Deborah Bloomfield

Two groups of microbes have been found living in hot water in Yellowstone National Park. The existence of the groups was known previously, because their DNA had been detected and it was clearly unlike anything we knew, but this is the first time the organisms themselves have been seen and described. Advertisement Cows are said […]

Physics is a complicated topic. There’s no shame in not completely understanding the black hole information paradox, for example, or the nature of dark energy and dark matter. Physicists don’t fully understand these topics either. Advertisement But sometimes the misunderstandings of non-scientists can be painful to scientists, as demonstrated in a recent Reddit thread that […]

The Carter Center has reported zero cases of Guinea Worm in the first three months of 2024, giving hope to the idea that this dangerous disease is close to being eradicated. If this is indeed the case, a disease that was once endemic in 21 countries will become the second-ever human disease to be eradicated […]

Chester Zoo recently announced the arrival of tuataras – a group of reptiles they describe as one of nature’s “greatest marvels” having lived on the planet for around 200 million years, since before dinosaurs existed – which have “three eyes”. It’s a lot of information to take in, but if that “third eye” fact is […]

At some point in your life, you may have wondered why manhole covers are round, and what the markings all over them mean. Advertisement Why are manhole covers round? This question has been used as an interview question by Microsoft. While it doesn’t have a definitive answer, there are a number of reasons why round […]

Regardless of where you stand on the spider fear scale, there’s no denying that these arachnids exhibit a remarkable array of really cool behaviors. From building their own trapdoors to mimicking flowers, spiders exploit their niches with incredible adaptations. While you might think of these niches as under garden pots and the corners of your […]

Each year, the average number of people injured from lightning strikes in the US is around 243, with roughly 27 people dying as a result. With a peak temperature of 27,760°C (50,000°F) – that’s nearly five times hotter than the surface of the Sun – it is, unfortunately, unsurprising that lightning can be so deadly, […]

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On July 28 and 29, not one but two meteor showers are expected to peak in the sky. This is a rare treat. Meteor showers constantly overlap but the peak of these two showers is completely serendipitous. The showers in question are the Alpha Capricornids and the Southern Delta Aquariids. Advertisement Neither of the two […]

Mark Spitz and Michael Phelps may be among the greatest modern Olympians, but their exploits in the pool would not have found much appreciation in Ancient Greece. In fact, at no point in the history of the original Olympic Games did swimming feature as an event, despite the fact that most Greeks knew how to […]

Five hundred million years ago, the Earth was a whole lot of sea. Underwater, the Cambrian Explosion was bringing a flurry of differentiation that laid the foundations for modern animal phyla. The new creatures were not just multicellular blobs, but had many of the distinguishing features of animals today: eyes, legs, shells, and mandibles. One […]

It’s no secret that giants walked among the dinosaurs, but just how big were the biggest? A new study has used computer modeling to estimate that Tyrannosaurus rex may have been 70 percent heavier than the fossil record indicates, supersizing a predator that was already thought to be pretty damn big. Most dinosaurs we see […]

The Moon is believed to have become pretty solid pretty quickly after it formed 4.4 billion years ago. But that doesn’t mean that volcanism and magmatic events stopped there. By looking at rocks collected during the Apollo missions, researchers believe they have found evidence of a major magmatic event taking place about 100 million years […]

A mass stranding event involving a total of 146 dolphins on the Cape Cod peninsula in the northeastern United States has officially been declared the largest such event in the country’s history. According to the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), whose rescuers responded rapidly to the distressed cetaceans, 37 animals died in the event […]

According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), July 22, 2024 was the hottest day since the ERA5 recording started in 1940. That day, the planet had an average temperature of 17.15°C (62.87°F), breaking the record set on July 21 of 17.09°C (62.76°F), that one only fractionally hotter than the previous record on July 6, […]

When they were created, the Olympics were only open to amateurs, a restriction dropped decades ago. Nevertheless, at least one form of discrimination still stands – you need to be a member of the species Homo sapiens to compete (equestrian events aside). With the Paris games about to open, it’s time to consider what would […]

Some things just look better from up in space, which is a tad unfortunate given most of us can’t get up there. Luckily, the fortunate few who venture outside Earth love to snap a few pictures of their view and share them with us – and that’s how we get to see these brand-new photos […]

In an effort to tackle its titanic trash problem, Grand Canyon National Park has set out a plan for its South Rim site to become the first in a US national park to use almost entirely reusable foodware. Advertisement It’s no surprise that so many people want to visit national parks – they’re home to […]

For the first time, NASA has used laser communication to send 4K video from a plane to the International Space Station (ISS) and back again. So far, NASA has relied on radio communication to send and receive messages to missions in space. While effective – we can communicate with Voyager 1, which is over 15 […]

Take a walk past The Natural History Museum, London, and transport yourself back in time with their brand new Evolution Garden. This five-year-long project to transform the space at the front and sides of the museum was unveiled last week and marks a remarkable journey through 2.7 billion years of evolutionary plant biology. We caught […]