Deborah Bloomfield

There is an ancient cave in Somerset, England, that may hold a complicated secret related to our prehistoric past: evidence of human cannibalism. Gough’s Cave, which was formed around 500,000 years ago, is located in Cheddar Gorge, which is made of limestone (not cheese) and is located in the Mendip Hills near Bristol. The cave […]

A magnificent fossil find was made in the Italian Alps in 1931. The specimen retrieved was thought to show remarkable preservation of an ancient reptile’s soft tissues, but that wasn’t the whole story. Now, a new study has revealed what makes this unusually well-preserved fossil so unusual: that “soft tissue” is, in fact, just black […]

A team of physicists at MIT have captured the phenomenon of “second sound” in direct images for the first time. In usual materials, heat prefers to spread out from a localized source until it dissipates into its surroundings. But in certain materials, this is not the case. This includes superfluids, a state of matter caused […]

There are three types of magnetism, not two, new research reveals, and the new one could be much in demand. To the first users of compasses, magnets must have seemed a form of magic. Just when we started to think we had got a grasp on the traditional form, known as ferromagnetism, a new one, […]

Ancient paintings on the walls of a Patagonian cave have been dated to 8,200 years ago, making them the oldest known rock art in the region by several millennia. Staggeringly, researchers also found that the markings were built up over a period of roughly 3,000 years, suggesting that the illustrations were used to transmit cultural […]

A new study looking at impact cratering on Titan has found bad news in the search for life on the moon, and potentially other icy moons of the Solar System as well. Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is often thought of as a potential candidate for life. The moon is the only place in the Solar […]

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Japan is currently the world’s largest nuclear power plant. As mighty as it may be, its reactors have been shut off for several years due to a cacophony of disasters and controversies. Recent developments suggest that may soon change, however. The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant is located at a 404-hectare (1,000-acre) […]

Contrary to past assumptions, passing stars can cause changes in the orbits of planets, including the Earth, that are large enough to affect the climate, research suggests. By not taking this into account we’ve overestimated our capacity to calculate past orbital variations, and therefore our capacity to attribute past climate changes to variations in Earth’s […]

The world’s biggest iceberg – the A23a megaburg – has recently been spotted performing a full 360° spin as it floats off the coast of Antarctica.  A23a made headlines in November last year when the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) announced it was on the move for the first time in over three decades. The iceberg […]

Getting out more energy from nuclear fusion is a fundamental step in making it the energy source of the future. So far, it has been achieved only in one system – the inertial fusion approach of the National Ignition Facility (NIF). New research on a similar approach shows that the NIF might have competition in […]

Looking at objects far away in the universe is like looking back in time, a very useful consequence of the finiteness of the speed of light. Very distant objects are therefore very young objects, as they were when the universe was also young. Imagine the surprise, then, of astronomers who found a very distant galaxy […]

The Silk Road, the mega highway that linked the far-flung corners of Eurasia, wasn’t the only grand trade route of the ancient world. In Europe, another historical trade network spanned from the North Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, quenching the wild demand for “the gold of the north” – amber.  It’s impossible to say when […]

The animal kingdom has a multitude of tricks for surviving harsh weather conditions and long, cold winters. From snuggling down in a cave to sleep away the worst of the weather, to shutting down all but the most basic of functions as a way to save energy, we break down the differences between the ways […]

NASA’s Perseverance has spent 1,063 days on Mars exploring the rocks and structures of Jezero Crater and its river delta. It has been collecting samples to be sent to Earth and analyzing rocks. But for over a month, one of its instruments has not been working, and mission specialists have not yet been able to […]

Earthly doctors have boldly gone where no medics have gone before, as they used a remote-operated robot to perform simulated surgery aboard the International Space Station (ISS). If you’re concerned about which astronaut had to play the guinea pig, though, don’t worry – the surgical procedure was limited to a bunch of rubber bands for […]

Have you ever wondered why that first sniff of rain makes you instantly tired? Or why it’s virtually impossible to peel yourself away from the sheets on a rainy morning? Well, it turns out you’re not just lazy, there’s a scientific reason rain makes us sleepy. There are a number of factors at play causing […]

Of the 20 extant species of armadillo, there is one that stands out for a myriad of reasons. Pink fairy armadillos are the world’s smallest armadillos, but the weirdness doesn’t stop there. They have pink coloration (unsurprisingly), enthusiastic sprouts of fine white fur, and recently it was discovered that they have a trait that’s never […]

Einstein’s work was crucial for the current understanding of gravitational waves and the development of stimulated radiation that culminated in the invention of lasers. Dr Jing Liu, from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, has combined the two into an intriguing proposal: it is possible to create the gravitational equivalent of a laser. Let’s […]

A fun question on Reddit asks “Do butterflies have any memory of being a caterpillar or are they effectively new animals?” Moths and butterflies have very unusual life cycles, as you likely learned from a surprising number of children’s books where caterpillars are (unfairly) mocked by other insects for being ugly, before they retreat into […]

Do you really know what’s going on in your mouth? The oral microbiome refers to the microorganisms living in the human oral cavity. While some of them can offer a positive or neutral benefit to human health, others can cause diseases within the mouth and even have a wider impact on human health beyond. We […]