Deborah Bloomfield

Time is relative. If you don’t believe me, get into a plank for one minute. How was that? Longest minute of your life, huh? And that’s just psychological time. Physical time, too, is relative and it’s fairly easy for two clocks to become out of sync. Differences in speed or gravity do the trick, so […]

New research is helping to demystify the Voynich Manuscript, long hailed as “the most mysterious manuscript in the world.” While the puzzle remains uncracked, some clever scientific sleuthing indicates that the unintelligible text could have been created using a cipher. If true, it means the bizarre book could potentially be deciphered.  The Voynich Manuscript is […]

Things weren’t looking good for the carnivorous plant Drosera silvicola. Scientists believed there were just two remaining populations of this “meat-eating” flower, both of which have found themselves in the middle of a mine. However, researchers have recently discovered a stronghold of the bug-dissolving beauty over 70 kilometers (43 miles) away from its currently known territory.  The […]

Every now and then, you may have noticed small worm-like structures in your vision, particularly if you are staring at a bright uniform color, such as a bright blue sky or a snowy landscape. These worm-like structures are floaters, and are caused by objects such as protein clumps, bits of tissue, or red blood cells inside […]

Do you remember the first time you saw a magic trick? Maybe it was a rabbit pulled from an empty hat, or you were asked to pick a card, any card. On the surface, magic can look like nothing more than clever props, hidden compartments, and theatrical flair – but many of the manipulations you […]

“When a tumour appears in the liver, that doesn’t mean it’s a liver cancer,” Professor Caroline Dive told me during a recent Zoom call. “It could be a liver cancer, or it could have come from somewhere else, like the lung. The treatment for lung cancer and liver cancer is not the same, but if […]

With around five years left to go before it leaves Earth’s orbit and is crashed into the ocean, NASA has announced that the International Space Station (ISS) has hit a new milestone. The ISS has been operational since the start of the millennium. Since November 2, 2000, humans have had a continuous presence in space, […]

Ancient hunter-gatherers in the Atacama Desert may have begun mummifying their dead as a form of “art therapy” to help them process their grief following the loss of a loved one. More specifically, the 7,000-year-old tradition might have been initiated by bereaved mothers struggling to come to terms with miscarriages, stillbirths or infant mortality. The […]

In February 1985, Jill Lawson went into labor at just 26 weeks pregnant, giving birth to her son Jeffrey Lawson when he weighed just 680 grams, or one-and-a-half pounds. Like many premature babies (but by no means all), Jeffrey developed patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), and was booked in for open heart surgery at a local […]

Roman military officials stationed at an Egyptian port were crazy about their pets, and seem to have been particularly fond of monkeys. Specifically, these ancient warriors adored Indian macaques, which they treated almost as if they were children, even giving them their own pets and burying them alongside an array of elaborate grave goods. The […]

China Eastern Airlines is set to launch the world’s longest scheduled air route, a marathon journey spanning roughly 20,000 kilometers (12,427 miles) across the Pacific between China and Argentina. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. The debut flight will depart on December […]

While most of us are decking the halls with boughs of holly, pity the poor Christougenniatikophobiacs out there this season – and not just because it takes them so darn long to pronounce what’s wrong with them. Why? Because this condition describes a terrible fear of nothing less than… Christmas itself. And yes, that means […]

The puzzling electric charge on clouds of interstellar gas can be explained by the passage of two hot, bright stars close to the Sun. “Close”, in this case, is something of a relative term even by astronomical standards, given these stars were never within our few hundred closest stellar neighbors. Nevertheless, if a new study […]

Sagittarius A* is the supermassive black hole sitting at the core of the Milky Way. It has a mass of 4.3 million times our Sun’s and a radius of 12 million kilometers (7.4 million miles). It is not alone at the center of our galaxy; it is orbited by multiple stars and other peculiar objects. […]

A pattern in the movements of a brown dwarf that orbits a Sun-like star is likely to be caused by a moon. If confirmed, this would be the first exomoon, that is a moon orbiting a planet that in turn orbits a star other than the Sun. However, if the data is to be believed, […]

Planetary scientists have found a wide range of molecules that are crucial for life among a lot of other organic substances present in asteroids, meteors, and even interstellar space. Now, scientists report new insights into asteroid Bennu, which was sampled by the NASA mission OSIRIS-REx. The latest research suggests tentative evidence for a substance we […]

Seals, the blubbery dogs of icy oceans, have a curious habit of flipping on their backs and slapping their bellies like a drunken uncle after Thanksgiving dinner. While it may look silly, this behavior is actually a subtle and sophisticated form of communication. Seals “speak” through a system of grunts, growls, snorts, hisses, whistles, and […]

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS may be a primitive carbonaceous object, according to a new preprint study comparing the object’s spectra with pristine NASA samples from Antarctica. As well as this, our third interstellar visitor also appears to be undergoing cryovolcanic activity during its first close encounter in (possibly) 10 million years. While much recent analysis has […]

Be ready, werewolves and witches, as well as general lovers of the night sky. The last full Moon of the year is happening on Thursday, December 4, and it will be a supermoon, meaning that it will appear brighter and larger in the sky. This effect is due to the proximity of the Moon as […]

Flying is something of a Marmite as locomotion goes – you either love it, or hate it. I myself fall into the latter category, reserving flying only for those journeys where there is no reasonable alternative (such as the new world’s longest flight of *shivers* 29 hours). I don’t hate the entire journey, just take-off. […]