Deborah Bloomfield

The ability to glow is a mesmerizing trait – but some things can only do so under certain circumstances, for example, having a black light shone on them. So what is a black light, and how do they work? How do black lights work?  Black lights emit ultraviolet (UV) light, which has a shorter wavelength […]

Dark matter is thought to make up 85 percent of all matter in the universe but so far we have no direct evidence it exists. There are plenty of good reasons to believe that there is indeed a substance that doesn’t interact with light only gravity, but until its properties are measured we need to […]

Global health is in a dramatic state of flux. As the world becomes ever-more globalized, we’re becoming buried by a tsunami of preventable diseases: obesity, cardiovascular disease, countless cancers, and allergies, to name but a few. While we might imagine that humans are the main character behind this change, the real star of the show […]

In the competitive and weird world of spider mite mating, there’s no time to waste as evidenced by the discovery that males will crack open the juvenile skin suits of developing females to speed things along. Not content to wait for the females to shed dead skin themselves, the males have evolved to spot the […]

Under normal circumstances, seeing a sea lion on the beaches of California would be a pleasant experience. These animals are social and gregarious and are the most abundant species of pinnipeds on this coast. However, beach goers are now being warned to keep an eye out for unusual behavior among these marine mammals as a […]

If you burrow deep enough, what lies beneath the polar ice sheets? Would you find mud, rock, water, more ice, an ancient mosiac, or just synthetic laminate flooring? Well, it depends on whether you’re hoping to delve under the North Pole or the South.  The Arctic in the Northern Hemisphere is simply an ice sheet […]

Seismic waves passing through the Earth’s solid inner core reveal it is textured, rather than homogenous. Little is known about the nature of these variations at this stage – simply discovering they exist is quite an achievement when you’re dealing with something shielded from our eyes by thousands of kilometers of rock. Most of the […]

Humanity’s relationship with telling time began before the first written word, making it a challenge today to investigate the origin of many timekeeping units. However, some time measurement units that derive from astronomical phenomena are quite easy to explain and likely were independently observed in many different cultures across the world. For example, measuring how […]

In 1815, the volcano Mount Tambora in Indonesia exploded in what was probably the largest eruption of the last 1,500 years. The event caused millions of tons of ash, dust, and sulfur dioxide to be released into the atmosphere, casting a temporary chill across the planet as it blocked out the sunlight for months on […]

Archaeologists have discovered 25 large pits dotted around the English countryside in what has become a nationally important prehistoric find.  The pits were discovered in Linmere, Bedfordshire, during two digs that took place in 2019 and 2021, respectively. According to radiocarbon dating, these odd features were created between 8,500 and 7,700 years ago – squarely […]

This week we spoke exclusively to the astronomers behind a curious phosphene detection deep in Venus’s atmosphere, archaeologists have uncovered a “passage to the underworld” beneath a church in Mexico, scientists are baffled by a 407-milllion-year-old fossilized plant that doesn’t follow the Fibonacci sequence, and we investigate how the very real Antikythera mechanism inspired Indiana […]

Space junk is a problem and it’s only set to get worse. In 2018, there were over 2,000 satellites in orbit. Now, thanks to mega-constellations like Starlink, there are 9,000 satellites, and by the end of the decade, this number is expected to reach 60,000. A crowded space environment runs the risk of Kessler Syndrome, […]

In the past few weeks, climate records have shattered across the globe. July 4 was the hottest global average day on record, breaking the new record set the previous day. Average sea surface temperatures have been the highest ever recorded and Antarctic sea ice extent the lowest on record. Also on July 4, the World […]

Three years ago astronomers announced they had found the molecule phosphine in the clouds of Venus. On Earth, phosphine is linked to biological activity, aka life. Astronomers were not expecting it and its presence coudn’t be explained. What followed was a flurry of excitement and then debate on whether the molecule had really been found. […]

A study of the world’s oldest rocks provides evidence that the recycling driven by plate tectonics may not have begun until several hundred years after the Earth formed. The authors admit their findings are not conclusive, but if they’re right, it would have big implications for what it takes to get life going. The fact […]

Ever glanced at your partner and done a double take because you thought you were looking in a mirror? Okay, maybe not – but perhaps you’ve noticed certain similarities between your facial features. If so, you certainly aren’t alone, and a new study might be able to explain why, in some cases at least, opposites […]

A fresh analysis of a high-status skeleton discovered in an ancient tomb in modern-day Spain has revealed that the individual was not a male, as previously assumed, but a female.  The tomb was first discovered in 2008 near Valencina, a small town just west of Seville in Spain. Along with a skeleton, early excavations revealed […]

How hot is too hot for humans? The question was asked and answered in a recent report from Professor Lewis Halsey and his team at the University of Roehampton, UK, whose ongoing research has identified an upper critical limit. The point at which things start to get seriously dangerous when it comes to human heat […]

An astonishing fossil has ticked off a few world records for tunicate remains, being the first ever to be discovered with soft tissues preserved, and the oldest of its kind at a modest 500 million years old. Named Megasiphon thylakos, it has revealed new insights into the origins of these truly peculiar animals, demonstrating that […]

Astronomers have announced the discovery of the most distant active supermassive black hole yet. The object is in a galaxy called CEERS 1019 and its light comes to us 570 million years after the Big Bang. It weighs much less than previously detected active supermassive black holes at very high distances from us – just […]