Deborah Bloomfield

After years of debate, botanists have now voted to change the scientific names of over 200 species of plant, fungi, and algae that make references to a racial slur, the first time such a move has been made. Advertisement The decision took place at the International Botanical Congress (IBC) in Madrid, where 351 out of […]

When you think of the longest-living animals, chances are your brain doesn’t automatically go for “relatively small breed of parrot”. But when Cocky Bennett, a cockatoo and local legend from Sydney, Australia, died in 1916, he had reached an age that even most humans can only dream of. Advertisement At a reported 120 years old, […]

The internet has, let’s face it, spoiled us all. Time was, if you wanted to know something like “what does a puma taste like?”, you’d have to hop on a ship bound for the jungles of South America, hunt one down, and eat it yourself. These days, it takes literally fractions of a second: you […]

Want to test your intellectual capacity without spending two hours (and probably a bunch of money) on a full-blown IQ test? Then the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) might just be the one for you – but fair warning, it’s harder to get a perfect score than you might think. Advertisement The CRT was created by […]

Health trends are fickle. What’s popular one month is more often than not passé the next, usually after being swiftly debunked – only after it’s already made a dent in your pocket though, of course. One trend that just won’t go away, however, is oil pulling, with its proponents declaring benefits all the way from […]

With the advent of mobile phones and easy access to digital broadcasts, long gone are the days of twiddling about with your radio and giving yourself a jumpscare when you accidentally switch from FM to AM (RIP to any headphone users who did this with their portable radio). But what’s actually the difference between the […]

Have you ever heard of a mimeograph machine? Unless you’re reasonably old or have a particular interest in the ways people used to duplicate information, we wouldn’t be surprised if you hadn’t – but it made a particularly big mark (or perhaps, ink splatter) on the history of printing. Advertisement What is a mimeograph and […]

When we hear the phrase “cradle of humanity” – the point in the world from which all human life sprang – there’s one place that usually springs to mind: Africa.  Advertisement That’s… vague, but not wrong. The group of apes that would eventually become humans first diverged from chimpanzees, our nearest relatives in the evolutionary […]

This week, butter created from CO2 tastes like the real thing (according to Bill Gates), the first cave has been found on the Moon, and a new microcontinent has been discovered between Greenland and Canada. Finally, we investigate how to tell the difference between pseudoscience and anti-science – and how to fight both. Advertisement Subscribe […]

For the last 10 months, NASA’s curiosity has been investigating a region of Mount Sharp that is of high interest. It has signs of a violent watery past and the chemical analysis has revealed the presence of many minerals including sulfates. And as the rover moved about it accidentally cracked open a rock. And inside […]

It didn’t take long from the invention of the telescope to realize that Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, leaving it the largest planet we knew for almost 400 years. Now however, with so many exoplanets (planets beyond the Solar System) its size record has been broken many times. Advertisement Nevertheless, we […]

Our blue planet is ruled by cycles. There’s the water cycle; the solar cycle; the menstrual cycle, all tiny epicycles on the great orbit that is the Circle of Life. But one you may not have heard of – or even thought of much before – is the salt cycle: how salt, or rather salts, […]

Ever seen a bee slap an ant? We imagine the answer to that is “no”, but if you’re now desperate to know what that looks like, well, today’s your lucky day. Advertisement Researchers from the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Japan have discovered that, in the face of unwanted visitors, Japanese honey bees (Apis […]

In an effort to stop peckish fish from gobbling them up, scientists have developed special cradles to protect the young corals being used to rehabilitate reefs. With coral reefs under stress from the effects of climate change and pollution, researchers are looking for ways to quickly restore the damage caused. One of these is coral […]

Researchers have shown for the first time that doomscrolling – the habit of checking up on disturbing stories on social media – can prompt existential issues, such as impacting your view of humanity and the meaning of life. Advertisement In recent years, news reporting has becoming increasingly negative. The media’s wholehearted embrace of the adage […]

There are plenty of local issues with the United States’ power grid. Texas, for example, continues to have weather-related outages. But there is another threat that should be considered – and it comes from beyond Earth. The effects of space weather, of a geomagnetic storm, could be disastrous.  Advertisement Researchers have found two particularly vulnerable […]

The only green-boned dinosaur fossil ever discovered is set to take center stage this fall at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. “Gnatalie” (pronounced Natalie) will grace the Museum’s new wing and community hub, where her verdant remains will be on display for all to see. Advertisement As well as being the only green-colored […]

A vaccine platform that promises a one-shot solution to the flu has just been tested on a potential pandemic strain, and the scientists behind it say their results are very promising indeed. Advertisement “I think it means within five to 10 years, a one-and-done shot for influenza is realistic,” said corresponding author Jonah Sacha of […]

The fastest object ever made by humankind is NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, a spacecraft that cruised through the corona, the Sun’s upper atmosphere, a mere 6.5 million kilometers (4 million miles) from its surface. Advertisement It first completed this historic flyby of the Sun in 2021, but achieved its top speeds during its 17th close passage […]

The very first inhabitants of the paleocontinent known as Sahul may have exported some of the region’s most iconic mammals to islands hundreds of kilometers away, new research suggests. Consisting of Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea and other nearby isles, Sahul is famous for its cast of marsupial characters, some of which appear to have been […]