Deborah Bloomfield

The atomic explosion that struck Nagasaki in 1945 can be traced back to the Hanford Site, an unsuspecting desert in Washington state where colossal quantities of radioactive material were produced in the 20th century. Its days of pumping out plutonium are long gone, but the site has left a nuclear hangover that continues to curse […]

Visibility of, and investment in, generative AI – programs such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, and other large language model (LLM) based technologies – has exploded in the past couple of years, bringing with it a whole host of benefits and drawbacks. But amongst all the existential dread and alarming levels of misinformation, there’s one far more […]

Around 6,000 years before the Bronze Age cart wheel was invented, a group of textile makers in the Middle East may have designed the world’s first rotational tool involving a wheel and axle. After testing out replicas of the ancient devices, the authors of a new study suggest that they were functional spindle whorls that could […]

At just 7.8 million light-years away, the newly discovered dwarf galaxy dw1322m2053 is remarkable for its isolation and lack of star-forming activity. If that wasn’t enough to make you anthropomorphize it and feel sorry for its lonely status, the astronomers who found it have nicknamed it “Hedgehog”. We have detected galaxies billions of light-years away, […]

Earth’s waters are filled with billions of fish, coming in all manner of glorious colors, shapes, and sizes – but which is the smallest fish of them all? It turns out that question isn’t so easy to answer. The smallest fish in the world One of the strongest contenders for the smallest fish is Paedocypris […]

An almost perfect intermediate between Archaeopteryx and modern birds has been discovered with its skull preserved in extraordinary three-dimension. To find such an intact fossil bird that dates back to the Mesozoic is almost unheard of, making the find one of the most significant of its kind, but that’s not all. The dinosaur-era bird is about […]

A beautifully decorated coffin and burial chamber loaded with goods have started to unveil the story of an ancient Egyptian priestess who lived nearly 4,000 years ago. The discovery was unearthed at the ancient Egyptian necropolis of Asyut, a site along the River Nile that’s been undergoing excavations since 2003. According to a new announcement, […]

Science is no stranger to discovering species, losing them, and then rediscovering them again, but what’s less common is to realize that the animal you thought you’d misplaced is actually being photographed all the time. Such is the tale of the marine worm, Haplosyllis anthogorgicola, that’s been photobombing seahorses at a rate of three in […]

Almost 60,000 years ago, a massive underwater avalanche took place just off the coast of Northwest Africa. Initially, about 1.5 cubic kilometers (0.36 cubic miles) of sediments rolled down across the Agadir Canyon, one of the largest in the world. As this sediment rolled down across the 450 kilometers (280 miles) of the submarine canyon, […]

For the first time, amber fragments have been recovered from Antarctica, or, to be more specific, from an offshore sedimentary basin. The fossils mean we now have amber samples from every continent, and provide information about Antarctica’s forests, which were once home to hardy dinosaurs. Atmospheric carbon dioxide was high in the Cretaceous, making the […]

Lovers of all things colorful and sparkly are in for a treat with an unusual variety of ammonite that’s set to go to auction later this month. The “gem” of an ammonite dates back 71 million years, and comes with a curious coating of ammolite, giving it a dazzling rainbow iridescence. “A ‘Gem’ Ammonite in […]

Voyager 2’s visit to Uranus in 1986 occurred just after the planet was slammed by an exceptionally powerful solar outburst. The heightened solar wind compressed the magnetosphere. According to new research, we’ve been treating that squashed magnetic field as standard for 40 years, causing scientists to think the planet has several strange features that are […]

The US government is preparing to “pull back the curtain” on UFOs in yet another public hearing this week. Transparency is the name of the game, so the whole hearing will be freely broadcast live to the public.  The hearing – titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth” – will take place on Capitol Hill […]

Some animals need more help than others, and wild species can be rescued and returned to the wild after being nursed back to health. In some cases, they can even be recaptured after their release if they run into additional difficulties due to close monitoring. On that point, settle in folks – it’s time for […]

Japan has a problem – there aren’t enough truck drivers to meet demand. The solution? A stretch of highway connecting Tokyo and Osaka transformed into an automated cargo transport corridor that’s been dubbed a “conveyor belt road”. The project is being spearheaded by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), with plans to […]

One of the weirdest sea slugs known to science has been discovered at a staggering depth, swimming around right down in the Midnight Zone between 1,013 to 4,009 meters (3,323 to 13,153 feet). As well as becoming the first sea slug known to live in the deep-water column, it also uses its body like a […]

At the bottom of Buffalo Ford Lake at Yellowstone National Park, researchers have found interesting clues about the natural history of the area. Before the 1800s CE, the American bison was thriving. Estimates of buffalo numbers on the continent vary from around 30 to 60 million at the start of the century, but that quickly […]

Immense glaciers once covered the entire Earth, reaching even the equator, geologists have confirmed. The discovery that this also applied in the center of continents, where conditions would have been very dry deepens the mystery of where and how life survives. Geologists learned of the existence of recent ice ages by finding the legacy of […]

The corpse flower is one of the strangest plants on the planet, famous for the hot stench of death it unleashes when in bloom – a rare and short-lived event that lures in as many tourists as it does pollinators. Opportunities to study the mechanisms behind the odorous performance are rare, but scientists with access […]

Arguably the most impressive example of prehistoric rock art ever discovered has finally been interpreted, and the meanings behind the images are truly mind-blowing. Collaborating with Indigenous elders in the Colombian Amazon, researchers learned that the epic collection of ancient paintings alludes to a hidden spiritual dimension that shamans are able to navigate by transforming […]