Deborah Bloomfield

The idea of plate tectonics – which describes how Earth’s crust is arranged into slowly moving plates, with volcanic activity and earthquakes taking place along the boundaries – is so normal to us now that it might be surprising to learn it was only really accepted by geologists during the 1960s. Before that, and the […]

The Moon is certainly not a colorful world. Forget the crimson hue of Mars or the blue of Neptune. Our natural satellite is instead in grayscale, a magnificent desolation that only changes color in eclipses. However, there are pockets of color on the Moon, and some of them tell us of dramatic events in the […]

Camera traps are an invaluable resource when it comes to conservation; they can help scientists see “ghosts” in the dark, rediscover lost species, and build up a picture of how different members of a habitat are using the space. Camera traps can also provide a sneaky secret window into the lives of these creatures, revealing […]

Have you ever heard of an octopus map? If not, you’ll likely see them everywhere after this, as a new study demonstrates. In short, an octopus map is a map that depicts some enemy as a centralized menace with various tentacle-like threats dispersing from them across other territories, or indeed the whole world. Traditionally, these […]

A YouTuber has created what might be the world’s strongest handheld laser, and it is capable of punching through titanium. “The legal power limit for a laser pointer is 5 milliwatts. Well, I think it would be funny to build one that’s  50,000 times stronger than that,” Drake Anthony, who goes by “styropyro” on YouTube, […]

Thought we’d seen the last of it? Sorry to disappoint, but there’s a new COVID-19 variant gallivanting across the globe. Its official title is NB.1.8.1, but some have taken to calling it “Nimbus”. In the Southern Hemisphere, where flu season is just starting to ramp up, medics are bracing for a new wave of cases, […]

Diving into the world of the arachnids is not for the faint-hearted – even fans of all things eight-legged might just think twice about the critters belonging to Solifugae. “Here is an odd creature, a monstrous apparition. How weirdly fashioned, how ill-proportioned, how evil and forbidding in its hideous shape and coat of bristling hairs!” […]

Visit Lancaster County, in Pennsylvania, and you might meet an unexpected resident. Standing around 1.2 to 1.5 meters tall – 4 or 5 feet in the local lingo – the Albatwitch is a pencil-thin, hairy local legend, with huge eyes that glow an ominous red, or perhaps yellow, through the night. Christopher Vera, Director of […]

Ask most people getting older, and they’ll tell you, time feels like it’s speeding up as you gradually run out of it. The endless summers of childhood, once dragging on forever, now seem to pass in a blink. And the years? They just don’t last as long as they used to. So why does this […]

If there’s one thing worse than a virus, you’ve got to imagine it’s a massive version of the same thing. So it may not sound like good news that scientists from the University of Miami have just discovered some 230 previously unknown types of giant virus, present in just about every ocean across the planet […]

When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, lava, ash, and debris left the landscape barren for miles. It was obvious that recovery would take decades. But one team of scientists had an unconventional idea to help jumpstart the process: send a few gophers on a one-day mission to the mountain. Plant life struggled to return […]

Between 120,000 and 60,000 years ago, Neanderthals embarked on a second wave of major migrations from Eastern Europe to southern Siberia and Central Asia. Using supercomputers, anthropologists have now managed to track the path of that journey with incredible precision. It’s known that Neanderthals made this journey based on archaeological sites in Eastern Europe dating […]

Diagrams and animations of planetary orbits are, in a way, lying to you a little bit, though it’s more accurate to say they’re simplifying things. They leave out the concept of barycenters so teachers don’t have to explain complex gravitational dynamics to kids still wrapping their heads around the fact that Earth isn’t the only […]

If you’ve ever counted beyond ten, and we’re going to be generous and assume that you have, at some point you’ve probably noticed the names of the numbers are a little odd. While we say “thirteen”, “fourteen”, “fifteen”, “sixteen” and so on, when it comes to 11 and 12, we don’t say “oneteen” or “twoteen”, […]

When two “puppies” were recovered from the Siberian permafrost, perfectly preserved like prehistoric popsicles, they were initially believed to be early domesticated dogs. However, new research has revealed they were actually red-blooded wolves. Even more remarkably, scientists discovered that these Ice Age pups dined on woolly rhinoceroses, an unexpectedly formidable prey for a small canine. […]

Walking in Interior Alaska in winter is an astonishing experience. The snowy landscape, the crisp air, the frozen frogs… Wait, what? Yes, were you to feel about in the leaf litter during the region’s coldest months, you just might be lucky enough to find a frog frozen solid. Typically, you’d expect this to be sad […]

A new species of dinosaur has been discovered in Mongolia, and it’s palaeontological royalty. Named Khankhuuluu (pronounced khan-KOO-loo) after the Mongolian for “dragon prince”, it represents the closest known ancestor to tyrannosaurs and has inspired a team of scientists to rewrite the evolutionary history of this iconic group of dinosaurs. The dragon prince, or Khankhuuluu mongoliensis […]

Scientists have developed a laser-based device that can read letters from over a kilometer away. The device, which is so precise it can even read letters that are millimeters wide, could be used as a spy tool. The laser was developed by scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China and international colleagues, […]

The number of satellites in orbit, especially in low-Earth orbit, has massively increased in the last decade. This has brought an increase in brightness across the surface of the Earth, meaning there are places on the planet experiencing light pollution for the first time because of it. This is a threat to the natural nocturnal […]

We’re sorry to say this is a sad and unpleasant one. A new study has shown the hidden world of pain fish endure before they die after being caught. In some instances, the animals can suffer high levels of pain for up to 10 minutes, a situation that experts say needs greater regulation to improve […]