Deborah Bloomfield

NASA has released two new movies showcasing changing observations of two well-known sources in the sky: Cassiopeia A and the Crab Nebula. Both headliners are the leftovers of massive stars going supernova in our galaxy. The time-lapse videos condense 20 years of the Chandra X-ray telescope’s data into just 20 dramatic seconds. The explosion that […]

An abundance of microbial life has been found in Chile’s Atacama Desert, lurking up to 4 meters (13 feet) below the surface of one of the most arid and inhospitable places on the planet. The Atacama is the driest nonpolar desert – but not the driest place on Earth, that title belongs to somewhere you might […]

NASA’s Psyche mission is on its way to study a peculiar asteroid and during its cruise, the mission team has been testing a new communication system. The new approach doesn’t use radio waves but an infrared laser and it has now shown that it works successfully from the most distant place yet. Psyche was 226 […]

A former NASA engineer working on a propellant-less propulsion drive has claimed that the device can deliver enough thrust to achieve lift in Earth’s gravity, an effect which should not take place under our current understanding of physics. Dr Charles Buhler, who worked on a range of programs while at NASA, has since co-founded Exodus […]

There are many impressive things about birds. Some soar for miles without ever flapping their wings; some live for over half a century; and some are literal rainbows. But when you look at a bird gliding high up in the distance, have you ever wondered just how high they can go? The species that holds […]

A remarkable coincidence has seen a late Cretaceous mudflat preserve the footprints of two different types of raptors. More astonishingly still, one of these prints comes from a previously unknown species larger than any raptor we have previously found. Until we find the bones, there is a lot we can’t know about the creatures named […]

Propulsion is always a big deal when it comes to space missions. Every gram counts when going up into space, so the more energy-dense your fuel is the better. You also usually can’t refuel once you are out there. An alternative solution, which doesn’t have this problem, is using a solar sail. By taking advantage […]

Around five million years ago, the rivers of North America were home to an enormous salmon that would make today’s largest specimens look like minnows. It may have grown up to 8.9 feet (2.7 meters) long and was thought to have incredibly long fangs like a saber-toothed tiger. However, new research has found that this […]

A cluster of five enormous Stone Age structures in County Wicklow, Ireland, may have been built as a means of delineating the path taken by the souls of the dead as they ascend to the eternal realm. Known as cursus monuments, the constructions are extremely rare in Ireland but relatively common in Britain, although archaeologists […]

NASA’s planet-hunting telescope Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered its first free-floating, or rogue, planet. It is a terrestrial object, likely bigger than Earth but not by too much. This candidate object was discovered within the analysis of 1.3 million light curves collected by the space observatories over its years in orbit. Rogue planets […]

A UK man has become one of the first to receive an experimental mRNA vaccine designed to prevent recurrence of melanoma skin cancer. Steve Young, a 52-year-old musician, had a stage II melanoma removed previously, and said the shot is his “best chance” at stopping the cancer coming back. “I feel lucky to be part […]

Plants are not just able to survive in low gravity such as on the Moon, two new papers suggest – they may prefer it, at least based on the only species to sprout. When Chang’e 4 landed on the Moon in January 2019 it carried with it a payload that could dictate the future of […]

If you’ve been on the Internet you’ve probably heard of the Slow Mo Guys, the YouTubers dedicated to filming everything from guns firing bullets at other bullets to Will Smith wielding a big flamethrower in slow motion. After doing it for over a decade, the team wondered whether they could attempt to film “the fastest […]

A new method for making diamonds bypasses the high temperatures and pressures, opening the door to making them at a fraction of the existing cost. The world of fine crystal control called The Diamond Age in science fiction may be closer than we think. Although we have known how to make synthetic diamonds since the […]

In addition to being one of the most significant archaeological finds of the 20th century, the tomb of Tutankhamun also turned out to be a glorified can of worms, the opening of which has inspired countless myths, movies, and pseudo-archaeological theories. In particular, the so-called “Pharaoh’s Curse” became a globally recognized phenomenon when Lord Carnarvon […]

Particles and waves are one and the same in our universe. This challenge to the expected binary is everywhere, but it becomes crucial at the quantum level. The wave-particle duality has been studied for over a century with a myriad of experiments, but researchers have now done something different: They have captured it on camera. […]

Fractals – those self-similar shapes which can be endlessly zoomed in on without losing detail – are weirdly ubiquitous in nature. You’ve got snowflakes, famously; cauliflowers and coastlines; even rabbits, with a bit of work, can be shown to conform to fractal patterns. Of course, none of these examples can truly be said to be […]

In 2017, astronomers at the Pan-STARRS1 observatory looking for near-Earth asteroids spotted an object as it hurtled past our Sun at 38.3 kilometers per second (23.8 miles per second).  Soon, telescopes around the world pointed in the unusual object’s direction, trying to capture as much data as they could before it moved away from the […]

Exquisitely preserved fossils belonging to an extinct group of giant sharks have been discovered in Mexico, and may help solve some centuries-old mysteries surrounding what these enigmas looked like, what they hunted, and how they fit into the shark evolutionary tree. Ptychodus is a genus of extinct sharks from the Albian–Campanian stage of the Cretaceous period […]

The carbonized remains of an ancient papyrus scroll from Herculaneum have yielded long-lost information concerning Plato, including his exact burial place as well as details about his demise into slavery. Located near the iconic site of Pompeii, Herculaneum was obliterated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, leaving the town – and its […]