Deborah Bloomfield

In a matter of years, we will be getting incredible new high-resolution images of Jupiter, in particular its icy moons, from the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE): the European Space Agency (ESA) mission that will study Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. The road to Jupiter is still long, and to get a boost, it flew past […]

There are 8.2 billion people on the planet, and that number is only going up. All those extra humans need somewhere to live – and increasingly, it’s wildlife that will pay for it. At least, that’s according to a new study from researchers at the University of Michigan, which has calculated the likely amount of […]

It comes as no surprise that some of the most remote places on Earth are filled with some of Earth’s rarest creatures. From those that have only been seen via camera trap, to cases of discovery and rediscovery, even large creatures can manage to hide away inside secret habitats. None more so than the Saola. […]

While most dolphins prefer warmer waters, there’s one species in particular that’s no stranger to cooler climes – in fact, the most likely place to find one is south of the Antarctic Convergence. The name of this remote and rarely seen marine mammal? The hourglass dolphin. Advertisement A striking Southern Ocean resident Just look at […]

People around St Francis Bay in South Africa had an interesting morning last Sunday: between 8:30 and 9 am local time, a bright streak was seen illuminating the sky, with some people hearing a sonic boom and feeling a tremor. At first, it was speculated to be a piece of space junk falling through the […]

If you’ve ever found yourself scouring your brain for some common, everyday word, only to come up short, don’t worry – it literally happens to all of us. Termed “lethologica”, or more often a “tip of the tongue” state or syndrome, “You can’t talk to anybody, in any culture, in any language, in any age […]

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) made history over the last several years by delivering the first images of the shadows of two supermassive black holes. The fuzzy orange glow might look out of focus, but it was a technical feat, requiring connecting telescopes all around the surface of the planet to form a single instrument […]

The evolution of flight in insects has seen them take to the skies at incredible sizes and speeds – we’re looking at you, Megaloptera (appropriately enough meaning “large wing”). Flying requires creating lift and for that, you need molecules in the air, something that gets less concentrated the higher up you go. It got us […]

Reportedly, fishing is one of the most common activities for people to be doing when they’re struck by lightning. But what does this mean for fish, who famously spend their entire lives in prime fishing locations? Despite what cartoons would have you believe, when lightning strikes a lake, all its once-living contents won’t instantly float […]

Researchers have collected and analyzed the genomes of 1,705 virus species from ice cores taken from Guliya Glacier on the Tibetan Plateau. This discovery offers 50 times more viral information than has ever been recovered from glaciers in the past. Advertisement Although it may sound like the prelude to a story about potential contamination risk […]

Dr Anthony Fauci, a key figure in the US government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has announced that he was recently hospitalized with a West Nile virus infection and is now recovering at home. Advertisement Speaking to CBS News, the former chief medical adviser to the president said he thinks it’s likely he contracted the […]

Scotland’s Loch Ness is famous for the enormous beast rumored to lurk in its waters, but what other life is living it up in the murky depths? New research from the University of Aberdeen decided to find out what’s really down there by dipping a holographic camera in for the first time, and the results […]

Last week, a study from 2022 sparked a media storm, suggesting that the Shroud of Turin – the controversial linen cloth that some believe was the burial shroud of Jesus Christ – does actually date back to the time of the Christian religious leader. But despite the excitement this has caused, there is reason for […]

If you want to know how hard it is to win a war on drugs, consider just how quickly they get adopted, despite great obstacles. Not long after Europeans first encountered coca in South America, and centuries before anyone isolated cocaine, traces of the drug had made their way into the brain tissue of Europeans, […]

NASA’s DART mission is future tech made reality today. In 2022, the mission demonstrated that it is possible for humans to push potentially dangerous asteroids into a different orbit away from Earth. It did so by smashing a spacecraft into – and subsequently successfully changing the orbit – of Dimorphos, the moon of asteroid Didymos. […]

As summer ends and authorities begin to roll out preparations for this year’s respiratory virus season, health officials in the US have announced that households across the country will be offered free COVID-19 tests in the coming fall and winter. Advertisement In a CDC press briefing on August 23, Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response […]

Tracks of near-identical dinosaur prints have been found across two continents, demonstrating how the dinosaurs that made them 120 million years ago were among the last to be able to complete their journey. That’s because this was when the supercontinent Gondwana broke off from Pangea, severing the geological connection. The prints were discovered in Brazil […]

Almost a year since its launch and eight months since landing on the Moon, Japan’s SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) mission is officially over. The Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) confirmed the decision in a press statement on August 26. SLIM was last heard from in late April but survived much longer than its intended […]

Whirlpools appear when fast-flowing water interacts with other currents or obstacles. Faced with a worthy opponent, the water begins to swirl in a downward spiral, creating a vortex capable of sucking in objects – or animals – that happen to be nearby. Advertisement Some whirlpools are small and brief while others can be enormous and […]

The apparent crisis in our models of the universe – caused by impossibly large galaxies soon after the Big Bang – may be no crisis at all, according to a new study. The authors conclude the galaxies in question are not as large as has been estimated. If this work is correct, the JWST has […]