Deborah Bloomfield

This week, the first image of the magnetic fields around Sagittarius A* has been taken using the Event Horizon Telescope, male and female crab spiders may be using cooperative mimicry to resemble a full flower in a world-first, and climate change is affecting the shape of the Earth which may impact global timekeeping. Finally, we […]

Having lost 90 percent of its territory during the 1800s gold rush, a historic memorandum signed on March 19, 2024, will see a region of land returned to the Yurok Tribe, with plans for it to serve as a future gateway to the Redwood National and State Parks, managed by both the tribe and the […]

On April 8, a total solar eclipse will cross North America, from the west of Mexico all the way to Newfoundland in Canada. Since solar power continues to grow across the United States, the impending eclipse has people wondering how much it will affect power generation across the country. In particular, the path of totality […]

If asked to draw a galaxy, you’d probably produce a spiral shape like the one above. When it comes to gaining our attention, spiral galaxies have big advantages – for one thing, most people regard them as extremely beautiful. They’re also brighter, having more hot young stars, so unless we look really closely we see […]

Just weeks after making her public debut, one of the world’s largest snakes – a new species of giant anaconda – has been found dead in the Amazon rainforest.  The tragic news was shared earlier this week by Professor Freek Vonk on Instagram, who said: “With enormous pain in my heart I want to let you […]

The Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona, is asking members of the public to keep an eye out for a new creeping threat in the Sonoran Desert: invasive stinknet. This strongly scented herb is currently blooming across southern Arizona, and park officials want it removed before it sets seed. Stinknet (Oncosiphon pilulifer) is an invasive […]

Preventing the spread of some sexually transmitted infections (STIs) could be as simple as taking a couple of pills. At least, this is a possible scenario if DoxyPEP becomes more widely available worldwide. The treatment uses an antibiotic as a post-exposure prophylaxis – a preventative treatment that can stop the spread of bacterial infection. Research […]

An “exceptional” 99-million-year-old tentacle trapped in amber is the first partial body fossil of a tapeworm ever discovered, suggesting the parasites have been wreaking havoc on intestines since at least the mid-Cretaceous. Despite being found in nearly all marine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems, tapeworms (Cestoda) are rarely preserved in the geological record. In fact, the […]

A book bound in human skin has been stripped by Harvard University’s Houghton Library following a review prompted by the recommendations put forward in 2022 regarding human remains in museum collections. Harvard Library states the “ethically fraught nature” of the book’s origins and history made it inappropriate for stewardship at the library, and are in […]

Imagine being capable of surviving being frozen to almost absolute zero as well as being put in a kitchen oven on the highest setting; going without water and food for decades; being blasted with radiation; and even being exposed to the vacuum of space (and maybe spread to the Moon). No humans can do that, […]

Five years ago, the idea that the whole world could be shut down for weeks on end would be unthinkable. But then, so would the notion of mass graves in New York City, a US Republican government issuing what looked similar to a universal basic income, and a few thousand people poisoning themselves with entirely useless […]

A hard-boiled egg makes for a nutritious snack, but disaster can strike when our timing is off. Boil too long and the yolk looks like a 90s mouse ball, but too little and cracking that baby open is going to make a mess of your worktop and delay snackisfaction. But what if I told you […]

For a long time, orcas (or killer whales) were all believed to be one species but with different “ecotypes” in various regions, but scientists have now identified at least two distinct species in the North Pacific Ocean. They argue there are enough differences to declare the Bigg’s killer whales and resident killer whales separate species. […]

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Mount Sinai – a deeply sacred site in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – is the location where Moses was given the Ten Commandments stone tablets by God, according to the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible. Like many settings in the Bible, it’s thought to be based on a real place, although where exactly […]

Something strange is going on in Florida (well, stranger than usual). Critically endangered smalltooth sawfish have been spotted erratically spinning and whirling around in the Lower Florida Keys, while dozens more have died under mysterious circumstances. The situation has become so severe that the NOAA Fisheries has initiated a first-of-its-kind emergency response effort to prevent […]

As a result of concerns over the survival of owl species native to western North America, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has made a draft proposal to cull nearly half a million barred owls over the course of three decades. This plan, however, has been met with uproar by animal advocacy groups. Barred […]

Songwriters may be Under Pressure, but they just don’t get Into The Groove like they did back in the 1980s. That’s the conclusion of a new study looking at the evolution of song lyrics from 1980 to 2020, which found that while the meaningful verses created by earlier artists could sound Like A Prayer, more […]

The Barberton Greenstone Belt in South Africa contains some of the oldest exposed rocks on Earth, some over 3.6 billion years old. It also contains some layers, a bit younger than that, which have perplexed geologists as they looked like a jumble of different rocks put together. Researchers now have a proposal: That portion is […]

“Life imitates art” might be an overused cliché, but a newly discovered gecko species found among rocks in the Western Ghats in India appears to be taking the phrase quite literally. Back in April 2022, a team of researchers had set out on an expedition in the deciduous forests of the southern Western Ghats – […]