Deborah Bloomfield

The sky at night. It inspires awe. It inspires thoughts of an existential nature: Who are we? Why are we here? And, perhaps most importantly of all, in which direction should I roll this big ball of shit? That is, if you’re a dung beetle. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please […]

If you think of helium, you are probably thinking of party balloons and squeaky voices. That doesn’t do the element justice. It has a large number of technical and industrial applications, and is the second most common element in the universe. On Earth, though, it is pretty scarce, and the fact that it is lighter […]

Back in 2022, the Hubble space telescope appeared to have found the most distant star ever discovered. Named Earendel – morning or rising star in old English – a new paper suggests it might not be what we thought. Earendel was spotted by Hubble due to a fortunate case of gravitational lensing, where light from […]

Astronomers report the finding of a unique new object that doesn’t fit with categories that were only established in the last few years. They have observed an ultra-massive white dwarf with an outer layer of hydrogen and helium, 10 billion times thinner than other white dwarfs. This object is believed to be the product of […]

Deep lakes in the Sahara lasted until more recently than previously thought, fed by an unexpected water source. The discovery indicates that some of the Sahara was a welcoming place for humans more recently than anyone had realized, painting a different picture of the region at the time the first civilizations appeared. The world’s largest […]

Gold has captivated humans for millennia, but it comes in many different forms out in the wild. Among the rarest and most peculiar is crystalline gold, which forms deep underground and maintains its original shape – crafted by the formation of cracks in Earth’s crust. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please […]

For the first time ever, researchers have captured a human embryo implanting in real-time, revealing new details about the surprisingly strong mechanical forces this little bundle of cells uses to burrow itself into the uterus. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. Embryo […]

This is Splash – a wannabe search-and-rescue superstar training to hunt for missing people in Florida’s murky waters. Oh, and did we mention he’s an otter?  The intrepid mustelid is the latest addition to the team at Peace River K9 Search and Rescue. They’ve traditionally used dogs to track the scent of missing people, but […]

This week, a world-first study has found “sex reversal” is surprisingly common among wild Australian bird species, Gabon’s orange cave crocodiles appear to be evolving into a new species, and even bird songs obey Zipf’s law of abbreviation, just like all human languages. Finally, we explore just how unlucky the only person to ever be […]

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have announced that a new artificial intelligence (AI) model accurately predicted the results of a nuclear fusion experiment conducted in 2022. The model correctly assigned a probability greater than 70 percent that ignition was likely in that experiment. This outdid existing supercomputer approaches while also offering researchers a more […]

This week on Break It Down: The discovery of some fossilized human teeth reveals the oldest known members of our genus weren’t alone; their neighbors were a species we’ve never found before. A world-first study reveals that sex reversal is surprisingly common in wild Australian birds. A law of abbreviation that mysteriously fits all human […]

Polar bears have become something of an icon for the Arctic. The world’s largest land predators, they are big, they are beautiful, they are – not white, actually. Across their evolution they’ve developed some curious adaptations for life in the cold, and we don’t yet understand all of them. The rest of this article is […]

On the final dive of the E/V Nautilus’ expedition season in October 2019, during a live-stream no less, researchers stumbled across a rare discovery on the seafloor. As their camera penetrated the depths of the Davidson Seamount off central California’s coast, the skeletal remains of a whale came into view, to the team’s audible excitement. […]

One of the first things anyone interested in the Solar System learns is that out beyond the asteroid belt lurk the gas giants, of which Jupiter is the largest. Does that mean that Jupiter and its peers are pure gas? Or somewhere deep within is there a solid core? Just as there’s a big difference […]

This week, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order called “Enabling Competition In The Commercial Space Industry” with the purpose of enabling commercial space companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin by reducing or removing environmental and other regulations, cutting red tape and allowing for more launches. The executive order called on the Secretary of Transportation […]

A submarine volcano off the coast of the Pacific Northwest of the US is set to blow in 2025. Seamounts like this are providing scientists with the perfect opportunity to study the evolution of early life on Earth and the potential threat of deep-sea mining – that is, unless their equipment gets frazzled in the […]

Imagine you have an important meeting you have to attend. Maybe it’s a date, a job interview, or something else. Regardless, as you’re making your way, you find your preferred route is blocked. You’re faced with a choice: you can take a diversion that will take longer to reach your destination, or you can double […]

Thanks to the natural magnification from gravitational lensing, researchers have been able to study a small galaxy from when the universe was not even 1 billion years old. They saw that it is made of many clumps. This has earned the object the nickname “Cosmic Grapes” and has also challenged some of our expectations around […]

Despite the vast number of meteors that fall from our skies each year, there has only ever been one confirmed impact with a human: the poor and unfortunate Ann Hodges. It was November 30, 1953, a day like any other, when Ann decided to take a nap on her couch in the town of Oak […]

An offshore canyon that’s twice as deep as the Grand Canyon recently turned up 40 potential new-to-science species when scientists embarked on the first-ever high-tech dive to the region. Using the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s remotely operated vehicle, ROV SuBastian, the expedition was livestreamed as it captured alien-looking squids, Barbie-pink lobsters, and a sea star with […]