Deborah Bloomfield

Despite its popularity among horror-movie mad scientists, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is actually a legitimate treatment for certain mental health disorders, and is effective for up to 80 percent of depressed patients who receive it. Strangely, however, researchers have until now been unable to explain how the procedure works, yet a pair of new studies has […]

Scientists have cooked up a new explanation for the explosive craters that have recently rocked Siberia. Trapped gas and climate change are still the prime suspects, but the new theory hints that a deeper geological force might be at play.  Since 2012, at least eight circular “gas emission craters” (GECs) have formed in the Yamal […]

In the last few days, arctic air has brought below-freezing temperatures across many parts of the US, including Chicago and Lake Michigan. There, people noticed a very peculiar phenomenon: “Steam” appeared to form above the Chicago River and the lake. Prompting many to ask (maybe in the style of 4 Non Blondes): what’s going on? […]

The Guinness World Records have temporarily suspended their “world’s oldest dog” title amid claims that the current title holder was not as old as its owners claimed it was. When Bobi passed away, an entry on the Guinness World Records website explained that he had lived to be 31 years 165 days old. While not […]

Scientists in China have successfully cloned a rhesus monkey that has managed to survive for more than two years after its birth. Off the back of this feat, the researchers claim their newly refined methods could provide a “promising strategy for primate cloning” in the future.  His name is “ReTro”, named after one of the […]

What’s your love language? Are you particularly receptive to words of affirmation? Or maybe you appreciate spending quality time with your partner, or cherish physical touch, or splashing out on a gift to express your love. Whatever your love language is, it has one thing in common with the others: none of them are supported […]

Mars is a frigid desert, but we know in the past that it had rivers, lakes, and even maybe an ocean. Those features are still carved in its rocks today. Most of the valleys and lakes were carved before 3.7 billion years ago, but something that is not clear is how long these water features […]

Astronomers have detected a star with such curious composition they conclude it must have been enriched by a supernova that didn’t accord with our current understanding of exploding stars. Their efforts to reconstruct this event reveal we’ve probably been missing something big about the behavior of the first generation of giant stars. In 1999, the […]

You’ve probably been told at some point that oil is made from dinosaurs, thinking that when you are at a gas station you are pumping refined velociraptor directly into your Volvo. As widespread as the belief is, it’s not true. Oil is not made from the decomposed bodies of ancient dinosaurs. “For some strange reason, […]

A potential problem for any intelligent aliens that could be out there that may prevent them from developing technology has been highlighted by a recent paper: the oxygen bottleneck. Free atmospheric oxygen is, of course, one of the key signs of potential life to look out for. The only planet where we know there is […]

A Chinese startup has developed a tiny nuclear battery that it claims can generate electricity for 50 years without the need for charging. Just the size of a small coin, the company suggests that this technology has the potential to power a smartphone in the future (although there’s a lot of work ahead before that […]

For the first time, a non-human animal has demonstrated the ability to recall events from their past and use them to answer an unexpected question. The breakthrough comes after the possibility was first explored six years ago and could potentially unlock new treatment avenues for patients with memory loss. Episodic memory is the string of […]

In 1994, the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at a dark and seemingly empty patch of sky for 100 hours. When Hubble was launched in 1990, like with the JWST, its capabilities weren’t immediately clear. Ahead of being turned on, astronomers attempted to analyze what […]

The world’s seafloor is scattered with millions of mysterious pockmarks. It’s commonly held among scientists that these small pits were formed by fluids or methane gas leaking from the depths of Earth’s sediments, but a new study puts forward the idea that they were created by life.  And when we say “life,” we’re not just […]

In Krung Thep Maha Nakhon (Bangkok), there is an award-winning restaurant called Wattana Panich, where you can order and then eat a beef and goat soup that is 49 years old. The soup, which is described as “delicious and aromatic” as well as having a “real depth of flavor that’s hard to explain”, has been […]

How did life start? It’s a question that has intrigued humans ever since we became conscious of ourselves and our place in the world. Now, researchers from Newcastle University in the UK may have an answer. By investigating the conditions that may have allowed living systems to emerge from inert geological materials 3.5 billion years […]

Private American space company Astrobotic has announced its doomed lunar lander is now on a path back towards Earth. Peregrine has been leaking fuel since last week, and any hopes for a “hard” landing on the Moon have been dashed. Instead, Astrobotic is aiming for a controlled burning up in Earth’s atmosphere. After a successful […]

Many lunar deposits are curiously high in titanium, with TiO2 accounting for up to 18 percent of some samples by weight. As interesting as that may be to future miners, this fact has also intrigued planetary scientists, who for more than 50 years have been unable to explain how these rocks could form – let […]

2024’s Apocalypse Bingo Card can put a big fat cross through “insect invasion” as America is scheduled to have the first double brood emergence of cicadas in 221 years. How can we know that? Because these peculiar insects have a passion for prime numbers. Periodical cicadas don’t emerge often – once every 13 or 17 […]