Deborah Bloomfield

Our brains are the consistency of tofu, and gross as that may be to grapple with, it makes finding naturally preserved specimens that date back thousands of years all the more fascinating. Once thought to be incredibly rare, new research challenges the view that brains don’t preserve well, revealing we’ve found a great abundance of […]

Freshwater dolphins in the Amazon and South Asia have captured hearts around the world with their unusual pink skin and status as some of the world’s most threatened mammals. But how did these unusual creatures come to live there? New fossil evidence of a 16.5-million-year-old freshwater river dolphin has helped answer these questions. The skull […]

The Neolithic sailors of the Mediterranean traveled aboard sophisticated vessels that already contained many of the nautical solutions seen on modern boats. The quality and complexity of these prehistoric crafts indicate that several major advances in sailing were achieved during the late Stone Age, paving the way for the spread of the ancient world’s most […]

If you want a quick and easy way of learning just how many curse words a person knows, try standing on their foot. Being in pain can do interesting things to our language, but could that volley of obscenities actually be helpful? New research suggests that both rude words and gestures could have a pain-reducing […]

Black holes are objects at the limit of our physical theories, so the better we understand them, the better we can test our knowledge of the universe. And while astrophysical black holes are studied in so many ways, it would be much easier to analyze one in the lab. Unfortunately, having one in a lab […]

Belugas may be known as the “canaries of the seas” for their noisy nature, but that’s not the only way these cetaceans communicate. According to a recent study, they also change the shape of their heads in what scientists believe could be a form of visual communication unique among toothed whales. Communication comes in all […]

The next time you find yourself eyeing up the snack cupboard 10 minutes after finishing dinner, it might help to know that a simple overactive appetite may not be the culprit. A new study in mice has found a brain circuit driven by cells dedicated to seeking out tasty food, and scientists suggest it could […]

This year’s World Happiness Report has been released and features some glum findings for the US: For the first time since the index began, the country is not ranked in the top 20. Things seem particularly tough for young Americans whose happiness levels have fallen sharply since 2010.  Some things never change, though; Finland secured […]

It probably hasn’t escaped your attention that this year, on April 8, a total eclipse will pass through North America. The eclipse should be a spectacular one, coinciding with the solar maximum. “In 2017, the Sun was nearing solar minimum. Viewers of the total eclipse could see the breathtaking corona – but since the Sun […]

Strange rumors were buried beneath the centuries of bat feces at Nevada’s Lovelock Cave. When two miners started to remove layers upon layers of guano around one century ago, they inadvertently unearthed an old Native American legend of cannibalistic red-haired giants. Rest assured, the legend of Lovelock Cave is just that: a legend. No evidence […]

Periodically throughout the year terms like equinox and solstice get banded around, with some people even going so far as to celebrate the summer solstice, or wish you a happy solstice in much the same way as other more well-known celebrations. But what actually is a solstice and an equinox and how are they different […]

With excitement for next month’s total solar eclipse building, many authorities across the path of totality are preparing for an influx of visitors, putting out warnings to residents to expect disruption. One of the latest comes from a Texas judge, who has urged pet owners to make sure that they’re stocked up on supplies for […]

Seven states are trying to broker a deal on how to divide up the dwindling waters of the Colorado River. However, different factions of squabbling states have their own visions on how to make the plan work – and no one wants to pull the short straw.  The Colorado River Basin covers around 673,396 square […]

Scientists with the IceCube collaboration have finally been able to detect a special type of neutrino coming from the universe. The tau neutrino was only discovered in the year 2000 and it has never been seen from an astrophysical source. Now, researchers report the detection of seven possible candidate events. There are three types of […]

A strange video that appears to show an eel shedding off a rather nice striped sweater has been doing the rounds on TikTok, and the video’s twist ending has got a lot of people thoroughly confused, concerned, and disgusted. The video, which is filmed beside a rocky coral bank on the seabed, shows what looks […]

A distressing story has resurfaced on various news outlets over the last few days, concerning a man who was swallowed up by a sinkhole in Florida on March 1, 2013.  Jeff Bush, 37, was asleep when a sinkhole opened up beneath his home in Seffner, Florida. The hole – about 6 meters (20 feet) across […]

Archaeologists have used the Iliad, an Ancient Greek epic poem written in 800 BCE set towards the end of the legendary Trojan War, as a guide to locate shipwrecks off the coast of Greece. Researchers from Greece’s National Research Foundation and the Ministry of Culture used various historical sources to locate 10 shipwrecks that sunk […]

This coming weekend the Moon will experience an eclipse, and in less than three weeks the Sun will be eclipsed by the Moon. The best views for both will be in the Americas, but you might be wondering what the view would look like if you were not on Earth but on the Moon. The […]

The seemingly inevitable has been confirmed: 2023 was the hottest year on record by a massive margin. Oh, but that’s not all – last year also witnessed record-breaking levels of greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, ocean heat and acidification, Antarctic sea ice cover, surface temperatures, and glacier retreat. The findings come from the latest […]

In a statement released on Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it had finalized a ban on the last remaining form of asbestos – a group of cancer-causing minerals – used in the United States. Though the use of asbestos in the US has been in decline for decades, previous attempts to ban […]