Deborah Bloomfield

Propulsion is always a big deal when it comes to space missions. Every gram counts when going up into space, so the more energy-dense your fuel is the better. You also usually can’t refuel once you are out there. An alternative solution, which doesn’t have this problem, is using a solar sail. By taking advantage […]

Around five million years ago, the rivers of North America were home to an enormous salmon that would make today’s largest specimens look like minnows. It may have grown up to 8.9 feet (2.7 meters) long and was thought to have incredibly long fangs like a saber-toothed tiger. However, new research has found that this […]

A cluster of five enormous Stone Age structures in County Wicklow, Ireland, may have been built as a means of delineating the path taken by the souls of the dead as they ascend to the eternal realm. Known as cursus monuments, the constructions are extremely rare in Ireland but relatively common in Britain, although archaeologists […]

NASA’s planet-hunting telescope Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered its first free-floating, or rogue, planet. It is a terrestrial object, likely bigger than Earth but not by too much. This candidate object was discovered within the analysis of 1.3 million light curves collected by the space observatories over its years in orbit. Rogue planets […]

A UK man has become one of the first to receive an experimental mRNA vaccine designed to prevent recurrence of melanoma skin cancer. Steve Young, a 52-year-old musician, had a stage II melanoma removed previously, and said the shot is his “best chance” at stopping the cancer coming back. “I feel lucky to be part […]

Plants are not just able to survive in low gravity such as on the Moon, two new papers suggest – they may prefer it, at least based on the only species to sprout. When Chang’e 4 landed on the Moon in January 2019 it carried with it a payload that could dictate the future of […]

If you’ve been on the Internet you’ve probably heard of the Slow Mo Guys, the YouTubers dedicated to filming everything from guns firing bullets at other bullets to Will Smith wielding a big flamethrower in slow motion. After doing it for over a decade, the team wondered whether they could attempt to film “the fastest […]

A new method for making diamonds bypasses the high temperatures and pressures, opening the door to making them at a fraction of the existing cost. The world of fine crystal control called The Diamond Age in science fiction may be closer than we think. Although we have known how to make synthetic diamonds since the […]

In addition to being one of the most significant archaeological finds of the 20th century, the tomb of Tutankhamun also turned out to be a glorified can of worms, the opening of which has inspired countless myths, movies, and pseudo-archaeological theories. In particular, the so-called “Pharaoh’s Curse” became a globally recognized phenomenon when Lord Carnarvon […]

Particles and waves are one and the same in our universe. This challenge to the expected binary is everywhere, but it becomes crucial at the quantum level. The wave-particle duality has been studied for over a century with a myriad of experiments, but researchers have now done something different: They have captured it on camera. […]

Fractals – those self-similar shapes which can be endlessly zoomed in on without losing detail – are weirdly ubiquitous in nature. You’ve got snowflakes, famously; cauliflowers and coastlines; even rabbits, with a bit of work, can be shown to conform to fractal patterns. Of course, none of these examples can truly be said to be […]

In 2017, astronomers at the Pan-STARRS1 observatory looking for near-Earth asteroids spotted an object as it hurtled past our Sun at 38.3 kilometers per second (23.8 miles per second).  Soon, telescopes around the world pointed in the unusual object’s direction, trying to capture as much data as they could before it moved away from the […]

Exquisitely preserved fossils belonging to an extinct group of giant sharks have been discovered in Mexico, and may help solve some centuries-old mysteries surrounding what these enigmas looked like, what they hunted, and how they fit into the shark evolutionary tree. Ptychodus is a genus of extinct sharks from the Albian–Campanian stage of the Cretaceous period […]

The carbonized remains of an ancient papyrus scroll from Herculaneum have yielded long-lost information concerning Plato, including his exact burial place as well as details about his demise into slavery. Located near the iconic site of Pompeii, Herculaneum was obliterated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, leaving the town – and its […]

Last November, astronomers saw a quick gamma-ray explosion lasting one-tenth of a second. Then, 13 seconds later, they knew it came from galaxy M82, which is just 12 million light-years away. Basically next door, as galaxies go. This suggested they had witnessed something quite rare, a flare from a magnetar. A magnetar is a special […]

Our Sun is currently around the mid-point of its existence, constantly creating energy (and helium) by fusing hydrogen atoms within its core. As the supply of hydrogen in their cores are depleted, stars like our Sun begin their red giant phase. Advertisement “In about 5 billion years, the Sun will start to run out of […]

Evidence has been found for bioluminescence having existed among animals 540 million years ago, more than doubling the previous record. Besides altering how we picture the oceans of the world in the Ediacaran era and thereafter, the finding could shed light (sorry) on the reasons bioluminescence evolved and is so widely used today. The capacity […]

Aussie scientists have uncovered three new species of giant extinct kangaroo that once skipped around the outback of Australia as well as the forested mountains of Tasmania and New Guinea.  The three new species are members of the extinct genus Protemnodon, which lived from around 5 million to 40,000 years ago. Advertisement The biggest of […]

A Bengal tiger and her cubs were spotted by tourists as they feasted on a crocodile in Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan, India. The 6-year-old tiger T-124, aka Riddhi, had been spotted pursuing these scaly targets previously. A video shared in February shows her approaching a crocodile from the water’s edge – although that particular […]

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured a rare phenomenon on Tuesday, April 23: four enormous regions of the Sun exploding simultaneously. Eruptions on the Sun are a common occurrence, especially as we are around the peak of the Sun’s activity cycle, known as the solar maximum. During this part of the Schwabe cycle, sunspots and […]