Deborah Bloomfield

It’s easy to assume that “big” equals “strong”. If you pitted an elephant and a guinea pig against each other in a weightlifting contest, it’s pretty easy to guess how that would go… or is it? While some of the strongest bones to be found in the animal kingdom do belong to the traditional big […]

Sometimes the natural world and the world of computer and video games have a little bit of a crossover – from the frightening zombie fungus from The Last Of Us, to the subject of today’s article. Meet the Pacman frog. Pacman frogs aren’t really called Pacman frogs but because of their pleasingly round bodies and […]

This week on Break It Down: the first archaeological study takes place outside of Earth, the oldest calendar might show a comet impact, a new study thinks the ancient Egyptians were using hydraulic tech to build the pyramids (others disagree), what a rock on Mars could tell us about potential life in the Solar System, […]

Ever thought, “I’d really like a game of table tennis,” but had no one to play with? Well, do we have the scientific breakthrough for you! Google DeepMind has just unveiled a robot that could give you a run for your money in a match, but don’t assume you’d be in for a trouncing – […]

In a matter of days, the European Space Agency’s JUICE mission will attempt a completely new maneuver that breaks two records: It will be the first time a spacecraft uses two objects for a gravity assist maneuver, and it will be the first-ever Lunar-Earth flyby. The Lunar-Earth Gravity Assist (LEGA) is expected to save JUICE […]

From the life of the Buddha to A Christmas Carol, to, heck, even Aladdin, the idea that money can’t buy us happiness is pretty baked into most human cultures. Like so many “common sense” ideas, though, it seems like it’s dead wrong – at least, according to a new study from happiness researcher Matthew Killingsworth. […]

Comet 13P/Olbers is a period comet that visits the inner Solar System every 69 years. It flew past its closest point to the Sun on June 30 and is now on its long journey back away. But it has come at a particular active point in the solar cycle. The Sun is currently at or […]

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Our best estimates of the composition of the universe indicate that it is mostly dark matter and dark energy, neither of which have been detected on Earth. Even the baryonic matter we sometimes call the “observable universe” is three quarters hydrogen and 23 percent helium, by mass, and even less if you’re counting atoms. It’s […]

It looks like a baby dragon from Game of Thrones or perhaps a desert-dwelling Pokémon, but the armadillo girdled lizard is very much a real animal. Advertisement They are known by a few different names – including the armadillo lizard, the armadillo spiny-tailed lizard, and the golden-armadillo lizard – although they’re scientifically known as Ouroborus cataphractus. […]

Authorities in Spain are investigating a 39-year-old man after it was discovered that, on a quest to get some exciting photos for social media, he had poured water over 6,000-year-old cave paintings, causing them to be damaged. Advertisement Agents from the Spanish Civil Guard’s Nature Protection Service (SEPRONA) launched the investigation in May, after coming […]

While the light and relaxing soundtrack of a nature documentary might make it seem otherwise, nature is, in fact, very noisy – but in a cacophony of different animal sounds, which one rises above the rest? The loudest animal in the world The battle for which animal is the loudest takes place in the ocean […]

A “Global Glacier Casualty List” is being set up by scientists to keep tabs on the ice sheets that fall victim to climate change. If things continue as they are, the database will have a lot of work on its hands: two-thirds of the world’s glaciers are on track to disappear by the end of […]

The Perseids meteor shower continues to be the most popular in the Northern Hemisphere as it peaks in the warmth of August. It is also the most active in this period and one of the most active across the year, consistently delivering spectacles. The peak is happening the night between August 11 and August 12, […]

An otherwise normal stroll along the beach before Independence Day may have led one New Jersey resident to uncover a brand-new world record for the oldest message in a bottle ever found. The discovery was made on July 3 by Amy Smyth Murphy, who noticed something sticking out of the sand while walking along the […]

In the early hours of July 18, 1918, the Franco-American counter-offensive against German positions began at Aisne-Marne in northern France. The first division of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) drove the German forces back, but not without significant losses. Advertisement By the end of the assault, more than 1,000 US soldiers were unaccounted for – […]

Although our universe may seem stable, having existed for a whopping 13.7 billion years, several experiments suggest that it is at risk – walking on the edge of a very dangerous cliff. And it’s all down to the instability of a single fundamental particle: the Higgs boson. Advertisement In new research by me and my […]

Women wait longer than men to receive medical care in hospital emergency departments and are less likely to receive pain medication for the same complaints, a study has found. The research reveals a troubling and “significant” sex bias in how medical staff perceive a patient’s pain. Advertisement Gender and sex inequality in medicine is a […]

Lunar eclipses were more than just entertainment for the ancient Babylonians, who saw these celestial events as harbingers of doom. Reading the signals lurking in the shadows that devoured the Moon was therefore an important science, and resulted in the production of a series of texts documenting the various omens to be found in an […]

The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft has not only created the most accurate map of the Milky Way, it has also measured over 150,000 asteroids. And among that data, it found that hundreds of them might have a little moon. If confirmed, it will end up nearly doubling the known number of binary asteroids. Advertisement […]