Deborah Bloomfield

The higher atmosphere is full of peculiar phenomena and an important one for communication and navigation is equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs). These are hot pockets of superheated gas that form at low latitudes, usually after sunset. They remain poorly understood, and given that they impact Earth’s connection to space, it is important to know what […]

Cape fur seals at popular beaches across South Africa have been exhibiting uncharacteristically aggressive behavior, including biting beachgoers and other animals along a roughly 650-kilometer (404-mile) stretch of coastline. With more and more seals tested for diseases as a result of this, experts are concerned about the rise of rabies within the species.  Advertisement As […]

A moderate geomagnetic storm is predicted to engulf Earth’s atmosphere tonight, with the northern lights likely to become visible further south than usual. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), the aurora may reach as low as New York, and it’s all thanks to a wave of “dark plasma” […]

Typhoon Yagi has become one of the most intense typhoons to ever hit Vietnam, and it has left behind death and devastation, not only in that country but across the Philippines, Hong Kong, Macau, and mainland China. This is the 11th named storm of this year’s typhoon season, which started in late May, and the […]

Within the depths of an ancient Chehrābād salt mine in Iran, multiple miners met a grisly end thousands of years ago. Over the last few decades, their mummified remains, some of which show the terror they faced at the time of their deaths, have been excavated by archaeologists. Now, recent research has offered fresh insights […]

According to a new study, adolescents who lived through the COVID-19 lockdowns experienced rapid premature brain aging due to the social restrictions, but girls were more significantly impacted than boys. The results indicate that female brains are more vulnerable to changes in lifestyle resulting from pandemic lockdowns. Advertisement The COVID-19 virus caused illness and death […]

The speed of light in a vacuum is the absolute speed limit of the universe. Nothing will go faster than 299,792 kilometers per second (186,000 miles per second), according to Einstein’s work, as it would require an infinite amount of energy to do so. Advertisement However, that doesn’t mean that light can’t be beaten in […]

Archaeologists have found an extremely unusual Neanderthal artefact at an excavation site in Spain, which is forcing them to rethink what we know of these extinct humans and their technologies. The researchers found the only known example of a horse bone spearhead, which shows that these ancient hominins could make hunting weapons out of such […]

With summer drawing to a close, an algal bloom in Lake Erie that began forming around June is still going strong, bursting with a glow of emerald green (or should that be blue?). Advertisement The Landsat-9 satellite snapped images of the algal bloom in Lake Erie on August 13, revealing it covered approximately 830 square […]

Orcas, or killer whales, are known to some as the velociraptors of the sea for the incredibly orchestrated attacks they carry out in the wild. From spy hopping to wave washing, a simple seal faces a hell of a fight in getting out alive, and as a human I don’t much fancy my chances, either. […]

Silver has been building up in certain parts of the coastal seabed since the 19th century – and researchers believe its mounting abundance is due to a blend of furious monsoons, microscopic life, and climate change. Advertisement In a new study, scientists from the Hefei University of Technology and Guangdong Ocean University in China studied […]

Earth is not a static, unchanging ball of rock. Your day-to-day perception of the ground you stand on might suggest otherwise, but our planet is an ever-changing, shape-shifting globule of crust floating around a molten sphere of mantle and metals.  Advertisement In a beautiful illustration of this, scientists have put together a 1-minute video showing […]

A sampling of the upper troposphere has detected a wide array of microbial species, some of them human pathogens. Many of these organisms were found to be killed by the cold, exposure to increased radiation, or lack of food. However, some proved disturbingly resilient, and able to travel great distances and survive. Advertisement Carl Sagan […]

The USA is failing to learn lessons from COVID-19 as the world reconciles with a possible future bird flu pandemic, experts have warned. In a recent Perspective article, public health specialists have laid out their concerns that mistakes made during the response to COVID-19 may be repeated next time around, and that leaders in the […]

As we search the skies with increasingly more powerful telescopes, we have discovered plenty of things that our best models of the universe have not predicted, from Odd Radio Circles (ORCs) and Kýklos, to (potentially) oversized galaxies in the early universe. Advertisement One particularly gigantic surprise was first spotted by the eROSITA X-ray space telescope, […]

As anyone knows from reading a little about Albert Einstein or watching a sci-fi movie that wants to save a little on costs, it is possible to create artificial gravity in low-gravity environments. Advertisement As Einstein’s thought experiment involving a painter falling from a building and experiencing weightlessness shows, gravity and acceleration are equivalent. If […]

The doctors who performed the world’s first total eye and partial face transplant have reported on their patient’s progress one year on, and the results are promising. The patient, 46-year-old military veteran Aaron James from Arkansas, has recovered well without immune rejection – and though he is still unable to see through the transplanted eye, […]

Few people can imagine a worse death that being swallowed alive by some monstrous creature, but that is the reality for many of Earth’s critters. Fortunately, in the case of Japanese eels, being swallowed alive doesn’t have to mean certain death, and they’ve been recorded performing a rather impressive escape tactic.  Advertisement Japanese eels (Anguilla […]

For several decades, scientists have toyed with the idea of primordial black holes. In the smorgasbord of particles and forces and energy of the beginning, slight overdensities might have led to the formation of small black holes. But not too small. Because under a certain limit, these objects would have wiped out the universe already. […]

Bother a leafhopper nymph and you’ll be faced with quite the display. These insects have evolved a truly wacky way of expelling wax from their derrieres, ranging from flailing “fiber-optic” strands to cotton-like fluff. Advertisement Wax is a crucial material for insects, acting as a hydrophobic layer of protection that keeps the right moisture in […]