Deborah Bloomfield

If you already thought that Burmese pythons could stretch their elastic jaws inexplicably far, then boy have we got a surprise for you. Turns out they can open even wider than previously thought, and as a result can bring down bigger prey. There’s really not much that isn’t on the menu… Burmese pythons are an […]

Let’s face it: antibiotics – incredible, lifesaving innovations that they are – can be really annoying to take. Courses can be long, doses may have to be carefully timed around meals, and you might have to lay off certain foods and drinks. Wouldn’t it be great if you could load up on all the antibiotics […]

Some humans have what appears to be a real superpower – they can use sound to “see” in a similar way to Marvel’s Daredevil. In fact, human echolocation has been so advanced that some people have been able to do things like ride bikes or even play ball games. And now researchers have found a […]

Sorry Charli XCX, we think we’ve found a new 365 party girl: the oriental hornet. According to a new study, this big bug has a seriously high tolerance for alcohol. More so, in fact, than any other animal – even when given some very highly concentrated hooch. Consuming low levels of alcohol is actually pretty […]

In the dank depths of Ellison’s Cave, you can find two of the deepest freefall pits in mainland US: Fantastic Pit, which plunges vertically for 179 meters (586 feet); and Incredible Pit, an equally dizzying 134 meters (440 feet) deep. Ellison’s Cave is located on Pigeon Mountain among the Appalachian Plateaus of Northwest Georgia. The […]

Send word to Poirot, fetch Sherlock Holmes, and ring round the Thursday Murder Club – there’s been a death at 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) up, and only the very best team can solve it. So far, the evidence is pointing to one lead suspect… but let’s review the clues as they happened on the coast […]

Dreams are weird places. No matter how strange and incongruous the content, most people dream without realizing they’re in a dream. However, this is not the case for everyone as lucid dreamers are able to perceive the dream for what it is. It’s a desirable skill and now there are various lucid dream apps available […]

This week on Break It Down: the discovery of the smallest-ever dinosaur eggs reveals teeny tiny bones, the first black hole triple is changing our understanding of giant star death, the longest venomous snake is now four separate species, a rare bit of positive carbon capture news, how a new overdose implant can save lives, […]

In a stark example of the impact of human activity on the world around us, scientists are reporting that Aotearoa New Zealand’s native stoneflies have changed color as a direct result of deforestation. We tend to think of evolution as a series of very slow, incremental changes over millennia. Even the word “evolution” conjures up […]

Electric currents can affect bacteria at levels too small to harm (or even hurt) humans, which gave medical researchers an idea. Now, they’ve demonstrated that electrical stimulation can protect wounds from Staphylococcus epidermidis: a bacterium that, as its name suggests, lives on human skin and can seize the opportunity to wreak havoc when damage lets it […]

In recent decades, atmospheric rivers that transport water vapor high above the Earth’s surface have shifted position – a radical change that could have an impact on weather patterns and rainfall across the planet. Scientists at UC Santa Barbara found that atmospheric rivers in both hemispheres have moved approximately 6° to 10° closer to the […]

The most common stars in the universe are smaller and cooler than our Sun, but they can be a lot more violent when it comes to activities and intense ultraviolet radiation. Many rocky worlds have been found around these M-dwarf stars, but their temperamental behavior had researchers question their suitability for life. A new study […]

An international collaboration of radio astronomers has found evidence suggesting that massive stars might not form as models had previously indicated. The expectation was to see prestellar cores from which the largest stars slowly accumulate mass, grabbing material in turbulent flows. Instead, the stars might simply form from the direct collapse of a large chunk […]

Some stellar objects simply don’t have what it takes to become stars. Namely, they are not massive enough to start nuclear fusion at their cores. These are brown dwarfs. There are a few thousand known brown dwarfs in the Milky Way and we have never seen any beyond our galaxy. They are cool objects, which […]

Nazaré on the coast of Portugal is famous for summoning some of the biggest surfable waves on the planet thanks to the unique deepsea geology that sits on the seafloor. Elsewhere, however, bigger waves have been reported (although good luck surfing them). Sebastian Steudtner earned the world record for the largest wave ever surfed on […]

Once upon a time, the Mediterranean Sea turned into a vast salty basin for around half a million years. Hints of this geological upset can still be seen today – and there’s a chance a similar cataclysm might happen again in the distant future.  The event is known as the Messinian salinity crisis. So the […]

Finding new ways to travel through space is not easy and this is why tests are important – even though some snags might happen. NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System was launched in April, and in early September was fully deployed. The system appears to be working, but as one of the four booms deployed […]

Virtual worlds, ChatGPT, and AI seem to be all the rage in 2024, with all sorts of developments shaking up not just the technology space, but having wider implications for medicine, politics, and even the judicial system. Now, researchers from Swiss startup FinalSpark have combined a virtual world with tiny human mini brains and built […]

There are an awful lot of bad ways to die accidentally. Just look at the man who fell into a Yellowstone hot spring, or these five unfortunate people. Possibly the worst accident in history, at least amongst diving accidents, took place in the North Sea in 1983. Making dives deep into the ocean is a […]

In February 2021, I was walking home alone along an unlit path when something strange happened. It was snowing, cold, and extremely dark. I had chosen to take this lonely route as a shortcut that led me from the university campus I worked on at the time to the suburbs of the city, but to […]