Deborah Bloomfield

Sagittarius A* is the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. As supermassive black holes go, it is fairly quiet. It’s not creating any galaxy-wide tantrums that should worry us. It does flare up though, and studying these flares across wavelengths has been very important to create models about the extreme environments […]

A new study investigating artificial intelligence (AI) and “cognitive offloading” by humans has found a negative correlation between frequent AI use and critical thinking abilities. Advertisement Large language models have become more freely available these days, whether it’s OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s AI summaries, providing (often not entirely accurate) answers at potentially huge costs to […]

Anxiety can act as a great motivator to avoid potentially uncomfortable interactions, and it seems that even rats may fall victim to it. A new study involving rats being let loose in a maze populated by food-guarding robots has revealed how their brains behaved when anticipating future threats, changing their behavior so that they could […]

A new preprint study looking at data from NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) Lander has claimed to find evidence that Mars has a solid inner core, just like the Earth. Advertisement By looking at the seismic vibrations from beneath the surface, scientists can put together a picture of the […]

Thawing ice has unveiled remains of a long-lost forest in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, indicating the profound changes that have influenced the area – and perhaps what might lie ahead.  Scientists at Montana State University (MSU) studied the remains of a mature whitebark pine forest that formed nearly 6,000 years ago on the Beartooth Plateau […]

La Niña reared its head in the tropical Pacific in December 2024 and it’s likely to linger for a few more months. What does that mean? In short, colossal climatic forces are set to drive lower average temperatures, as well as noticeable changes to rainfall. Advertisement The NOAA Climate Prediction Center recently announced the emergence […]

COVID-19 appears to be associated with a substantial rise in the number of ME/CFS cases, according to a new study. Using data from a long COVID research initiative run by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the scientists calculated that the incidence of ME/CFS is now 15 times higher than pre-pandemic levels, and found […]

An enormous body of water has been found in volcanic rocks below the peak of the Oregon Cascade Range. The volume is so large, the push to use it to address regional water shortages is likely to come quickly, but the solution is not that easy. Meanwhile the proximity to slumbering volcanoes could have implications […]

Supermassive black holes are not picky eaters. They placidly sit at the center of galaxies, but if material gets too close, they’ll voraciously gorge on it. Stars have been disrupted and eaten too when they got too close. Now, researchers report that they have caught a supermassive black hole in the act of eating a […]

After centuries of rumor and speculation, archaeologists have finally confirmed the existence of a colossal underground tunnel system beneath the Peruvian city of Cusco. Built by the ancient Inca, the labyrinth – or Chincana – radiates outwards from the Temple of the Sun, extending for more than a mile towards a fortress on the edge […]

Nearly 162 years ago, a visionary predicted the evolution of machines and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) with unnerving accuracy. He boldly foresaw a future where humanity’s mechanical creations might even gain consciousness and supplant us as the dominant species on Earth. Advertisement His name was Samuel Butler, a British-born writer (not to mention […]

The human Stone Age was, undeniably, the first step on a journey towards the species total technological dominance – but it didn’t have to be. After all, pick a rock that’s too soft, or too wonky, and our ancestors may never have made it past “ape with aspirations”. So how did they manage to get […]

Neutron stars are among the densest objects in the universe. Their crust is far stronger than any material on Earth and a spoonful of this matter is heavier than a mountain. Talking about mountains, if they exist on neutron stars, some have hypothesized that they might be just a few millimeters tall. New work suggests […]

New data from England and Wales has identified an increase in women seeking abortions after using “natural” birth control methods – things like menstrual cycle tracking, and systems that use body temperature fluctuations to predict fertility. These methods are known to be less effective than other options like hormonal contraceptives and condoms, so there was […]

At the center of almost every galaxy, there is a supermassive black hole. Well, astronomers think it’s every galaxy, but it is a difficult claim to confirm. Not because there might be many exceptions – the difficulty lies in the fact that many black holes are so well hidden that we wouldn’t know they are […]

Australia might be home to a large proportion of the world’s deadliest animals but it’s about to have three more. The iconic Sydney funnel-web spider, with one of the world’s deadliest bites, has been discovered to be three species instead of one, each with a separate geography to match. Considered the spider with the most […]

Scientists working at a crustacean laboratory in Singapore have discovered a new-to-science species of “supergiant” isopod, and it’s an absolute wedge. Known as bọ biển or “sea bugs” in Vietnam, its angular noggin has inspired an out-of-this-world species name: Bathynomus vaderi, after everyone’s favorite absent father figure, Darth Vader. B. vaderi is part of the […]

In 2008, a team of researchers studying deer and cattle found something a little unexpected. Both animals, when grazing or resting, appear to align their bodies in the north-south direction. Advertisement “Farmers and attentive nature and countryside observers know that most cattle and sheep, when grazing, face the same way,” the team explained in their […]

The Amazon river is the largest drainage system in the world in terms of water volume and its drainage basin. The 6,400 kilometer (4,000 mile) river flows from the Andes Mountains of Peru, crossing South America before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean. However, according to a surprising find in 2006 and subsequent geological studies, that […]

Researcher are forever finding and naming new-to-science species of dinosaurs, but it feels like we don’t speak as much about where new dinosaurs came from in the most literal sense. That is, when two dinosaurs wanted to make baby dinosaurs, how did they do it? Advertisement Dinosaur sex is something that science writer and palaeontologist […]