly on the hunt for ways to boost our wellbeing, whether that’s through what we eat, that exhausting, sweat-inducing spin class, or just trying to find some kind of zen in the chaos. While reaching an old age may be partly down […]

The largest and most lavish tomb ever built in ancient Macedonia may have been designed to fill with sunlight on the winter solstice, according to a somewhat controversial new study. Believed to have been built for Alexander the Great’s dearest friend Hephaestion, the so-called Kasta monument remains the subject of much debate among historians, yet […]

Almost anything can happen when we fall asleep. Dreams can take us flying, they can see us living out our dreams, or realizing our worst nightmares. Fortunately, we stay safely in our beds while all the drama is unfolding, but why is that? Why don’t humans act out their dreams? A pivotal moment in our […]

Kids can get long COVID too, but it might not necessarily look the same as it does in adults. New data out of the US, including over 1,000 children, is showing that the symptoms of long COVID look different in those aged up to 2 years and those aged 3-5. Added to what we already […]

What does Dracula have in common with just about every health service in the world? They’re always in need of fresh blood. Literally – in the US, at least, someone new needs a blood transfusion every two seconds on average, and the only way to meet that demand is using donations. But it may not be […]

The animal world is full of complex reproduction and courtship strategies, from those that must fight to secure a mate to those that might not even survive the process. Under the ocean waves, seahorses have developed a pretty interesting technique for making more seahorses that’s entirely their own. Emily May was diving near Rye Pier […]

The biggest aircraft ever built lies in ruin, but a new contender is gathering momentum.  WindRunner is a supersized aircraft that’s currently under development by the Colorado-based company Radia. Flaunting its design on their website, the startup explains that the plane will boast an 80-meter (262-foot) wingspan and measure 108 meters (354 feet) from tip […]

Sir David Attenborough’s latest film OCEAN includes a documentary film world-first: chilling footage from the point-of-view of a bottom trawler scraping the seabed. Fish, cephalopods, and rays can all be seen fleeing the wall of destruction headed their way as metal and rope wipe out ecosystems that take years to recover. It makes for difficult […]

Fuel cells that react liquid sodium metal with air could be the power source required to give electric airplanes much longer ranges, a new paper has proposed. The idea has yet to leave the laboratory bench, but the authors have demonstrated energy-to-weight ratios other technologies can only dream about. In a world hungry for low-pollution […]

Mars is a frigid desert all over, but no two places on the Red Planet are exactly the same. There are craters, fluvial valleys, volcanoes, deep canyons, and fields of dunes. But you can also find places that have a little bit of everything, such as Deuteronilus Cavus, a peculiar crater that formed on Mars […]

The Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) is an exceptional site, and its Goode Solar Telescope (GST) is a great instrument. Thanks to a new upgrade that pushes it to its theoretical limit, that special instrument has just become even better. The telescope has now delivered the clearest views of fine structures within the solar corona, […]

For the first time ever, researchers have published a photograph of a living Upemba lechwe (Kobus anselli), a rarely spotted species of antelope that a new survey suggests is on the brink of extinction. The photo was captured during an aerial survey of the Kamalondo Depression, a large region of sunken land in the south […]

The common death adder (Acanthophis antarcticus) already has quite a fearsome reputation as one of the most venomous land snakes found in Australia. And what is more dangerous than a death adder with two fangs ready to strike? Well, a death adder with three of course! Keepers at the Australian Reptile Park made the unusual […]

In the wild, baby animals like giraffes or horses will be up and walking within hours of birth – and maybe once, we would have found that impressive. Now, though? Nature can suck it. We’ve got it beat – with 3D-printed robots that can walk straight out of the machine that created them. “Soft robotics […]

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most powerful particle accelerator on the planet, can provide a tremendous amount of energy to particles and ions, making them go up to 99.9999991 percent the speed of light. This energy is incredible but tiny compared to occasional high-energy cosmic rays, which make the LHC protons look like snails. […]