Deborah Bloomfield

The Soviet Union’s failed Kosmos 482 Venus spacecraft is set to make a somewhat delayed reappearance as it slams into the Earth in the next few days. Between 1961 and 1984, the Soviet Union launched a series of space probes in order to study the second-closest planet to the Sun. The overall program was a […]

Stars are not solid objects, but turbulent spheres of plasma. The internal motions can be measured as waves pass through them, and those waves – beyond making beautiful sounds – can tell us a lot about the properties of the stars. This is the field of asteroseismology, and researchers were able to apply it to […]

Zookeepers have recorded a remarkable mix of sounds produced by reuniting Zoos Victoria elephants. The recording not only demonstrates the breadth of elephant’s sonic capacity, but includes sounds the keepers say they have never heard elephants make before over decades of care. Many zoos have transformed themselves from places where animals were driven mad in […]

Elevators; we’ve all been in them. While some are fancy glass elevators allowing you to see the outside world, the majority are small, enclosed boxes with mirrors placed on the walls. But why is that? It turns out that there are a few reasons why manufacturers place mirrors inside, largely relating to safety and user […]

Cuttlefish cause their tentacles to undulate in ways that appear to carry specific meanings, at least to other cuttlefish, a new study reveals. Moreover, these messages can be conveyed not only by sight, but by sensing the movement they produce in water. Bivalves aside, most animals have ways to communicate, such as a threatening roar […]

An 89-year-old man has been killed in a fatal bear attack in Florida, USA. Authorities have announced the death of Robert Markel, who was killed along with his dog in the first fatal bear attack in Florida’s history. The attack occurred at Markel’s home near Jerome, a community near the larger city of Naples in […]

All things fungal are popular again, what with the release of the second series of The Last of Us, the fungus-ridden zombie post-apocalyptic drama show based on the celebrated video game. But while viewers across the land sit and watch this misnamed show (seriously, for the “last” of us, there are certainly a lot of […]

The ALICE experiment of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) looks at what happens when heavy ions smash together. Mostly, it is to understand the quark-gluon plasma that existed in the first moments after the Big Bang. But smashing lead ions together can break those atoms into more commonly recognizable forms, such as the conversion of […]

Earth’s trusty magnetic field has been keeping the planet safe for at least 3.7 billion years. There’s a chance it might have formed even earlier than this, but the evidence is shaky and less widely accepted.  It’s known that Earth had a magnetic field 3.7 billion years ago thanks to iron-rich rocks found in southwestern […]

The ocean has fascinated and terrified humankind since time immemorial thanks to its ability to bring forth all manner of strange entities and forces – whether good, bad, or ugly. Never was this more true than during the Late Bronze Age, when the waters of the Eastern Mediterranean spawned a floating army of marauders known […]

Messier 77 is a galaxy known to emit a lot of neutrinos, the ghostly particles that can easily pass through a planet. There are other galaxies whose neutrino release can also be detected on Earth, but Messier 77 emission is like no other. Researchers have now got a potential explanation for what’s going on. The […]

A major study warns that cats need to be monitored more closely as bird flu-carrying birds migrate across the world and pose a greater threat of human-to-human transmission. In recent years, we have seen the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus rapidly evolve to the point where it can now infect multiple non-human species. […]

Picture yourself sitting down for a dinner party with Pythagoras. As well as dodging endless talk about triangles, and maybe how beans are tiny humans, you may have to be on the alert for pranks, according to an old legend that places him as the inventor of the mischievous Pythagorean Cup. The Pythagorean Cup, or […]

The nocebo effect appears to work more strongly and more persistently than the placebo effect when it comes to pain, a new study has found. In other words, having negative expectations going into a painful experience means it will probably be worse than it would otherwise have been. This effect is more prominent than the […]

If your mother tongue is English, you almost certainly follow this strange grammatical rule, despite never being actively taught it.  There’s an unspoken order for adjectives in English: Opinion > Size > Age > Shape > Color > Origin > Material > Purpose > Noun.  Nothing is stopping you from ignoring this rule, but it […]

The election of the pope is a major geopolitical event – the leader of the Catholic Church represents and influences the 1.4 billion Roman Catholics around the world. Its election happens in a conclave, where the electing cardinals are locked in the Sistine Chapel and select the new pope. Since the 1800s, smoke signals have […]

When children take the marshmallow test to see if they can delay gratification, having a partner who promises to go the distance helps them do better. In some ways, the experiment replicates buddy systems used to fight addiction, suggesting these would also work for young children, even when the buddy is an online stranger. The […]

Big news, California. It’s been confirmed that you have a new record for the highest tree, discovered by happy accident at a dizzying elevation of 3,858 meters (12,657 feet). The Jeffrey pine came as something of a surprise to UC Davis Professor Hugh Safford, who spotted the species while out hiking just for fun in […]

Yes, this is a real insect, and yes, it is a lot to take in. This buggy-eyed beast is the spiny devil katydid (Panacanthus cuspidatus), also known as the thorny devil. It wears its characteristic head protrusion like a tiny little crown, and rightly so, because these bizarre insects rule the forest. Most katydids feed […]

The lights shone bright and fluorescent as a crowd of people gathered in a small white room. Their eyes were mesmerized and locked on the viewing window. Behind the glass, two people were holding a medium-sized snake, with its mouth hinged open around a plastic dish covered with a thin parafilm layer, which was pierced […]