Deborah Bloomfield

In 1850, archaeologist Austen Henry Layard found an unusual piece of rock crystal in the North West Palace of Nimrud, Northern Iraq, leading to speculation about its purpose. Dubbed the “Nimrud lens”, the highly-polished piece dating back to around 750-710 BCE was first identified as a lens, while a more outlandish theory claims that it […]

We all love a bargain, especially when forking out for plane tickets – but unfortunately for tight-fisted travelers, many of the “hacks” we use to come about them don’t actually work. Whether it’s buying tickets on a certain day, clearing cookies, or using a VPN and browsing incognito, these tricks are at odds with how […]

A new study tells the story of a woman who received a pioneering bionic hand that’s deeply integrated with her bones, nerves, and muscles. There are still many hurdles to overcome with this type of tech, but this case report shows how it’s already capable of enriching people’s lives.  Karin lost her right arm during […]

The Moon is not a hospitable place. The lunar regolith – the Moon’s soil – is a dusty collection of sharp, abrasive, and possibly toxic particles that can cling to spacesuits, damage equipment, and even caused one of the Apollo astronauts to develop an allergic reaction to it. Apollo 17’s Harrison Schmitt called it lunar […]

A fancy fur pelt and some unusual bone markings have provided the first direct evidence of Neanderthals hunting cave lions. Not only that, but the artifacts also signify the earliest direct instance of a large predator kill in human history.  The first piece of evidence comes from the remains of a Eurasian cave lion, dated […]

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe continues to break records – records that were set by spacecraft in the past few years of exploration of the Sun. In its 17th close passage around our star, the spacecraft came as close to the Sun as 7.26 million kilometers (4.51 million miles) from the solar surface. That is about […]

Space telescopes don’t automatically know where they are pointing. They use guide stars to know which bit of the sky they are looking at. ESA’s Euclid was launched earlier this summer, and during its commissioning phase, the mission team realized that there were some glitches when it came to its positioning. The space observatory’s Fine […]

Archaeologists have discovered an exceptionally preserved and sealed chamber tomb in the municipality of Giugliano in Campania, Italy. The tomb is adorned with multiple frescos, the most notable of which depicts Cerberus – the three-headed guardian of the Underworld – which has given it the name the Tomb of Cerberus. The tomb was discovered during […]

Solar eclipses, while fun to gawp at and/or cower from in fear of the sun-eating god depending on what century you’re from, are incredibly useful for scientists. During the 2024 total solar eclipse in North America, NASA will use the opportunity to photograph the Sun’s corona from a high altitude and view sunspots as the […]

Noctis Labyrinthus is a network of canyons the length of Italy that is located between two record-breaking regions on Mars. It is the beginning of Valles Marineris, one of the longest canyons in the Solar System. On its other side, there is the Tharsis Bulge, a region home to the tallest volcanoes we know of. […]

Evidence has been found for the previously speculative idea that Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are caused by neutron stars having a sort of earthquake. The same work also throws doubt on one alternative explanation, that they are caused by stellar flares. If the connection is confirmed, it could not only tell us more about the […]

The milky discharge of the Sonoran Desert Toad contains what may be the most potent psychedelic compound on Earth, yet researchers are yet to figure out how the rotund little creature produces its mind-melting ooze. Seeking the source of the amphibian’s stupefying secretions, the authors of an as-yet un-peer-reviewed study pumped the stomachs of dozens […]

Update 10/12/23: Bad weather has delayed the launch of Psyche. The launch window opens again tomorrow, October 13 at 10:19 am (2:19 pm UTC).  Today, NASA is launching the first-ever mission to a metal-rich asteroid. The Psyche spacecraft will travel 3.5 billion kilometers (2.2 billion miles) to visit its namesake, asteroid Psyche, thought to be […]

If you’ve seen a squirrel while out for a walk lately, or even nipped over to your friend’s house to feed the cat while they’ve been out of town, it might not even have crossed your mind that all terrestrial vertebrates have four legs. From the cows in the field to the lions on the […]

There are so many different types of love, and we experience each type uniquely – but what does that actually look like? With the help of hundreds of volunteers, scientists have mapped where 27 distinct types of love are felt within the human body and revealed that it’s as much about the head as the […]

A couple in Colorado have shared footage they captured from a train, which people appear to believe is Bigfoot having a stroll and a sit-down. The footage, which is trending on X (or Twitter, as it is still largely known), shows a hairy figure walking across the grass, before sitting down for a rest. Shannon […]

Some asteroids are dense. So dense in fact, that they may contain heavy elements outside of the periodic table, according to a new study on mass density. The team of physicists from The University of Arizona say they were motivated by the possibility of Compact Ultradense Objects (CUDOs) with a mass density greater than Osmium, […]

In the 19th century, the discovery of dinosaurs fuelled one of the most heated and ridiculous conflicts ever seen between two scientists. While both bone-hunters were ultimately ruined by their bitter rivalry, their work discovered over 100 species of dinosaurs – like Stegosaurus, Brontosaurus, and Triceratops – and helped to lay the groundwork for our current […]

In 1963, a man in the Nevşehir Province of Turkey knocked down a wall in his basement and ended up discovering a gigantic underground city up to 18 stories deep, complete with chapels, schools, and stables. Known as Derinkuyu, the city had been abandoned for centuries – probably much to the relief of the man […]

Geologists in China have unearthed a new type of ore that’s rich in niobium, a much-prized metal with superconductive properties that is used in everything from steel production to jet engines and particle accelerators.  Dubbed niobobaotite, the ore was recently discovered within the Bayan Obo Mining District of Inner Mongolia in China, according to an […]