Deborah Bloomfield

Yesterday, we saw amazing observations of a full halo coronal mass ejection release from the Sun, passing over comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, and continuing straight for Earth. It will slam into our planet in a matter of hours. Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are stupendous releases of high-speed plasma from the Sun. They are associated with […]

Germophobes may be horrified, but bathrooms are rich locations for biological diversity, with so many species living side-by-side that most have yet to be recorded. When it comes to the black mold you really should have cleaned off months ago, that can be a health hazard, but a wealth of new discoveries on toothbrushes and […]

For the 170 years that scientists have been aware of Arthropleura, a genus of the biggest arthropods ever known to have existed, there’s been a key question that has remained unanswered: what did their heads look like? Now, thanks to some newly discovered fossils, they’ve finally solved the mystery. Arthropleura was a millipede-like critter that lived […]

Human activity has contributed to a “catastrophic” decline in the average size of monitored wildlife populations in just 50 years, according to the WWF’s Living Planet Report. The new report, released every two years, takes a deep look at the state of world’s biodiversity with the help of the Living Planet Index developed by the […]

Over 150 million years ago, a sauropod took a walk through an area that would later become part of Colorado. Now, you can see the evidence it left behind in stunning new drone footage that captures the world’s longest continuous dinosaur trackway. Famed for its wealth of dinosaur fossils, Colorado is already a paleontologist’s dream […]

You can, if the movie Forrest Gump is to be believed, tell a lot about a person by their shoes. Delightfully, according to a new paper, the same is true of elephants – although, since they’re lacking in the shoe department, you’ll have to direct your gaze a little more… noseward. That’s right: an elephant’s […]

Beyond the physics we know exists lurk many possibilities that have yet to be proven, including a fifth force to add to gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Our failure to confirm its existence suggests any fifth force is probably fairly weak, but it could still explain some puzzling aspects to the […]

What a week it has been for the Sun and Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS). The Sun has released multiple highly energetic flares, including the most powerful this solar cycle, as well as several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – fast eruptions of plasma pushed across interplanetary space. The flares and CMEs have come right at Earth, […]

Even the longest-lived parts of continents don’t survive forever, which is why geologists and paleontologists have so much trouble reconstructing Earth’s first billion years. The reasons for this are still not well understood – however, a study of the forces affecting the North China Craton provides some likely answers. Cratons are the oldest parts of […]

A 16-year-old from the US appears to have become the first person to beat the game of Tetris, clearing the final level and causing it to reset to level 0. Tetris has been around for a while, so you might have assumed it would be complete by now. After all, it’s not like a game […]

We tend to think that poor sleep is something we can just shake off – a couple of early nights and you’ll have caught up, right? But maybe it’s not so simple. New research tracked one woman’s activity for 19 weeks, revealing the impact that daily life could be having on our minds even days […]

The results are in – the winner of Fat Bear Week 2024 is none other than everyone’s favorite mama bear, Grazer.  This is the second year in a row that Grazer (more formally known as 128) has been declared Katmai National Park and Preserve’s chonky champion, beating out her rival Chunk (32) to achieve 71,248 […]

Researchers have released the most accurate and consistent map of the magnetic fields in the Sun’s corona – its tenuous but incredibly hot atmosphere. The magnetic fields play a role in the heating of the corona, which is hundreds of times hotter than the surface of the Sun, reaching millions of degrees. It also determines […]

You might have already had the impressive, albeit slightly uncomfortable, experience of meeting Ameca, one of the “world’s most advanced human-shaped robots” that can mimic a range of human expressions. Well, she’s now got a pal called Azi. With the aid of artificial intelligence (AI), the couple can share expressive conversations that are equal parts […]

Researchers studying hydrothermal vents in the depths of the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench have found tiny inorganic structures performing energy conversions associated with life. There are a number of ideas about how life began on Earth, with the most widely favored being that it emerged near hydrothermal vents in the oceans billions of years in […]

A new crowd of deep-sea weirdos and alien-like lifeforms have been captured on camera by scientists exploring the depths of the ocean around American Samoa. The beautiful footage (below) comes from the E Mamana Ou Gataifale II expedition by the Ocean Exploration Trust, NOAA Ocean Exploration, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and the Woods […]

We live in unprecedented times. With global average temperatures soaring to levels last recorded… well, never, extreme weather events set to disrupt the lives of basically everyone from now on, and sea levels rising, it’s hard to imagine how societies worldwide going to cope in the near future. But perhaps we can take some cues […]

Early modern Europe was no place for witches. Over the course of about 300 years up until the end of the 18th century, some 90,000 of the spell-casting hags were put on trial, with half being burned at the stake, thrown off cliffs, or put to death via other horrific means – and all because […]

Plunging thousands of meters beneath the ice in Alaska’s Ruth Glacier is possibly the deepest gorge in North America. Known as the “Great Gorge” because of its vast size, the icy corridor has proven difficult to accurately measure, but new research might just have changed that. Currently, Hells Canyon, on the border of Oregon and […]

You may have noticed, on a lazy day spent in a swimming pool, that it is somewhat easier to hold your breath for longer when you are underwater.  This may seem weird, given the increased pressure pushing on your chest. But it’s a phenomenon, and one that we share with our mammal friends, known simply […]