Deborah Bloomfield

The last several years have shown that there is a lot more to understand about Venus, both present and past. As worlds go, Venus is hellish. A surface temperature high enough to melt lead and a surface pressure like being a kilometer underwater don’t make it homely, plus the clouds that cover the whole planet […]

A fisherman has been hospitalized after coming face-to-tail with a whale in the waters south of Brisbane, Australia. Advertisement The accident took place about a kilometer (0.6 miles) away from the Tweed Heads bar at around 8:40 am on Sunday, August 18. At the time, the man was fishing with a friend on a small […]

Wind farms pumped out more electricity than coal-fired power stations in the US across March and April 2024, signifying a clear milestone in the declining fortunes of fossil fuels and the rise of renewables.  Advertisement Data from the US Energy Information Administration (IEA) shows that March and April were the first two consecutive months in […]

Over 6,000 sheep are planned to be unleashed onto eight solar plants in Texas, acting as wooly gardeners by nibbling away at vegetation over more than 10,100 acres (4,087 hectares) of land. This will be the largest solar grazing agreement in the US to date, says renewable energy operator Enel North America, who are partnering […]

The European Space Agency’s Gaia observatory has produced the most accurate map of the Milky Way, with the position and motion of almost 2 billion stars being used to better understand our galaxy’s present and past. However, teams are now looking at the future. One of them aims to conduct a follow-up mission that can […]

Contrary to what many of us thought, great white sharks are not made up of a single species but are actually separated into three distinct populations that inhabit different parts of the world’s oceans. The results raise concerns for conservationists, as it seems these distinct populations rarely interbreed. Advertisement The discovery was made by an […]

Archaeologists have been furiously digging to unearth a stunning mastodon skeleton in Iowa. It’s the first time that well-preserved remains of the prehistoric beast have been scientifically excavated in the state – and what a beauty it is. Advertisement Researchers at the University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist were first contacted in the […]

Hydrated metals have been detected on the surface of the asteroid Psyche. The observations, made with JWST, raise some big questions for the mission named after the asteroid, which hopefully will be settled when the spacecraft reaches its target. Advertisement At 222 kilometers (178 miles) wide, 16 Psyche is the 16th largest member of the asteroid belt […]

The Dodo (Raphus cucullatus), arguably the most famous extinct animal, is comparatively poorly understood. Endemic to the island of Mauritius, the doomed flightless bird is the subject of myriad myths and misconceptions, not least of all its scientific name and the number of species that make it up. In the most comprehensive review of the […]

Hurricane Ernesto battered homes and businesses across North Carolina, Bermuda, and the Bahamas as strong winds and swells caused damage along the islands and east coast of the USA. In Rodanthe in Dare County, North Carolina, one beach home was even swept completely out to sea. Advertisement On Friday, August 16, a house at 23214 […]

The story of our species begins in Africa, although our ability to tell that story is based on patchy evidence that has been steadily vanishing for the past 2 million years. Much of what’s left comes from the famous East African Rift System (EARS) – often referred to as the Cradle of Humankind – although […]

A detailed analysis of five recently discovered microscopic eukaryotes has identified one that appears to have dispensed entirely with its mitochondria. If that is the case, Skoliomonas litria will join a highly exclusive club, becoming the first free-living eukaryote ever discovered to have lost its mitochondria. Advertisement “Mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell!” You […]

The ever-growing menace of plastic pollution and the plight of polar bears has been starkly captured in this shortlisted image for an upcoming photography competition.  Advertisement The image was recently picked as a finalist for the Ocean Photographer of the Year 2024 award along with a selection of other incredible wildlife shots depicting Godzilla-like iguanas, […]

The European Space Agency’s Juice mission is on its way to explore Jupiter’s icy moons, arriving in a few years, but to get there it’s stealing some orbital velocity from Earth, Venus, and – for the first time – the Moon. These gravitational assist maneuvers are standard to slingshot missions about the Solar System but […]

Astronomers studying red dwarf stars have spotted something in the background, which they think explains a signal that has been puzzling astronomers since its detection over four decades ago. If they are right, it could represent an opportunity to improve our understanding of rare astronomical events.  Advertisement In the 1970s, the Big Ear telescope, operated […]

A new study argues that ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) are incapable of independent learning or acquiring skills without human input. This pours cold water on the belief that such systems could pose existential risks to humanity. Advertisement LLMs are scaled up versions of pre-trained language models (PLMs), which are trained on massive […]

While there’s no chance of you encountering a megalodon on your marine adventures, there are still plenty of other heebie-jeebie-inducing deep-sea creatures out there to run into, as one group of kayakers and snorkelers found out last week when they came across a rarely seen giant – an oarfish. Advertisement The 3.7-meter (12-foot) long, silver […]

The push to set up a “Lunar Coordinate Time” is gaining traction. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is the latest organization to call for the Moon to have its own standard clock time in a bid to coordinate future lunar missions. Advertisement A motion to establish a standard Lunar Celestial Reference System and Lunar Coordinate […]

Citizen scientists working on the hunt for the hypothetical Planet 9 that should lurk at the edge of the Solar System have instead found a cosmic object moving so fast that it will one day leave the Milky Way. It’s the first object with the mass of a small star found moving at this speed. […]

You may have seen in the news recently that a banana apocalypse is nigh – scientists have heralded an uncertain future for the fruit as it continues to be plagued by a fungal pathogen. It sounds like devastating news for lovers of banoffee pie and banana bread (although maybe not for smoothie fans) – are […]