Deborah Bloomfield

This week on Break It Down: Two spacecraft just created the first ever artificial solar eclipse, thanks to some impressive drone photos we know now dancing dinosaurs might have been leaping around to impress females in Colorado, a child from the world’s oldest burial site appears to be a Neanderthal-Homo sapiens hybrid, for the first […]

When Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022, her 70 years on the throne fell slightly short of the record for a sovereign state monarch. That accolade belongs to Louis XIV of France, who ruled for 72 years until his death in 1715 – although even his reign was but a flash in the pan […]

The world’s first microfiber recycling facility has just opened in Cornwall, England. Run by the Cleaner Seas Group, the new Microfibre Filter Hub, Microplastic Recycling Lab, and Return and Recycle Center aim to transform our approach to microplastic pollution in the world’s oceans. Many of us are probably aware of the prevalence of microplastics, given […]

For clues as to how dinosaurs dated, we can look to the last living dinosaurs: birds. On Earth today, several species perform lek mating, a spectacular display that sees males gather together for what is essentially a dance-off. Females will watch the males perform, and the most impressive wins the chance to mate with her. […]

Astronomers are ready to share with the world the very first groundbreaking images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The facility, supported by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, is set to observe the sky like never before, thanks to its incredible digital camera, the largest in the world.    You can […]

New research explains how a common brain parasite, called Toxoplasma gondii, can disrupt brain functions, even when it only infects a small number of neurons. The microscopic parasite, which infects nearly one-third of the world’s population, interferes with communication between brain cells. The researchers behind the new study hope their findings will lead to new […]

Evidence has been found for a mantle plume beneath Oman, on the Arabian Peninsula. Unlike all the confirmed mantle plumes found before, however, this one is not associated with current or recent volcanic activity, earning the title “ghost” plume. Mantle plumes rise from the boundary of the Earth’s outer core, bringing extra heat to the […]

Fifty years ago, a film hit the cinemas that would change the way movie-goers saw the ocean. Author Peter Benchley’s creation, JAWS, was brought to the silver screen by (a relatively unknown, in 1975) Steven Spielberg and, helped along by a killer score from John Williams, they created a supervillain unlike any Hollywood had ever […]

The expanse of space and the oceanic abyss hold a fascination for humanity; extreme environments where our bodies and technology are pushed to their limits, yet we continue to explore. We take this tongue-in-cheek question seriously and pose it to astronauts and explorers who have done both. Join co-hosts Dr Alfredo Carpineti and Katy Evans […]

An old video taken on board China’s Tiangong Space Station has been doing the rounds over the past few days, as viewers noticed a glass of water sitting on one of the tables. The video in question is actually three years old, and involves Chinese astronauts conducting classes for children back on Earth. In the […]

A new paper examining and simulating the formation of wide-orbit planets has put the chances of our own Solar System harboring the hypothetical “Planet Nine” at up to 40 percent. In 2016, two astronomers at Caltech presented evidence that six objects past the orbit of Neptune were bunched together in a way that suggested they […]

If you’re up to date on your Voyager news, you will know that the aging spacecraft are slowly saying goodbye to their instruments, as NASA tries to conserve power and get more science data out of the remaining payloads. In the latest shutdown, the cosmic ray subsystem experiment on Voyager 1 and Voyager 2’s low-energy […]

Ever looked a little too closely at the skin of an apple and noticed its surface is covered in thousands of tiny brown, or sometimes white, dots? Well, that doesn’t mean the apple has been sitting out in the Sun too long, or that it’s got some kind of trypophobia-triggering disease. These tiny dots actually […]

Humans aren’t the only animals with numerical awareness, although we are alone in our ability to perform symbolic manipulations of numbers. Taking a deep-dive into the evolutionary roots of our arithmetical tendencies, a team of researchers has uncovered strong evidence that extinct human species like Neanderthals and Homo erectus may have been the first mathematicians. […]

Nothing ruins a nice seaside swim than someone shouting about something swimming in the crystal clear waters, right next to you. While most people might mistakenly call a Portuguese man o’ war a jellyfish, the species is actually a siphonophore, which is closely related. Now, scientists have worked out that the fearsome man o’ war […]

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved lenacapavir, an injectable drug that has been shown to act as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to reduce the risk of sexually acquired HIV. The drug, which is being marketed by Gilead Sciences as Yeztugo, has shown a 99.9 percent prevention rate in a clinical trial involving people of […]

Constantly offloading cognitive tasks onto artificial intelligence (AI) may come at a cost to your brain. According to a new research project, writing essays with the help of ChatGPT diminishes the vibrancy and interconnectedness of your brain’s neural activity.  What’s more, you’re unlikely to remember much of what you wrote, and the essay itself will […]

In late 2026, a human-made object will reach a full light-day away from the Earth for the first time in human history. Space is big, and human-made objects are slow. The record speed any human has ever traveled was set by Apollo 10 back in 1969, and has not been broken since. The fastest human […]

A collection of scientific papers from English mathematician, codebreaker, and father of computer science, Alan Turing, has sold for £465,400 (US$625,000) at auction after narrowly avoiding being shredded. The works include possibly the most famous theoretical paper in the history of computer science, On Computable Numbers, and many other works that “represent the foundations of […]

The Salton Sea, California’s largest lake, is producing more toxic hydrogen sulfide gas than previously thought, according to a new study. The levels are so high that they exceed the state’s air quality standards, posing a potentially greater risk to the health of local communities. The lake is located around 257 kilometers (160 miles) east […]