Deborah Bloomfield

Ever made a bold claim only to be immediately proven wrong? Yeah, happens to the best of us. Michael Fish and the hurricane. The “unsinkable” Titanic. Then there was that time one of America’s biggest newspapers predicted it would take one to 10 million years to make a flying machine, 69 days before we managed it. […]

Everyone loves a good ghost story. Whether you’re a skeptic or a believer, there’s something about the eerie and the uncanny that we all enjoy. But for many people, the things that go bump in the night are not just the stuff of stories; they’re real. In fact, countless numbers of people across the world […]

With less and less evidence to recommend the 10,000 steps per day rule, space has opened up for a new walking trend. Lately, it’s “Japanese walking” that has come to the fore, with proponents claiming benefits for aerobic fitness and joint health – so, what’s it all about? Japanese walking, otherwise known as interval walking […]

More people are using ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) to ask for mental health advice. There have been stories in the news about the possible extreme consequences of such advice, but now researchers have looked at the wider mental health advice and support that these programs provide. The situation appears dire, with a […]

It’s been 22 years since someone last photographed the “Asian unicorn”. Also known as a saola, it was last seen via a camera trap in Quảng Nam province, Vietnam, but nobody’s seen one since. Proving an absence of something isn’t easy, especially when dealing with elusive animals that occupy remote habitats. So, how do we […]

White lights, encounters with powerful entities, and the sensation of leaving one’s body are all classic tropes associated with near-death experiences (NDEs), although the limitations of language often make it impossible for people to fully convey what it’s like to come face-to-face with the eternal void. To try and paint a more complete picture, therefore, […]

After a relatively quiet summer, bird flu is beginning to rear its ugly head once more. But even if we haven’t been talking about it as much, that doesn’t mean the virus has gone away – and it’s not only the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain that’s been making moves.  H5N1 outbreaks on US farms A […]

While filming on location off Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, whale scientist Nan Hauser was swimming towards two humpback whales when one of them started charging at her. When it approached, it started moving as if it were trying to tuck her under its fin – not a very comfortable maneuver for a human being […]

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) are studying an Inca building from the mid-15th century that has a peculiar structure. It has three walls and an opening at one end, and they believe it was designed with the specific intention of amplifying sounds. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. […]

Almost 90 percent of US adults have at least one risk factor for a newly defined medical condition – but just as many, nine in 10, have never heard of it before. The American Heart Association hopes to change that by raising awareness of the condition, called cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic (CKM) syndrome. “We want people to know […]

A team of physicists exploring an old and outdated model of the atom believes that it could help solve one of the most basic questions about our universe: why it exists at all. In 1867, British physicist, mathematician, and engineer William Thompson (better known as Lord Kelvin) attempted to explain why there is an abundance […]

A study of more than 2 million children has found that autism is more common among those whose mothers were exposed to raised sulfate or ammonium pollution during pregnancy. Exposure to ozone early in life was also a factor. The rate of increase was modest, indicating none of these was the largest factor in autism […]

New observations from the Nordic Optical Telescope, in the Canary Islands, Spain, suggest that 3I/ATLAS’s unusual anti-solar tail has changed direction, becoming dominated by a tail that faces away from the Sun. On July 1, astronomers at the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) spotted an object speeding through the Solar System on an escape […]

Exploring the deep ocean comes with the chance to encounter all kinds of weird and wonderful species. You could come face to face (ish) with a faceless cusk eel, Chewbacca corals, dancing sea pigs – or if you’re lucky, an otherworldly-looking octopus, as scientists exploring the abyssal plains of the South Pacific recently discovered. The […]

A treasure trove of around 635 million kilograms (1.4 billion pounds) of cheese sits a few hundred feet beneath the ground in the US, having been stashed there by the government. Why? Well, it’s kind of a long story. The peculiar origins of “Government Cheese,” as The Farmlink Project reports it is known, date back […]

Going gray is an inevitable, and for many, undesirable, part of aging, but health-wise, it’s no bad thing – it could reflect the body’s natural defense against cancer, new research in mice suggests. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. The study, led […]

Where are all the aliens? For decades, armchair philosophers and the greatest minds in science have pondered the Fermi paradox, but perhaps they’ve been attacking the question from the wrong angle. Maybe the aliens are already “here,” just not in the form of little green men in flying saucers. What if extraterrestrial life exists as […]

In 1954, American psychologist James Olds and British-Canadian neuroscientist Peter Milner implanted electrodes at various positions on the brains of rats. The team placed the rats inside a “Skinner box“, a small enclosure with a lever or button inside that the animals can learn to press in order to gain a reward. In this case, […]

Ice Age (as in the movie) tells the heartwarming tale of a mammoth, sloth, and saber-toothed cat that – against the odds – work together to protect a baby human. There was, however, another star who really stole the show: Scrat, the Ice Age squirrel. We follow Scrat’s endless quest to secure some kind of […]

In 1971, the world got its first look at an arcade machine, playing the little-remembered space combat game Computer Space. A year later, we got the all-time classic Pong in arcade machine form, and the first ever home console, the Magnavox Odyssey. In the decades preceding, researchers at various institutes created several experimental games, which […]