Deborah Bloomfield

After a years-long hunt, Vermont botanists have rediscovered a floodplain-dwelling plant species that hadn’t been seen in the state since 1916. Advertisement When it comes to the search for false mermaid-weed (Floerkea proserpinacoides), it’s not exactly an understatement to say it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. The plant is small, making it […]

An ancient Olmec monument symbolizing the entrance to the afterlife has finally been restored to its former glory and returned to its ancestral home, almost 3,000 years after it was sculpted. The enormous Portal al Inframundo (Portal to the Underworld) is thought to have been looted in the 1960s, yet was only brought back to […]

As part of efforts to shift towards “greener” urban areas, a city in Spain has begun installation of what’s to be the country’s largest urban solar farm in a somewhat unconventional location: cemeteries. Advertisement Valencia, found on the east coast of Spain, is on a mission to achieve climate neutrality by 2030. It’s in part […]

Several fossil remnants of a huge bird called Genyornis newtoni, including the first intact skull, have been described, offering insight into the lifestyle of the last of the giant thunder birds that once roamed Australia.  Advertisement If you think Australia’s existing fauna are terrifying, take a look at what used to inhabit the continent. A starring […]

An international team of astronomers has announced the detection of two of the earliest and most distant galaxies known. The light of both of them comes from just 300 million years after the Big Bang and it was possible to observe them only thanks to the power of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Advertisement […]

North Korea launched a second wave of trash-filled balloons toward South Korea after a similar campaign just a few days earlier. It might seem like the North is simply trying to irritate their rival neighbors – and that’s no doubt a factor – but the balloons have a deep historical context in Korea. Advertisement Over […]

As a science website, it is easy to get caught up in the mysteries of vanishing stars and the crisis in cosmology, while people out there on the Internet are struggling with why flying against the planet’s rotation doesn’t decrease flight times, and why we can’t power our trucks with magnets. This week, it appears […]

During the 16th century BCE, prehistoric people in what is now Armenia placed a 3.5-meter (9.8-foot) tall basalt stone over a barrow. Buried below the stone were the remains of an adult woman and two newborn children. At first, researchers believed the babies were twins, but new analysis suggests a more complicated and remarkable relationship. […]

Earlier this year, there was a bit of a mystery at the Aquarium and Shark Lab in Hendersonville, North Carolina, after a stingray appeared to become pregnant despite no male stingrays being present. While an interesting mystery in its own right, the case drew extra attention after suggestions by the head of the aquarium that […]

A small mystery has rocked X (Twitter) over the weekend, after a junior doctor in the UK found a living goldfish on his lawn. On Saturday, junior doctor Ben Beska heard a group of birds outside, and went to investigate. Instead of the usual objects you tend to find on the grass (more grass and […]

It was back in 2019 when Elon Musk unveiled the Cybertuck, and it was an event that did not go as Musk probably envisioned. Since then, there has been disaster after disaster, and here are some hilarious and embarrassing examples. Advertisement The original d’oh moment On a brightly lit stage, the Cybertruck was unveiled: a […]

The black hole information paradox is one of those physics problems that can keep scientists up at night. It strikes at the heart of one of the crucial problems in modern physics: the fact that we can’t reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics. And it is all black holes’ fault. Deborah BloomfieldSource Link: Can Information […]

Blood and baguettes don’t usually go together in any context, let alone as building materials, yet there’s a palace in West Africa that’s cemented with these bizarre ingredients. Located in the city of Abomey in Benin, the structure is said to have been built using the blood of 41 voodoo sacrifice victims, and a new […]

Issue 23 (June 2024) of CURIOUS is out now, bringing you science highlights for the month plus deep dives into intriguing topics, interviews, exclusives, diary dates, and explanations for some of Earth’s most perplexing natural phenomena and landscapes. Read Issue 23 of our digital magazine now by clicking below! Use the arrows to navigate or […]

Our family dog used to have a rather noticeable extra eyelid that became especially apparent when he dozed off, usually upturned on the rug. This is the fleshy curtain seen at the corner of each eye, closest to the nose. It’s also commonly called the nictitating (literally “blinking”) membrane. You may have noticed these “third” […]

The Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) fascinate researchers and the general public alike. They remain central to debates about the nature of the genus Homo (the broad biological classification that humans and their relatives fall into). Neanderthals are also vital for understanding the uniqueness or otherwise of our species, Homo sapiens. We shared an ancestor with the […]

“Medieval history” often brings up images of knights in shining armor, rampaging crusaders, and dying horribly from common and preventable causes. Far away from all those peculiarly disgusting Europeans, though, on what we now know as the Swahili Coast of Eastern Africa, there was something pretty amazing going on – as a study revealed back in 2023. Advertisement “The findings were very eye-opening,” said […]

As a science website, it’s easy to get bogged down in questions like “Is there life on Enceladus?” and “Where are all the aliens?”, when people are struggling with more basic (but fun!) questions like “Why can’t we power our cars with magnets?” and “If you fell from a skyscraper on the Moon, would you die or otherwise […]

One of the deepest metal mines in Europe – the Pyhäsalmi Mine in central Finland – is to be turned into an enormous gravity battery capable of storing 2 megawatts of energy. Advertisement As the planet moves towards renewable energy, we are faced with the problem of storage. The problem is that the wind doesn’t […]

Our bodies are absolutely chock-full of microorganisms, collectively known as the human microbiome. Science suggests that it could impact our health and some people believe they have a simple solution for that: probiotics and prebiotics. Advertisement But do these claims have any substance to them? And what exactly is the difference between the two anyway? […]