Deborah Bloomfield

The Earth has an electric field that allows atmospheric particles to escape near the poles. Yet despite the concept being proposed around the time humans were first reaching space, it’s never been verified, let alone measured, until now. In the course of a suborbital flight, NASA’s Endurance rocket has done both. Advertisement Planetary scientists proposed […]

Does your cat’s big fat belly appear to comedically swing from side to side when it walks or runs? You might just be looking at its primordial pouch, which, despite looking completely ridiculous, provides your feisty feline with a complex evolutionary advantage. All cats – male or female, neutered or intact – have a primordial […]

As the search for ever-more sources of clean, renewable energy continues, it seems like there’s one resource we’ve forgotten to tap into. Not for nothing is Earth known as the “Blue Planet” – with more than 70 percent of the globe being covered by seas and oceans, is there no way we could harness the […]

Between 23 and 11.6 million years ago, an unlucky sea cow had a very bad day. It got munched on by not one, but two types of carnivores as it became dinner for both a shark and some kind of ancient crocodilian. The most unfortunate of sandwiches. Advertisement The gruesome scene has been pieced together […]

The US Bureau of Reclamation has come up with a plan to prevent invasive smallmouth bass from taking over the Grand Canyon, and it involves turning down the temperature. Advertisement Smallmouth bass are typically native to the eastern and central United States, but they are also highly effective predators that love nothing more than chowing […]

Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) has been a right tease. Back in May, it looked on the way to brightening steadily and becoming visible to the naked eye by October – however, in July, a paper pointed out several unusual features that suggested the comet might not survive the close encounter with the Sun in less […]

A pod of orcas has taken out a boat off the coast of Spain, damaging the rudder to such an extent that the two-person crew were stranded off Cape Finisterre. That’s according to a statement emailed to the New York Times by their rescuers – and given recent events, it’s not all that surprising. Advertisement […]

Science fiction has its fair share of galaxy-spanning civilizations. From the United Federation of Planets to the Galactic Empire, from the rule of Paul Atreides to that of Cleon II, we have fantasized about people spreading across the vast gulf of space and building a galactic culture. Could such a thing exist in real life? […]

The Vikings are renowned for their violent raids on foreign lands, yet new research suggests that murder and bloodthirst were not the norm across all of Scandinavia. Comparing the levels of violence evidenced by Viking-Age skeletons in Norway and Denmark, the study authors found that interpersonal attacks were far more common in the northern realm, […]

The locations of “knot-like structures” in the human genome have been mapped for the first time. Known as i-motifs, these odd shapes were reported to exist in 1993, but initially treated with suspicion. The discovery of how frequent they are, and their locations, suggests they play important roles in our health, but can also lead […]

Wildlife Photographer Of The Year is back for its 60th anniversary and ahead of the big competition announcement, they’ve released some of the highly commended images for 2024. Among the photos we’re treated to the world’s grumpiest cat, the many talents of jackdaws, a picture-perfect forest scene, an army of mussels, and a baby manatee […]

Although we might blithely refer to the last glacial period as “the Ice Age”, temperatures varied a lot. This affected humanity even in the tropics, but in a bitterly cold Europe changes were much more likely to be a matter of life and death. A new way of analyzing fossil teeth from the era gives […]

A Falcon 9 rocket had an unexpected failure on August 28 when the booster rocket landed following its trip to space. There were no injuries since it landed at sea on an autonomous barge, but the Federal Aviation Administration has grounded the rocket pending an investigation, and SpaceX postponed a second launch scheduled for last […]

A new seamount and 20 potentially new-to-science species have been discovered off the coast of Chile during an expedition to map uncharted parts of the seafloor. Armed with their trusty ROV SuBastian, the clever folks over at Schmidt Ocean Institute were surveying the unnamed and unexplored seamount when they spotted two flying spaghetti monsters. Don’t […]

An adult in New Hampshire, USA has died after contracting Eastern Equine Encephalitis virus (EEEV), the first human case of the disease reported in the state for a decade. Advertisement EEEV, sometimes known as “Triple E”, is a rare infection in humans – only 11 cases are detected in the USA per year, on average. […]

In a big result for “Isn’t it crazy what science can figure out?!” news, researchers from the University of Liverpool have revealed the evolution and incredible destruction wrought by a gigantic underwater avalanche nearly 60,000 years ago. Advertisement The team used more than 300 core samples, taken from the seafloor of the Atlantic Ocean off […]

Wellbeing is a significant concern for many people across the world. However, it is also for sale – anyone who uses social media will be aware of the sheer number of organizations and individual influencers promoting competing wellness claims, from obscure supplements and 10-step programs to wisdom-peddling books, cold plunges, or premium spiritual retreats. These […]

Right at the end of last year, the United States suddenly grew in size by 1 million square kilometers (more than 386,000 square miles) – that’s almost twice the area of Spain. This unexpected expansion was not the result of strange geological forces, nor the invasion of a foreign land, but the US attempting to […]

As the Moon orbits the Earth, the Earth orbits the Sun, and the Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way, oscillating up and down relative to the galactic plane as it does so. But this might have consequences, with a group of physicists suggesting that this motion of our star through the galaxy potentially […]

There once lived a group of ornithopod dinosaurs that were enthusiastic plant eaters, and this vegetarian lifestyle is reflected in the fossil remains of their jaw and dental morphologies. However, scientists haven’t previously paid much attention to how this diet affected the rate of wear and replacement of their teeth.  Advertisement Now, new research has […]