Deborah Bloomfield

For many years, groups around the world have rehearsed what to do in case we discover an asteroid that might impact Earth. Well, this time is for real. Asteroid 2024 YR4 has been placed at Level 3 on the Torino impact scale, with a 1.2 percent chance of impact with Earth in late 2032. This […]

Toxic mushrooms are one of the leading causes of food poisoning deaths worldwide, and an incredible 90 percent of these fatal fungal foragings are the work of one species: the aptly named death cap mushroom. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Also known by its taxonomic label Amanita phalloides – which actually means penis-shaped – this deadly […]

NASA astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore were outside of the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday for a very interesting spacewalk, which ended up being a record-breaking one for Williams. After completing the almost 5.5 hours of extravehicular activity (EVA), Williams is now the woman who has spent the longest time in space […]

For nearly 140 years, every February 2 in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, has seen a bizarre ceremony in which a groundhog named Phil “forecasts” whether or not there’ll be six more weeks of winter. The tradition even has a day named after it – but are there other animals with weather-predicting abilities that deserve attention too? ADVERTISEMENT […]

One thousand six hundred years ago, in a city named after the famous emperor Hadrian, bored Roman soldiers spent their free time shuffling counters around a game board in an attempt to hone their strategic thinking skills – or maybe just to have fun. Announcing the discovery of two of these ancient tokens, archaeologists say […]

People over on Reddit are currently asking the realest of real questions; is it possible to cook a chicken by throwing ice cubes at it? ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE While it may sound like a stupid question, it’s really only an extension of a stupid question that has been going around the Internet for years. […]

Quantum mechanics underpins all of reality, but at our level – the so-called classical world – we wouldn’t be able to tell. The difference is so stark that it seems like separate dimensions. The frontier between the two is difficult to explore, as objects and interactions can end up being more easily explained one way […]

We live in turbulent times. At every juncture, at least half the country is pissed at the government, complaining that “I didn’t vote for this! What happened to democracy?!” At which point, some smug commentator will pop up and point out, a wry smile on his face as ICE cart him away, that “actually, the […]

The cuisines of some countries are synonymous with spice – think India, Thailand, and Mexico – while others take a more “minimalist” approach to seasoning (looking at you, Britain and Scandinavia). It doesn’t take an AI-powered Anthony Bourdain to work out that, generally speaking, warmer places have a friendlier relationship with spicier food.  ADVERTISEMENT GO […]

Whether you’re a fan of amorphous solids or just enjoy being able to see stuff outside, glass is a pretty cool material. But how does it work on an atomic level? Why can we see through it, when we can’t see through (for instance) metals, Danny DeVito, and pasta? And what actually is glass anyway? […]

As the old philosophical question goes, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” The literal scientific answer is yes it does, because any movement of atoms – on a massive scale like this, or on the tiniest scales we cannot see – […]

Almost exactly a century ago, the “Greatest Cave Explorer Ever Known” entered a labyrinth of underground caverns in south-central Kentucky and never returned. The gripping story captured the public’s imagination then and it remains a cautionary tale for thrill-seeking cavers, serving as a stark reminder not to push the limits too far. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD […]

It’s a fun “fact” that many of us will have heard before: our bodies apparently replace themselves every seven years. Trouble is, that’s not true – so what actually does happen? ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE First, it’s probably a good idea to understand why this has become such a popular myth. It possibly comes down […]

An ancient oceanic plate under modern-day Iraq is breaking off horizontally, researchers have shown in a new study. This huge underground tear, stretching from southeast Turkey to northwest Iran, is affecting the way Earth’s surface bends and shifts, reshaping the landscape as it changes. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE For millions of years, as the Arabian […]

A study using network science to measure the intricacy of 20,000 pieces of music produced over four centuries has found that music is becoming less complex over time. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Music is an important part of human life, found in every society that we know of. As such, it’s pretty interesting to learn […]

The animal world has pretty much got every form of locomotion covered, from kangaroos that have a “fifth limb”, to corals that can inflate their body tissues and space-hopper themselves across the seafloor. While leaping through the trees might sound fun, take-off and landing require a certain level of precision (unless you’re a leiopelmatid frog) […]

For millions of years, tree species have spread from the Amazon to Atlantic rainforests across a region that’s too arid for them to grow. How exactly they make this challenging journey has been unclear, but now a team of scientists has put forward a new idea: the trees are constantly using the rivers as a […]

It’s thought that proteins first appeared on Earth around 3.7 billion years ago, and since then, nature has forged them into the molecules that exist today. But what if there was a way we could artificially mimic that process – only much, much faster?  ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE That’s exactly what a group of researchers […]

A vaccine that offers combined protection against flu and COVID-19 could soon be on the cards, in answer to everyone’s winter woes. A new study details an approach that uses a defunct virus as a carrier for proteins from both influenza A and SARS-CoV-2, finding that it elicited a good antibody response in a mouse […]

A new study has found surprising evidence of large bodies of magma lurking beneath long-dormant volcanoes in the Cascade Range in the USA, with potentially huge implications for how geologists predict and monitor volcanic eruptions. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Volcanoes generally come in three flavors: active, dormant, and extinct. Though it gets a little complicated […]