Deborah Bloomfield

Egg laying was the go-to for snails for millions of years – but at some point in the last 100,000, a group of marine snails ditched eggs in favor of live birth. The switch happened in the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms, and scientists have now discovered that it was driven by around […]

In 1812, Friedrich Mohs created a scale to measure the hardness of substances. There were problems with the scale, which have inspired other scientists to invent alternatives. Nevertheless, these have issues of their own, and the Mohs scale continues to be the most widely used. It is, however, sometimes misinterpreted, so time to explain what […]

The diversity of humanity’s languages is dying. In the wake of cultural globalization and global trade, our languages are becoming increasingly homogenized. Today, almost half of the world’s population speaks one of only the top eight most-spoken languages. Nevertheless, some 7,000 languages are still currently spoken and signed, many of which are unbelievably unique and […]

A survey of researchers working in artificial intelligence (AI) has shown that the industry as a whole thinks the rate of progress is speeding up and could benefit humanity in all sorts of ways, while many have concerns about potential downsides to our race towards more advanced AI.  The survey, which has not yet been […]

In 1984, Voyager 2 flew past Saturn, taking astonishing photographs of the gas giant in resolutions we had never seen before. As well as spotting undulations in the planet’s rings – the result of a then undiscovered ring-shepherd moon –  the probe captured images of strange dark “spokes” in Saturn’s rings.  These features have since […]

In 1969, the US had a brief and crunchy moral panic. People, including senators, believed that members of the public were injecting themselves with peanut butter to get high. The panic, according to website The Museum of Hoaxes, began at the American Academy of Pediatrics annual meeting in October 1969. At the meeting, two government […]

Structures key to oxygen-producing photosynthesis in cyanobacteria have been found in 1.75-billion-year-old fossil cells, three times the age of the previous record. Although Earth’s atmosphere became rich in oxygen before this, the discovery could help piece together the history of one of the most important developments in our planet’s history. Oxygen is the currency in […]

Ever wondered why the people at Google spend so much time trying to calculate eleventy-billion digits of pi? Why a number like one third can be so simple to write as a fraction, but impossible to jot down in decimal form? Or why there’s a number that’s literally just called “e”? Well, we have the […]

While polar bears (Ursus maritimus) live in some of the most remote and extreme environmental conditions in the world, that does not protect them from diseases that can spread thousands of miles. The contagious Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1 bird flu strain has reached the North Slope Borough near Utqiagvik, one of the northernmost […]

In an incredible two-for-one fossil find, palaeontologists have discovered a 75-million-year-old dinosaur jawbone with some surprise-laden prehistoric amber on the side. Nestled within the unusually large blob of resin were fragments of trees and the remains of an unlucky aphid. The find, which is the first of its kind in North America, according to Science, […]

At first glance, this stone recovered from the site of an ancient hillfort in northern Italy appears to be just a simple disk. But, on closer inspection, its surface is peppered with chisel marks that an archaeologist and an astronomer now believe could be the oldest celestial map ever found. “About two years ago I […]

An amateur ham radio enthusiast has made one of the coolest contacts possible, talking with an astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) using a homemade antenna.  The ham radio operator, Doug, made contact with the ISS as it passed overhead in July 2023.  Advertisement “I’ve made numerous voice and APRS [Automatic Packet Reporting System] […]

Another launch by China’s space agency has ended with used rocket stages showering an inhabited area after an uncontrolled re-entry. Bystanders in the Guangxi region of China managed to capture the crash-landings on their smartphones, showing a spiraling piece of space junk falling into an inhabited area and exploding in a fiery crash. The China […]

Today, the idea of microdosing potent substances such as LSD or other psychedelics has become increasingly popular in parts of the world. At present, the medical community is unsure whether microdosing psychedelics is actually beneficial, but this is not the first time people have taken small quantities of a substance for assumed health benefits. During […]

A big debate about small Tyrannosaurus rexes has been raging among the palaeontological community for decades. The debate rests on remains found in the US that are less than half the size of a full-grown T. rex: are these really juvenile T. rexes we’re looking at? Or are they a separate species? The opposing contender, […]

Life is dangerous when your prey is good at fighting back. That’s the fate of Matabele ants, which live on termites. After the struggle to overcome termite soldiers and get at the vulnerable nest, many ants carry injuries. Fortunately for them, their nestmates don’t believe in leaving a soldier on the battlefield, instead performing advanced […]

In Japan, there is a belief that a person’s personality is linked to their blood type. This may sound strange, but the idea is not too dissimilar to astrology’s popularity in the UK or the US today. However, Ketsueki-gata, as it is called, is unique and has deep cultural roots in Japan’s recent history. While […]

Ancient predatory worms dating back around 518 million years have been discovered in North Greenland, where a treasure trove of Early Cambrian fossils lay in wait in the Sirius Passet Lagerstätte. The new-to-science animals have been named Timorebestia, Latin for “terror beasts”, and their discovery reveals new insights into a curious group of predatory worms […]

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped out of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module “Eagle” and delivered one of the most iconic speeches of the 20th century. If he and Buzz Aldrin had stuck to the original schedule, at that moment he would have been saying something along the lines of “shshsh zzz honk honk […]