Deborah Bloomfield

Electric eels might be the stuff of nightmares for some, but are they really electric – and do they have the power to give you a painful zap? We break down just watt makes these eels so shocking.  Advertisement What is an electric eel? Electric eels are one of three species in the genus Electrophorus. […]

The MINI plonked on top of a BMW manufacturing plant in Oxford, England is no longer the only unusual sight meeting passersby; it’s now been joined on the roof by the UK’s first “motionless” wind energy system. Designed by the company Aeromine Technologies, the unit doesn’t exactly look like your traditional wind turbine – no […]

It’s a well-established (and slightly uncomfortable) fact that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred with one another. Recent research looked into when this inter-species kanoodling occurred and now another new piece of research has investigated where exactly it happened. Advertisement Scientists took a close look at the geographical distribution of both species in Southwest Asia and Southeast […]

Over half of the world’s population speaks more than one language. However, as little as 1 percent of the planet’s people can be considered a polyglot, defined as someone who can speak five or more languages. Moreover, there are some individuals known as hyperpolyglots, linguistic maestros that master an abundance of language (although there’s no […]

Mars is a frigid desert today but it used to be a very wet world. The jury is still out on whether it was cold and wet or warm and wet, but water was abundant. Where did all that water go? Some went underground and some escaped into space, together with most of the planet’s […]

It was mere weeks ago that the origin of Stonehenge’s Altar Stone was shockingly revealed to be hundreds of kilometers further away from the monument than previously thought. Now, another study has complicated the picture even more – by definitively ruling out the most likely location for the Altar Stone’s starting point. Advertisement There are […]

Boeing’s Starliner will undock from the Space Station in a matter of hours before flying back and landing on Earth early tomorrow morning. The capsule was supposed to be in space for just a week with its passengers, NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams, but a seemingly endless series of problems has forced NASA […]

A collision 7 billion years ago and a surge of magnification. Look at that in infrared, and somehow you end up with a question mark. It was a combination of a galaxy merger being located near the line of sight of a massive galaxy cluster that is distorting its light, creating something that has been […]

What’s in a name? Well, new research into marmoset monkeys has revealed that they join the list of creatures that use one for each other. The researchers think that they’re able to call each other by name and respond to their own names and this ability could even provide insights into the evolution of human […]

Something strange is occurring in the skies over Antarctica. Each winter, a blisteringly cold ring of wind rapidly circulates clockwise in the stratosphere above Antarctica, forming a polar vortex around the icy continent. This year, however, the polar vortex isn’t acting like its usual self. Advertisement Models produced by NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office […]

The first mission of the Polaris Program, called Polaris Dawn, is expected to launch on Monday following weeks of delays. Some of them were weather-related; since the craft will not dock with a space station, they need to make sure they have good weather at launch and reentry. It also did not help that the […]

It’s widely believed that two major compounds in the cannabis plant – THC and CBD – have a balancing effect on one another, with CBD canceling out the effects of THC in the body. However, a new clinical trial has poured cold water on that idea by suggesting that the opposite might be true, and […]

This week on Break It Down, “dangerous” asteroid Apophis has a slightly increased risk of hitting Earth, a pig in Hong Kong undergoes an operation by a team in Switzerland, people in Iceland are throwing puffins off cliffs, an asteroid impact over the Philippines just made history, a python somehow managed to ingest another python, […]

NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System is a brand-new technology demonstration of solar sailing. The space agency is not the first to employ this technology but there are new materials, or older materials in new combinations, which require testing in space before larger solar sails are employed in larger missions. Advertisement The latest test – […]

There’s little doubt that the last few months in Death Valley National Park have been particularly toasty, but officials have now confirmed that the hottest place on Earth has just experienced its hottest-ever summer. Advertisement “Death Valley National Park experienced the hottest meteorological summer (June-August) on record, with an average 24-hour temperature of 104.5°F (40.3°C),” […]

Two large pterosaurs have been discovered in Afro-Arabia, including a new species that’s been named Inabtanin alarabia and had a 5-meter (16-foot) wingspan. The fossils were preserved in an unusually three-dimensional way, enabling scientists to establish how these giant flying reptiles got around between 66 and 72 million years ago. Advertisement The new species is […]

A small meteor about 1 meter (3 feet) in diameter burned up over Luzon Island in the Philippines, yesterday night local time. The celestial show was seen by many people, filmed, and photographed. That’s because, for only the ninth time ever, we were ready for it. Asteroid 2024 RW1 was observed before impacting Earth, meaning […]

The Ulas family, in southern Türkiye, is like no other. For the last two decades, some of its members have been quietly challenging just about every theory we have about evolution and genetics – and all despite being unable to read, write, or even talk easily with outsiders. Advertisement Why? Because, unlike just about every […]

We’re willing to bet you didn’t have “mushroom-powered robots” on your 2024 bingo card. Fortunately for all of us, scientists at Cornell University have come in clutch with a pair of fungus-fueled biohybrid robots that respond to their environments, walk – or wheel – around, and look a bit like extras from The Addams Family. […]

While studying some humdrum sealife activity off the coast of Canada, scientists stumbled across a band of northern elephant seals exhibiting a fascinating behavior: each time the device let out a pulse of sonar, the seals headed down for a meal, just like the ringing of a dinner bell.    Advertisement The behavior was observed […]