Deborah Bloomfield

Bring on Friday! Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is now speeding towards its closest encounter with the Sun – possibly its one and only encounter with our star. On September 27, the comet will fly a distance of 58.6 million kilometers (36.4 million miles) from the Sun; that is roughly the same as the orbit of […]

If you’re thinking of going down the unconventional route for this year’s Halloween costume, we’ve got just the inspiration for you: a brand-new species of chimaera, better known as a ghost shark or spookfish. Advertisement Scientists discovered the new species, which goes by the scientific name Harriotta avia – avia meaning “grandmother” in Latin, in […]

Six out of nine key planetary boundaries have been broken, while a seventh is set to be imminently breached, according to a “first-of-its-kind” planetary health check report. Advertisement Each of the boundaries is a bit like a cog in the machine that helps the planet to stay stable and resilient, allowing humanity to continue surviving […]

Well-fed male Pacific field crickets (Teleogryllus oceanicus) show sexual interest in both male and female members of their own species – however, when fed a low-quality diet, they lose interest in other males and focus their attention more on females. Advertisement Some zoologists have been reported to not record data on their observations of same-sex sexual […]

Species are being lost from the wild at an unprecedented rate, and some of the most threatened ones are being protected by conservation projects that either work with or employ local people in the area where the species remains and use ex-situ conservation practices (outside of the species’ natural habitat) to protect species that can […]

Antarctica is no stranger to icy shenanigans – look no further than the giant spinning iceberg, or the “fingers of death” that lurk beneath the surface. In 2016, however, scientists were baffled when an unexpectedly massive hole opened up in the ice of the Weddell Sea. Now, we might know why it happened. Advertisement It’s […]

An estimated 50 night parrots (Pezoporus occidentalis) survive in a newly discovered colony in a remote area of Western Australia, more than doubling population estimates for colonies of a bird thought extinct for decades. Although the discovery greatly increases the chance of saving the parrot with one of the planet’s most unusual avian lifestyles (despite […]

Medical professionals are worried that an increasingly popular combat sport, known as slap fighting, could be leaving contestants brain damaged. Advertisement Slap fighting is essentially what it says on the tin. Competitors in this largely underground fast-paced sport take turns to strike one another with full force across the face with open hands. The winner […]

In an analysis of genetic data from over 1.2 million people from different ancestry groups, scientists have been able to pinpoint 115 genes associated with anxiety. Advertisement According to the World Health Organization, anxiety disorders are the world’s most common mental illness, estimated to have affected 301 million people across the globe in 2019. While […]

Mixed-species hunting packs comprised of octopuses and fish have been observed working together in the wild to improve predation success. It’s been thought that the brainy octopuses would naturally lead the pack, but new research suggests that the chain of command may be more complicated than that. Advertisement Hunting with fish is a particularly curious […]

New research has looked at an alternative idea for what black holes are, suggesting that they might not be what we thought. Advertisement Black holes are an enormous source of gravity, “bubbles“, and headaches. Predicted as a result of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, they contain an outer region known as the event horizon – […]

Pythagoras was a smart guy: sure, he had some pretty rogue beliefs about beans, but the man knew his triangles, something most of us will have become acutely aware of when high school geometry drummed the Pythagorean theorem into our heads. But did the famed philosopher actually come up with the equation he’s most often […]

NASA’s Langley Research Center has finally presented a plan to learn about the Moon and Mars, by shooting them with specially designed bullets. We can learn a lot about the Moon through telescope observations, and far more from going there ourselves and taking samples. But nothing, according to a proposed NASA project, quite beats going […]

On June 7 of this year, a British diver had a remarkable encounter with a rare and prehistoric shark. Megamouth sharks (Megachasma pelagios) are hardly ever seen alive, but this 5-meter (16.4-foot) behemoth emerged from the depths to star in some truly remarkable footage. Advertisement The person who can be seen swimming alongside the megamouth […]

A session of treatment including playing Tetris for just 20 minutes has been shown to reduce the severity of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms for up to six months in healthcare workers. It’s unclear exactly how the iconic game produces these therapeutic effects, although researchers believe that “mental rotation” – whereby players visualize falling blocks […]

The Three Mile Island power plant is remembered today as the site of the worst nuclear accident in US history, but it may be reopened in the near future as Microsoft seeks ways to power their artificial intelligence (AI) operations. Advertisement On March 28, 1979, the power plant experienced a partial nuclear meltdown of its […]

Astronomers are getting unprecedented details of supernova explosions and supermassive black holes thanks to a new space telescope. The X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM)launched a year ago and researchers have now published its first scientific results – and they are very good. Advertisement XRISM – pronounced crism – is a mission led by the […]

A high-powered pulse of X-rays could vaporize part of an incoming asteroid and change its trajectory in the process, a new study proposes. Whether the approach would be more cost-effective than alternatives under consideration remains to be seen, but questions also need to be asked about the safety of building a suitable instrument in the […]

The mysterious vanishing of stars might seem like the stuff of science fiction (look no further than the season four finale of Doctor Who), but it’s very much a reality; in the last 70 years, around 100 stars have disappeared from view, all without a concrete explanation. Advertisement How do we know they’ve disappeared? Their […]

Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider have shown that top quarks, the heaviest of all elementary particles, can end up being entangled. Such quantum entanglement is happening at the highest possible energy we have ever measured, 12 orders of magnitude higher than standard experiments.   Advertisement The intriguing results were seen by the ATLAS experiment […]