Deborah Bloomfield

Monarchs have donned regnal names after having ascended to their thrones since ancient times. When it comes to Popes, this is a standard and important practice, and the name chosen has a lot of symbolism from honoring deceased popes to setting one’s own pontificate. But it has not always been like this. Getting elected to […]

NASA astronaut and keen astrophotographer Don Pettit returned to Earth on his 70th birthday on Sunday, April 21, completing a 220-day stint on the International Space Station (ISS). While on board, he and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner orbited the Earth 3,520 times, traveling 150.2 million kilometers (93.3 million miles) since they docked […]

A genomic analysis of roses has shown the ancestral rose was not red, white, or pink but yellow, which would have proven deeply frustrating to those in search of a rhyme. The work provides a description of the ancestral rose, including the number of petals. The scientists responsible for this discovery expect it will make […]

Imagine you’re living in a time when tourist resorts are dotted around the Solar System. You take a job promoting some of these resorts and are looking for a selling point. Everyone’s talked about the view of Saturn’s rings from one of its moons so much that it’s time for some new pitch. Which planet’s […]

If we were to rewind the clock back 4.5 billion years, our planet would be massively different. And seeing Earth from space, you’d notice a glaring omission: the Moon would not be there. Its arrival will come only after a Mars-like body ends up hitting our planet. This cataclysmic event changed our planet and threw […]

Quantum entanglement comes in a new form, one that could be used to make quantum information technology smaller, once it becomes practical outside the laboratory. The work relies on the fact that when photons are restricted to spaces smaller than their wavelengths two of their properties merge into one. Quantum entanglement links the destinies of […]

Astronomers think there could be as many as 100 million black holes in our galaxy, most with a similar mass to our Sun, but they are not that easy to find. With no light able to escape them, black holes are usually detected when they are eating, since their feeding frenzies emit a lot of […]

As the only surviving members of the Hominini tribe, us Homo sapiens have the important responsibility of piecing together our family tree, documenting all those extinct human species upon whose hairy shoulders we stand. Yet the more fossils we discover, the messier the picture seems to get, and the harder it becomes to figure out […]

This week, we visited the How To Fix Our Broken Planet exhibit at the Natural History Museum, London, to discuss how whale earwax is spilling the ocean’s secrets. RFK Jr has claimed that we will “know” the cause of autism by September, a statement that science says is very unlikely, the world’s oldest analog computer […]

It would be incredibly useful if humans (just like sharks and elephants) could continuously grow new teeth throughout their lifetime, replacing those lost to disease, neglect, and bar fights. This is the fundamental idea that’s inspiring scientists to explore the prospect of lab-grown teeth.  In a new study, scientists at King’s College London and Imperial […]

When Mount St Helens erupted in 1980, the resulting lava, ash, and debris turned the landscape barren for miles around. It was clear the land would take a long time to recover from the eruption. But one team of scientists had an idea about how they could help speed up the process: sending a few […]

The global navigation satellite system, of which GPS is the most famous example, is a crucial aspect of modern life. From planes to cargo ships, to simply finding your way around a new city or just getting home, satellites help us navigate the world. The system is not foolproof, though, and it doesn’t work in […]

The Sun goes through an 11-year cycle of activity, going from the solar maximum, where it is covered in many sunspots and is more likely to have flares and coronal mass ejections, to the minimum, where there are no spots and those events are extremely rare. But this is not only the cycle our star […]

Times are tough at the moment and world news may feel like we are bouncing from one negative story to another, so here’s something to add some pep to our news consumption step. Anti-Personnel Landmines Detection Product Development (APOPO), a Belgian non-governmental organization, has just announced that HeroRAT Ronin has broken the Guinness World Record […]

It’s a truth often played for laughs that alcohol messes with your brain function. That’s why the cops make you do stuff like walk in a straight line and touch your nose when they suspect you’ve been drinking: those are some of the first things to deteriorate after a heavy night at the bar. But […]

In the cutthroat jungles of Madagascar, vast webs hang over the landscape’s bustling rivers, scooping up prey like industrial-strength bug-catching nets. They’re the handiwork of none other than Darwin’s bark spider. Despite the females being smaller than a human hand, this remarkable arachnid weaves webs that can stretch up to 25 meters (82 feet) across […]

Olo is described as a “new color” that scientists argue they’ve enabled people to see – one that doesn’t resemble anything in our everyday visual experience. It’s described as an intensely saturated greenish-blue, brought to life using a new technique that stimulates the eye’s photoreceptors in a non-conventional way. “We name this new color ‘olo’,” […]

Early next week, the Lyrid meteor shower will have its peak, and the Moon being less than half full will not ruin the spectacle too much. If you’re planning to watch, you won’t need any specialist equipment. In fact, telescopes or binoculars are often a hindrance to catching meteors.   The peak will be on […]

Pandemics, contentious political environments, economic distress, continued war, ecological degradation, climate change, wildfires – all these themes have featured in the 24-hour news cycle over the last few years, and it can be exhausting to constantly follow them all. However, consistently engaging with negative news is not just demoralizing. The frequent consumption of such information […]

We have been moderately lucky with comets in the last several months. We had Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS last October shining across the sky for weeks, visible to the naked eye, having survived a dangerous close encounter with the Sun. That chance now lies with C/2025 F2 (Swan), although it’s not expected to get as bright. The […]