Deborah Bloomfield

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).  Advertisement 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 Antikythera mechanism has fascinated people for over 120 years and research in recent years has brought more insight into this incredible device. The fragments that remain have revealed that it was likely used to calculate celestial events such as eclipses and the positions of the planets. Astronomers from the University of Glasgow have added […]

Lukas McClish, a Californian hiker who became lost and stranded in the Santa Cruz Mountains, has been found 10 days after he first set off for what he thought was a three-hour hike. McClish left for his hike on 11 June, but became lost in part due to recent wildfires destroying landmarks used for navigation. […]

For thousands of years after mammoths had gone extinct elsewhere, they survived on Wrangel Island off Siberia. The cause of their final demise remains debated, but new evidence indicates we can rule out one popular explanation: inbreeding. Despite being descended from no more than eight individuals, the Wrangel mammoths had enough genetic diversity to still […]

Back in the early days of the trans-Atlantic postal service, British packages were taking weeks longer than expected to reach the east coast of North America. With customs officials growing increasingly confused and frustrated at these slow delivery times, it fell to future Founding Father of the United States Benjamin Franklin to solve the problem […]

Humans have been living continuously in space for nearly 24 years, with astronauts and cosmonauts living aboard the spacecraft since astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev first boarded the International Space Station (ISS) on Halloween, 2000. Advertisement All good things must come to an end, and NASA is now planning for […]

Scientists in South Africa have for the first time inserted radioactive material into the horns of live rhinos, as part of efforts to make the horns easier to detect at international borders and curb poaching. Advertisement After facing near extinction, successful conservation work has seen rhino populations in Africa back on the up, with the […]

The Juno spacecraft’s focus has turned from Jupiter itself to its moons, and a fly-by of Io has produced valuable data for understanding the Solar System’s most volcanic world. Among other things, it shows just how widespread Io’s lava lakes really are, and reveals that when a crust forms on them it is often surrounded […]

Homo sapiens – us – are the only surviving human species. The question, and it is a big one, is why? Who were the species that came before us, or lived alongside us, and what happened to them? Host Dr Alfredo Carpineti is joined by Professor Chris Stringer, human evolution research lead at the Natural […]

Space in the vicinity around our planet is getting quite full, or at least full for space. We are a messy species, and low-Earth orbit is apparently no exception to our “we’ll clean up later” rule. One concern about the debris is that it could cause the “Kessler Effect” (or Kessler Syndrome).  Simply put, the […]

Around 6 million antelope have been recorded on a trek across East Africa, marking the world’s largest land mammal migration ever recorded. Advertisement The scale of the Great Nile Migration recently became apparent through an ongoing project between African Parks and the Government of South Sudan. Advertisement Between April 28 and May 15, 2023, after […]

Over the past several decades, scientists have developed optical and acoustic tweezers. Using light or sound waves, they can lift and control the motion of a small object, like a tiny tractor beam. These are exciting developments, but have very stringent requirements to work. Researchers have now developed a new way to move and manipulate […]

If you heard that someone was receiving a kidney transplant, you might naturally assume they’d have to spend at least a few days in hospital afterward. You might also assume that they would be put to sleep for the procedure. A 28-year-old man from Chicago just managed to buck both of those trends by receiving […]

Researchers in Spain have discovered the remains of a Neanderthal child displaying a number of traits that are consistent with Down syndrome. However, unlike other prehistoric individuals with the condition, the youngster didn’t die as a baby, indicating that both the child and its mother received ongoing care and support from the rest of their […]

While casually reading news about a slate tablet unearthed in Spain, a sharp-eyed researcher noticed the archaeologists had missed a huge discovery: not only did it feature the engravings of battling warriors, but also the mysterious alphabet of an ancient language. Advertisement The 20-centimeter (7.8-inch) tablet was recently unearthed during an archaeological dig near the […]

Low-cost miniature greenhouses could save one of Australia’s most beloved frogs from extinction, and the technique may prove applicable to many of the hundreds of other species under threat from an introduced fungus. Advertisement Of all the major classes of the tree of life, amphibians may be the most threatened, with many species already gone […]

Painted lady butterflies (Vanessa cardui) aren’t exactly strangers to long journeys across land, but for the first time ever, scientists have shown they’re also capable of making non-stop flights across oceans, having mapped the insects migrating a whopping 4,200 kilometers (2,610 miles) across the Atlantic. Advertisement The first indication of these transatlantic flights came back […]

The atmosphere of Jupiter is a fascinating, ever-changing environment. Bands of different colors, storms, enormous clouds, and more are seen across the planet. Its upper atmosphere, though, has always been considered uneventful. Sure it is where the polar aurorae happen, but beyond that, it was believed that it had nothing weird going on. Now, a […]

Under the shadow of night, criminals have put an end to an important field test in Italy. Scientists had planted a new experimental variety of rice that could be the answer to one of the most destructive diseases this crop faces – but the field was recently broken into and destroyed. Advertisement If you have […]

Scientists have come together to identify the most important hotspots for biodiversity, whose survival is essential if the era of human domination is to avoid ranking with Earth’s worst periods. Combined, the locations involved are smaller than Iran, but time is running out. Advertisement Five times in the planet’s history the Earth is known to […]