Deborah Bloomfield

In certain places in Japan, there are gigantic slabs of stone, erected centuries ago, that warn of environmental catastrophe. Advertisement “High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants,” one reads. “Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point.” Advertisement Some of the tsunami stones were placed […]

Visitors to the northern Oregon and southern Washington coastline are being told to avoid touching balls and patties of an oily, tar-like substance that’s been washing up on the shore and affecting wildlife. Advertisement The substance was first reported on May 19, and in the days that followed, was found along a roughly 240-kilometer (150-mile) […]

Tarantulas might be an arachnophobe’s greatest fear – but who could resist the power of an electric blue tarantula? Three species are particularly famous for having an electric blue hue, and while they might be the stuff of nightmares for some, they are pretty dreamy to behold.  The Cobalt Blue Tarantula Our first blue species […]

New research has challenged one of the most widely accepted theories about the function of sleep: that it allows the brain’s waste clearance system to take out the trash in the form of harmful toxins that build up while we’re awake.  Advertisement It’s something we all absolutely have to do, yet scientists know surprisingly little […]

One of the most prominent features of supermassive black holes that are actively feeding is a jet of plasma. The jet can move at almost the speed of light and extend for many millions of light-years in some cases. New research shows that the jets are not stuck in place, but they can in fact […]

Along with bonobos, chimpanzees are humanity’s closest living relatives, with a genome that is strikingly similar to our own. Yet chimps don’t drive cars, speak Danish, or play the clarinet, so if we’re so genetically alike, how can we be so different in our appearance and behavior? How similar are we really? Humans and chimpanzees […]

Astronaut training is pretty rigorous, involving trips to neutral buoyancy labs to simulate to simulate microgravity environments, and learning how to operate and maintain space station modules. But, according to former NASA astronaut José Moreno Hernández, there is another, less talked about training session: the pee and poop module – and it comes with its […]

The JWST has looked further into the universe than we have ever seen before, discovering a galaxy as it appeared just 330 million years after the Big Bang. Advertisement Looking this far back into the universe has yielded a few surprises, including those eerily big black holes that keep appearing, confounding our theories about how […]

If you’re looking for an example of when nature well and truly said “let’s fuck around and find out”, look no further than the extinct reptile Longisquama, potentially one of the most ridiculous-looking animals to have ever lived. This peculiar creature was discovered in the Madygen Formation, a geological formation found in the south of Kyrgyzstan […]

The first English colonizers to settle in North America were forced to eat dogs during an intense period of hardship, as shown by new archaeological discoveries. The grisly remains of this mini-famine also show how canine companions provide a unique insight into the power dynamics between European settlers and Indigenous peoples. Advertisement In a new […]

On the morning of June 3, look to the East. Just before sunrise, you will get six out of seven planets nicely aligned. Venus will be a bit too close to the Sun to be visible before the Sun appears. The alignment will give you great views in the order Jupiter, Mercury, Uranus, Mars, Neptune, […]

Scientists at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) have released a report on the recent rise in orcas ramming boats off the Iberian Peninsula. Advertisement Since 2020, a small group of orca off the Iberian Peninsula (known as Iberian killer whales) have interacted with vessels off the coast of Morocco, Spain, and Portugal at least 673 […]

After years of campaigning by Greenpeace, a court in the Philippines has revoked the permit to grow “Golden Rice”, a genetically modified crop designed to combat malnutrition. The move is a highly controversial one, with some scientists saying the decision could potentially cost “thousands and thousands” of lives. Advertisement The Philippines became the first country […]

When it comes to birth control, there’s a bit of an imbalance between products targeted at women and those assigned female at birth, and products targeted at men. And when we say “imbalance”, we mean that nearly all the effective, reversible methods are designed around the female reproductive system. There’s long been a drive to […]

Two lava flows on Venus show signs of being very recent, suggesting volcanic activity on Earth’s evil twin may be ongoing, providing exciting opportunities for future study. Advertisement It’s hard to believe today, but in the middle of the last century, hopes for life or future colonies on Venus were as high as for those […]

The Met Gala? That’s old news. The most Instagrammable event in Manhattan during May is something anyone can get a ticket to if they happen to be in the city, thanks to an unexpected partnership between the Sun and the street grid known as Manhattanhenge. Advertisement What is Manhattanhenge? Yes, Manhattanhenge sounds like a made-up […]

What started off as a family reunion with a big barbecue to boot wound up with six people infected with rare parasitic worms and three of those people ending up in hospital. The source? Undercooked black bear meat. Advertisement The story began to unravel when a 29-year-old man was admitted to hospital in July 2022 […]

A handful of puzzling cases in a brain bank of over 5,000 donated samples – these are the people identified in a new study from the Netherlands as having had asymptomatic Alzheimer’s disease. These individuals are known as “resilient” to the disease, and scientists are only just beginning to uncover the secrets inside their brains. […]

The remains of three Stone Age mammoths have been uncovered within a wine cellar in Austria, providing incredible new insights into how ancient humans may have hunted the extinct beasts. Describing the find as the most significant of its kind in over a century, researchers have said that the bones are probably 30,000 to 40,000 […]

Forget breaking into the housing market or the millionaire class – millennials have officially just reached even headier heights. Specifically, heaven. The Vatican announced recently that Carlo Acutis, a London-born and Milan-raised boy who died from leukemia in 2006 aged just 15, now qualifies for canonization – in other words, he’s ready to be declared […]