Deborah Bloomfield

You may have heard of the Fermi Paradox, but if you haven’t, here it is in a nutshell: Given the high probability that alien life exists out there in the universe, why has nobody got in touch?  If there are so many other civilizations out there, possibly at far more advanced stages than we are […]

Issue 19 (February 2024) of CURIOUS is out now, bringing you science highlights for the month plus deep dives into intriguing topics, interviews, exclusives, diary dates, and explanations for some of Earth’s most perplexing natural phenomena and landscapes. In This Issue… Advertisement OUR COVER STORY: Is Hypnosis Real? Or is it all just an act? Find out […]

The 12,000-year-old prehistoric site of Göbekli Tepe has become showered with attention in recent years – and rightly so – but it’s lesser known that southern Turkey is also home to a very similar “sister site” known as Karahan Tepe. Located just over 45 kilometers (27 miles) east of Göbekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe was first discovered […]

A  study by psychologists at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology claims to have found the most effective flirting techniques for men and women. The researchers looked at college students in the US and Norway, all of whom were heterosexual. The volunteer participants were sent questionnaires, asking them to rate how effective 40 different […]

The Lake Victoria of today is relatively young at just 16,000 years old, but within this tiny timeframe, some 500 different species of cichlid fish have managed to evolve here. Remarkably, this explosion of diversity is primarily thanks to hybrids born as a result of inter-species breeding. In a study, scientists at the University of Bern, […]

Zealandia has been kicking about for a good 60 million years, having separated from the supercontinent Gondwana around that time. It’s also almost entirely submerged underwater and wasn’t even formally recognized as a continent until 2017. But now, it’s experiencing something of a resurgence – at least in a research sense – becoming the first […]

A mystery that has dogged materials science for 200 years has finally been solved. A mineral found in many ancient rock formations had stubbornly resisted the efforts of scientists to grow it in the lab, even though they could recreate the conditions they thought formed it in nature. Now, a team has cracked the problem, […]

Animals that can change color are observed more often than you might think across different species, habitats, and even body parts. While reindeer have eyes that change color in winter and fish can turn black with anger, documentary makers have witnessed the Labord’s chameleon (Furcifer labordi) putting on a spectacular display at the end of […]

Plastic shells have become a fashion trend for hermit crabs across the world. In a new study, scientists have looked into how often hermit crabs are using plastic and other human-made materials as their shells, concluding that it is likely to be a global problem across many different species. Researchers at the University of Warsaw […]

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has taken its final flight across the dusty plains of Jezero Crater. The first flying vehicle on another world, Ingenuity spent almost 1,000 days on the Red Planet carrying out test flights and helping its rover companion Perseverance navigate the Martian terrain, 33 times longer than NASA had initially planned. It […]

A new material that could dramatically reduce the amount of lithium used in batteries has been identified by artificial intelligence (AI). Discoveries like this would have taken years in times gone by, but sky-rocketing computer power now means they can be found in days. The new material was recently sniffed out during a joint venture […]

It’s now legal for authorities in the Netherlands to shoot wolves with paintball guns, after a court ruling on Wednesday deemed it an appropriate measure to deal with “a serious threat to public safety”. The move comes after wolves in Hoge Veluwe National Park, in the Gelderland province of the country, became increasingly less fearful […]

A new COVID-19 variant, JN.1, has taken the title of the most prevalent variant of the virus in the US, and also worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “JN.1 remains the most widely circulating variant of SARS-CoV-2 in the United States and globally,” states their latest report. In fact, as […]

Earlier this week, for only the eighth time ever, an asteroid that actually came with a rare 95-minute warning exploded in the sky over Germany and the hunt began for any potential pieces of meteorite that survived burning up in the atmosphere and fell to Earth. Now, researchers think they have found them.  Fragments of […]

Color-changing cars have suddenly sped into reality and could soon be making their way to a highway near you. So, who’s developing this dazzling technology? How does it work? And what hurdles are there to overcome? How do color changing cars work? The first color-changing car to be revealed to the public was BMW’s iX […]

A sample of reports related to extraterrestrial intelligence will give you two things: pseudoscientific accounts that aliens have visited Earth based on little to no evidence, and scientific searches with no sign of progress. It’s easy therefore to consign the idea of aliens to, if not quite the same folder as fairies, at least “hobbits” […]

A species of fungus that has decimated bat populations around the world has been detected in the intestines of the famous mummy known as Ötzi. Discovered in 1991 in the mountains bordering Italy and Austria, the so-called Iceman is believed to have lived around 5,200 years ago and is the oldest natural mummy ever found […]

Human remains that are over 2,000 to 2,500 years old have been recovered by archaeologists within the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). The discovery, what is essentially a new “bog body”, was made in peatland at an excavation site in Bellaghy in October 2023. At the time, police were made aware that human bones […]