Deborah Bloomfield

Were you among the lucky people who saw the extraordinary aurorae of May 2024? They were the product of an incredible solar storm, coming from a region on the solar surface that was among the most active of the last two decades. Scientists were keeping an eye on the area before the event and for […]

Some volcanoes get all the publicity. Some deserve it – Yellowstone, for example, has a reputation that’s entirely deserved: if it erupted tomorrow, “it would really feel like the end of the world,” Alexa Van Eaton, a physical volcanologist at the Cascades Volcano Observatory, told PBS Terra back in November. “The area well beyond Missoula, […]

Tokyo has been toppled as the world’s most populous city, with the Indonesian capital of Jakarta now ruling the roost, followed by the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka. The reshuffling is partly due to changes in how urban areas are defined, but it also reflects a broader, more profound shift in our world.  In November 2025, […]

Researchers have identified specific psychological traits that indicate whether someone is likely to follow conspiracy theories. The results suggest that those who believe the world is fundamentally unjust and those who have a lower tolerance for ambiguity are more likely to hold to conspiracy ideas. Conspiracy theories are not new. Historically, such beliefs – which […]

The Trump Administration has suddenly frozen the construction of all offshore wind farms in the US. The reason, it claims, is due to “national security risks.” Just before Christmas, the US Department of the Interior announced that all five of the country’s large-scale offshore wind projects that were under construction must be paused with immediate […]

Did you know that Wyoming is home to a dinosaur “mummy zone”? Here, scientists have been finding remarkably preserved dinosaurs since the early 20th century, and we just got two new carcasses that heralded a bunch of dinosaur firsts. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access […]

When Betelgeuse finally collapses, the star – currently a red supergiant – will likely shine as brightly as the Moon in the sky for about two weeks, and be visible during the daytime for 6-12 months after that. It will be a spectacular event, but calculating when it will happen is a tricky business. Every […]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) just announced a big shakeup of the recommended childhood vaccine schedule in the USA. Following a memo from the office of President Trump at the end of last year, acting CDC Director Jim O’Neill has now instructed the agency to move forward with changes that see six […]

A treasure trove of deep reef dwellers has been discovered in coral reefs off the coast of Guam, including 20 that are new to science – and there could be more yet to come. Deep coral reefs like those in Guam exist at depths greater than 100 meters (330 feet) – which lies within the […]

The galaxy is expected to be home to billions of free-floating, or “rogue”, planets that have no stellar companion. These worlds have been kicked out of the system where they formed, and they travel cold and alone around the Milky Way. They are found serendipitously, their properties hard to estimate, but a new approach and […]

Galaxies might be separated by hundreds of thousands of light-years at the very least, but they do occasionally merge. During those collisions, the supermassive black holes that sit at the center of those galaxies can become active, entering a feeding frenzy thanks to fresh supplies of gas being thrown towards the core by the merger. […]

In 1917, a group of German soldiers arrived at a military hospital near Freiburg after returning from a campaign in Dobrudja, a region of the Balkans that had been riddled with disease. All of the troops had been struck down with a nasty case of dysentery caused by the Shigella group of bacteria – except for […]

Plunge 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) below the ocean’s surface, and there can be found the midnight zone, where the complete lack of sunlight and extreme cold and pressure have led to the evolution of all manner of ethereal weirdos. One of the rarest members of the gang? The giant phantom jellyfish (Stygiomedusa gigantea). The rest […]

Mammals are vertebrates famous for, among other talents, having milk-producing mammary glands, having hair or fur, giving birth to live young, and being warm-blooded. While these traits, along with having a complex neocortex in their brain, are generally found in all mammals, they are not universal rules. For obvious example, monotremes such as platypuses do […]

It seems that in the last few years, we have been collecting a lot of objects, phenomena, and events that challenge our best understanding of how the universe and galaxies in it have evolved. Thanks to new telescopes coming online, we are seeing with more accuracy into the past, and this means new insight. Insights […]

The Bayeux Tapestry, the medieval embroidery depicting the events surrounding the Battle of Hastings in 1066, may have been hung up in the refectory of St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury, new research suggests. If this is true, then the famous artifact may have been created as reading material for medieval monks as they ate their […]

Have you ever wondered why the Hawaiian language, ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, is heavily sprinkled with so many diacritical marks and other special characters? These lightly swishing symbols are there to guide pronunciation and meaning, which is especially important in a language with such a small, tightly-knit alphabet. With just 13 letters, the Hawaiian language is among […]

A mouse that was part of an elite team that spent two weeks in microgravity on board China’s Shenzhou-21 spaceship and Tiangong space station has proven there is no conflict between career and motherhood for space-traveling rodents. She gave birth to nine pups and although three of them died soon after, this is considered a […]

Did you know that a warm-blooded fish lives hundreds of meters below the sea? It’s a strange thought, but a 2015 study proved it to be true as it declared the opah, or moonfish, to be the first fully warm-blooded fish known to science. Just like a mammal, it circulates heated blood through its entire […]

There’s a cave in Spain that seems to have held some sort of ritual significance to Neanderthals, though researchers have no idea why the site was so revered by these extinct hominins. What we do know, however, is that Neanderthals kept coming back to the cave to stash horned animal skulls, and that the practice […]