Deborah Bloomfield

If you’ve ever raised a child and watched them learn to read and write, you may notice that they can tend to get jumbled up with their letters, sometimes writing letters or words backwards, rather than in the usual direction. Known as “mirror writing”, the first thing you should know is likely that there is […]

A massive blob lives in Utah, and its name is Pando, which literally means “I spread”. The sprawling lump of quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) has lived up to its name in spreading across 42.6 hectares (105.3 acres) in Fishlake National Forest with a network of 47,000 stems that were created through asexual reproduction, essentially making Pando a […]

It’s a story that sounds vaguely dystopic. More than half of Tuvalu’s 10,000-strong population have entered a ballot offering them a chance to win a permanent visa to Australia with climate change posing an existential threat to the low-lying island nation.  According to the public service broadcaster SBS Australia, a grand total of 5,157 applications […]

Antarctica’s “oldest ice” has reached the next leg of its journey: a laboratory in Cambridge, England. Here, it is to undergo a detailed analysis later this month, which scientists hope will unravel the mysteries contained within this 1.5-million-year ice sample.  The project is part of an international effort to improve our understanding of the Earth’s […]

Astronomers have discovered that the Milky Way might be just a small piece of a much larger cosmic structure than previously believed. If confirmed by future observations, this research could suggest that our current model of how the universe evolves is still missing some crucial pieces. As we study the universe more, we have found […]

The Red Planet is home to some genuine natural wonders, including Olympus Mons – the largest volcano in the entire Solar System – and the colossal Borealis Basin, which covers around 40 percent of the Martian surface. Yet in our attempts to explore this alien world, we’ve also stumbled upon a host of hoaxes and […]

Some asteroids are dense. So dense in fact, that they may contain heavy elements outside of the periodic table, according to a new study on mass density. The team of physicists from The University of Arizona say they were motivated by the possibility of Compact Ultradense Objects (CUDOs) with a mass density greater than Osmium, the […]

Physicists have finally observed a phenomenon whose predecessor was observed in the mid-19th Century. The scientists who made it happen claim the work may lead to better management of temperatures where this needs to be precise and highly localized. William Thomson (better known as Lord Kelvin) noted in 1851 that if one end of an […]

This week, scientists have, for the first time, observed matter-antimatter asymmetry in special particle decay, the first known trilobite fossil collected by Romans may have been used as a “magical” pendant or as a board game piece, and the “earliest moment” of planet formation has been spotted for the first time around a star 1,300 […]

Fly over Buenos Aires to the northwest, venture through the “middle of nowhere”, and you might be lucky enough to come across a giant “eyeball” slowly glancing around the green wilderness.  This strange sight is actually a floating forest island that stirs around in a surprisingly circular lake. It’s known as El Ojo, Spanish for […]

Evolution is an incredible process that has filled our world with a richly diverse set of species. In this sense, it is a brilliantly creative process that finds various ways to solve issues. But sometimes the process can appear a little cut and paste, as multiple independent species find similar ways to adapt towards specific […]

An international team of astronomers has gained new understanding of some of the densest objects in the universe and where the source of their X-rays is. This is all thanks to PSR J1023+0038, or J1023 for short, a transitional millisecond pulsar, which spins on its axis almost 600 times every second. Pulsars are a type […]

In 2012, Johnny Messner, an actor in several B-movies and TV bit-parts, was being interviewed by IGN. Throughout its course, he variously gestured at his crotch, lamented what he called “the way America’s getting s*** on”, and belched out loud. His excuse? “I’m an alpha male.” It’s an idea that’s become weirdly – and some […]

Of all the celestial bodies, none induce awe and fear in equal measure quite like black holes. They are incredible astrophysical objects and there are plenty of reasons why they are so iconic. In their supermassive form in particular, they have influenced the formation and evolution of galaxies, and more.  Host Dr Alfredo Carpineti sat […]

The word “bog” often conjures up thoughts of peat-preserved mummies who met violent ends – but that’s not the only thing to be found in them. In the wetlands of North America, there’s a tiny creature that’s so cute, it’ll make you forget about any such grisliness: the bog turtle. Turtles in general are pretty […]

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have found decades-old aerial photos that are helping them better understand the collapse of Antarctic ice shelves. The photos offer an unparalleled dataset that could also improve our ability to predict sea level rise and influence how we approach climate action. On November 28, 1966, an American flight crossed […]

A technique to allow women who carry diseases in their mitochondrial DNA to have healthy children has been performed successfully eight times since being legalized, two papers have announced. With one pregnancy having led to identical twins, the work has led to eight healthy babies, as well as one pregnancy underway. We inherit most of […]

Particles and antiparticles have opposite charges, and they annihilate if they interact, turning into pure energy. In the Big Bang, an equal amount of matter and antimatter formed, but some process must have given matter a boost, leaving just a tiny fraction of antimatter in the cosmos today. The reason for this is not clear, […]

Can spiders still spin webs in microgravity? Fortunately, we know the answer thanks to two arachnids, Arabella and Anita, who were blasted off to space in 1973. The idea for the “arachnaut” experiment originally came from a 17-year-old high school student in Massachusetts called Judith Miles. Presumably by coincidence, she suggested the idea in 1972, […]

Back in 2018, a bumper crop of new spider assassins was discovered in Madagascar. They represented four new species in the genus Madagascarchaea, as well as 14 new species in the genus Eriauchenius, bringing the total number of species up to six and 20, respectively.  These genera belong to a group called Archaeid spiders, also […]