Deborah Bloomfield

Mammalian ears are pretty damn strange. For humans, they’re a bit unsightly, they’re made of cartilage yet somehow sneak in three bones, and they get bigger as we age. Now, we’ve got a new weird ear fact to add to the list: they started out as gills. Our ears used to be gills? The outer […]

One of the largest collections of human and animal bones ever seen in a Roman feature in Britain has been discovered inside a ritual shaft at an ancient chalk quarry. Located in Surrey, southeast England, the 2,000-year-old pit contains the remains of 21 people as well as a dog penis bone that appears to have […]

A bunch of evidence has shown that ketamine could be used in therapy for depression, although how it achieves this remains somewhat unclear. In a new study, tiny zebrafish suffering from a sense of exhaustion and futility might provide some clues. Advertisement Ketamine is often half-jokingly called a “horse tranquilizer” because of its use in […]

Saber teeth such as those that belonged to apex Ice Age predators were superbly shaped for puncturing prey and subduing them, a new study has found. In one sense that is unsurprising, since many different mammalian carnivores evolved similar shapes independently. On the other hand, it raises the question of why none of the species […]

Quantum computers are the next major leap in computing, bringing the peculiar properties of quantum mechanics to the operations of computers. They run on qubits – quantum bits – which can be used to do calculations much faster than regular computer bits. There are hurdles to overcome though, and one of them is to make […]

If asked about the specifics of a random day in their life, most people would struggle to answer without flicking back through a journal, or digging into their Instagram story archive – but that’s not the case for everyone. For people with highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), or hyperthymesia, they can instead recall the most […]

Inefficient wastewater treatment may be exposing as many as 7 percent of people in the US to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – known as “forever chemicals” – in their drinking water, according to a new study. Advertisement Examining the wastewater from eight large municipal wastewater treatment facilities, with sizes comparable to those serving 70 […]

A physicist believes he may have solved the notorious “grandfather paradox”, suggesting that time travel to the past may not be ruled out by this particular branch of physics. Advertisement First off, what is the grandfather paradox? Unlike the bootstrap paradox, which gets a little messy, the grandfather paradox is fairly simple to explain. Say […]

In the very early hours of January 10, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will attempt the inaugural launch of its massive orbital rocket New Glenn. So far, the private space company has sent up into the atmosphere its New Shepard rocket, whose job is to send stuff to the edge of space and come back down. […]

The oldest equatorial dinosaur in the world, and North America’s oldest dinosaur, has been described in a new study. Dating back 230 million years, the chicken-sized dinosaur has big implications for our understanding of how dinosaurs spread across the world, pushing back their arrival in the northern hemisphere by millions of years. Advertisement The dinosaur, […]

Ants remember their encounters with individuals from another nest and treat every member of that nest accordingly. Although this demonstrates remarkable capacity given their tiny brains, it may also explain why ants are one of the few species besides humans that fight extended wars. Advertisement Ants recognize members of their own nests through scent, and […]

In 2022, the US Supreme Court’s decision in the case Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization effectively ended constitutional protections for abortion by overturning the landmark decision Roe v Wade. New research shows that by August of that year – just two months later – significantly more young US adults had sought permanent contraceptive procedures. […]

Your stomach contains hydrochloric acid, a highly corrosive chemical compound that can dissolve certain metals and would spell seriously bad news anywhere else in (or on) the body. Its purpose is to create the ideal environment for digestive enzymes to break down food and kill off bacteria, and yet despite its ferocity as an acid, […]

Washington DC may be the heart of US politics today, but it wasn’t always destined to be the nation’s capital. In fact, there were moments in history when other cities held that prestigious title. So, how did we arrive at today’s capital, and why wasn’t it always a certainty? Advertisement During the Revolutionary War – […]

Living things have been known to glow thanks to a nifty trick called bioluminescence, but it’s something we more typically associate with animals of the deep sea than those stomping around surface-side. It may surprise you, then, to learn that bioluminescence has been detected in humans. That’s right, we glow in the dark – it’s […]

NASA has announced the next steps for its beleaguered Mars Sample Return mission, the ambitious plans to retrieve multiple samples collected on the Red Planet, so they can be analyzed by more sophisticated labs on Earth. The mission was deemed too expensive, with a price tag of $11 billion dollars, and it would take too […]

Whale sharks, despite being the largest fish in the ocean, still have pretty secretive sex lives. What we do know about the reproductive behaviors of whale sharks is largely based on observations from aquariums or chance encounters in the wild – however, off the coast of Western Australia, scientists have witnessed what they believe to […]

A long-term study of the mating behavior of Seychelles warblers (Acrocephalus sechellensis) has provided some insight into the factors that influence whether bird couples stay together or part ways. The findings don’t always match those from other species, opening up opportunities to explore the reasons for the differences. Raising young is hard, and many birds […]

Ancient texts speak of a strange and valuable metal known as orichalcum. The mystical material was often dismissed as a fantastical invention – until they discovered a large cache of the stuff in the Mediterranean Sea. Advertisement Orichalcum’s name is derived from the Greek for “mountain copper.” One of its most prominent mentions comes in […]

In 2010, a 71-year-old man turned up to an emergency department in Verona, Italy, experiencing shortness of breath. A fairly standard case to see in an ED, it could be assumed. However, this patient was more unique than meets the eye – he had two hearts. While the man was only born with one – […]