Deborah Bloomfield

Something strange is stirring deep beneath Earth’s surface. Just a few decades ago, human activity set off a slow-motion shift in the molten rock of the upper mantle beneath Eurasia. The changes are occurring beneath what was the Aral Sea, located between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Once one of the largest lakes on the planet, the […]

A comet first discovered in late March has already become bright enough to be seen with binoculars under dark skies with a 2-degree tail. It should reach its brightest around May Day and offers a good chance of becoming visible to the naked eye. The last 12 months have been a bit of a boom […]

Silver: it makes for nice jewelry, fancy forks, and even parts of the device you’re using to read this article. But would you put it in your mouth and swallow it? Some people do, claiming that silver in the form of colloidal supplements is the answer to all manner of ills. Trouble is, it really […]

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Have you heard of the Blue Java banana? If social media is to be believed, the fruit is bright blue and tastes like vanilla ice cream.  Perhaps not-so-shockingly, these claims are not entirely accurate. But they are not entirely without basis either. Indeed, in its unripened state, the banana peel possesses a “blue-green” hue–before turning […]

Everything is bigger in Texas – including its oil fields. The Lone Star State is the beating heart of America’s oil empire, pumping out 6.3 million barrels of crude oil every day. To understand how it became an oil-producing powerhouse, you need to look back millions of years ago – and then fast-forward to the […]

Famous for its iconic pyramid and temples, the ancient Maya city of Tikal is no stranger to imperial conflict, having provided the setting for the Rebel Alliance base in Star Wars: Episode IV. However, new research suggests that the jungle-covered site may once have been conquered by another Mesoamerican superpower from central Mexico. Located in […]

Gold mining is putting an immense strain on the Amazon rainforest, but the trees might have a secret weapon up their bark. Just as tree rings can record the passage of time and shifts in climate, new research shows they can also help to track down destructive gold mining practices. Here’s how it works: human-made […]

For weeks, near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4 has dominated the news. From the moment of its discovery in late December until the end of February, it became the space rock with the highest risk of impact on our planet. Preparation to protect ourselves kicked in, and a global effort of observations delivered the happy news that […]

In 2019, experts from multiple countries and disciplines worked together to create a diet that would be both good for us and good for the planet. They called it the Planetary Health Diet. Despite, the commonsense choices in this food program, the health benefits have been untested until now. Researchers compared it with the famous […]

New Zealand’s South Island is home to many treasures. Some vast, like Milford Sound, some small, like the blue mushroom to be found there, and some treasures that are literal gold, albeit very, very tiny. Yes, the beaches here are sometimes littered with the stuff, but do we casual beach strollers stand any chance of […]

Sweet, savory, sour, bitter, and umami are the five classic tastes our tongues are trained to detect. But lurking on the edge of this flavorful lineup is a lesser-known sensation: ammonium chloride. Best known as the tongue-tingling punch behind salty licorice, this sharp taste might just deserve a spot among the basic five. Taste is […]

How many meters above sea level do you live? Buckingham Palace sits at only 16 meters (52 feet) above sea level, while Paris sits 50 meters (164 feet) above. By contrast, the top of Japan’s Mount Fuji sits 3,776 meters (12,388 feet) above sea level and is still less high than the highest city of […]

Scans of the wreck of the Titanic appear to show evidence for heartbreaking reports from the ship’s final few hours. The wreck of the Titanic, which sank in April 1912, is slowly disintegrating and may soon disappear, the inevitable result of rust, sea salt, bacteria, and a plethora of deep-sea creatures. “The future of the […]

If you’re quite happy with a cup of instant – or worse still, prefer tea – we’ll be honest, this one’s probably not for you. But if you own coffee scales, can argue passionately about the importance of grind size, and time your espresso pull to the second, you may be interested to learn that […]

A new study has found an entire new primary category of microbes hidden within Earth’s Critical Zone, sometimes referred to as the planet’s “living skin”. Back in the 16th century, Leonardo da Vinci once said, “We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot,” and that’s a sentence which – […]

Colossal Biosciences have introduced a new kind of wolf to the world, but had you been alive over 12,500 years ago you might’ve seen a similarly enormous predator stalking across the Americas. They have functionally de-extincted the dire wolf by genetically modifying a gray wolf, giving life to three puppies that share some of the […]

Uranus is so weird. Its magnetic field doesn’t go through the center of the planet, it rotates on its side, and it is fairly featureless. Some of the peculiarities might be due to a colossal impact in its past. Still, they make it difficult to assess even simple properties like the length of a day […]

In the volatile world of cryptocurrencies, crashes are common. However, one of the largest was not just a random event, new research indicates, nor a result of the inherent instability of a product without underlying value. Instead, a handful of apparently coordinated individuals brought two of the largest digital coins down. The identities of this […]

If you’ve ever watched any track and field events, horse racing, indoor cycling, or (shudders) baseball, you may have noticed that they all run in a counter-clockwise direction. Why is this, and why does it appear to be the standard worldwide?  While the tradition has not been continuous – for instance, Oxford and Cambridge runners […]