Deborah Bloomfield

South Korea’s “artificial sun” machine has just been fitted with some equipment that could allow it to generate high-temperature plasma over 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million degrees Fahrenheit) for even longer periods.  The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) is an experimental device located in Daejeon, South Korea. Its job is to provide the […]

Claims of a “Return to the Moon” have been around for a while, and for some people, they won’t be justified until a human foot hits the lunar surface again. However, for those more concerned about scientific discovery, the accumulated knowledge from multiple missions may be more significant. All going well, 2024 could be a […]

From the volcanic rubble of Pompeii, archaeologists have recovered over a dozen mini-statues, some of which may depict a dark and twisted myth that speaks of love, renewal, and the changing of the seasons. The relics were recently found by researchers from the Archaeological Park of Pompeii within the remains of the House of Leda […]

Good news if your New Year’s resolutions include both exercising more and quitting smoking – researchers have found that a brisk 10-minute walk could be the key to reducing cravings and withdrawal symptoms, as well as improving wellbeing. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smoking is the leading cause of preventable death, […]

Major cities all along the US Atlantic coast are sinking at an alarming rate, with some areas descending faster than global sea levels are rising. The combination of sinking land – or subsidence – and ascending water levels could result in catastrophic damage to urban centers in the near future, warn the authors of a […]

The video game Tetris has been completed by a human for the first time since its release. Willis “blue scuti” Gibson beat the game during a livestream, triggering the “true kill screen” on level 157. Tetris has been around for a while, so you might have assumed it would be complete by now. After all, […]

With space agencies’ sights set on increasingly long missions, beyond building resilient spacecraft, they’re also having to figure out the best way to keep astronauts well-fed. Researchers now think they’ve found the answer, and we’ve got bad news for any meat-loving space travelers: it’s a vegetarian salad. Astronauts have a unique set of needs when […]

As we move away from powering our civilizations with the ancient remains of not dinosaurs, we will have to overcome a few teething problems.  One is that renewable sources don’t necessarily generate electricity at the precise point that we need it (the wind doesn’t know – or doesn’t care – to blow extra hard when […]

Several news outlets have reported that the Earth may be hit by a “lost” asteroid this year. According to the reports, if asteroid 2007 FT3 were to hit Earth it would do so with the equivalent energy of 2.6 billion tons of TNT, NASA has lost track it, and it has a chance of hitting […]

It’s been said that in an infinite universe, anything can happen. Now, our universe may or may not count as infinite, but there’s definitely some weird stuff going on out there – and, as it turns out, a black hole sitting right in the middle of a star doesn’t even rate that highly in the […]

Thanks to one of the most successful scientific hoaxes of all time, palaeontologists spent the first half of the 20th century believing in the existence of an ancient hominid known as the Piltdown Man. Displaying an odd mix of human and ape characteristics, the anomalous animal was eventually exposed as a complete fraud in 1953, […]

The Quadrantid meteor shower will peak this week and it’s set to be one of the strongest showers of 2024 with up to 120 shooting stars being visible each hour. The Quadrantids are due to reach peak activity on the night of January 3 to 4, according to the American Meteor Society.  Advertisement The Quadrantid […]

Forget the Amazon; forget India’s forests with their living bridges; even forget the remote Malaysian rainforest with one of the world’s tallest trees. The world’s oldest forest is in Cairo. No, not Cairo the capital of Egypt – Cairo, the small town in upstate New York. At the bottom of a sandstone quarry in the […]

We might only be two days into 2024, but thanks to New Year’s festivities, there’s probably some people out there who are experiencing the worst hangover they’ll have this year. They may well be clinging to the possibility that a heavy, sweaty gym session will be the cure, lest they turn up at work with […]

Footage of the world’s second rarest primate, the cao-vit gibbon (Nomascus nasutus) has been recorded in a forest in Vietnam. Two adults and one younger gibbon can be observed playing together in the leafy canopy before the infant tumbles through the trees. The species exhibits sexual dimorphism where the males are black and the females […]

Nowadays it’s more common to rely on technology to find our way, but for thousands of years, humans have been using environmental wayfinders to navigate across enormous distances. Sailors in the Marshall Islands have been known to use wave patterns as a way of navigating the Pacific Ocean; meanwhile, the Gwich’in Indigenous communities in Alaska […]

Smoothies are not only a delicious fruit soup, but can also be a quick and easy way to get in some vitamins and minerals. It turns out, however, that the key to their nutrition-boosting abilities could be in the combination of fruits used – and depending on what benefit you’re looking for, bananas might be […]

On the hills of the English countryside in Dorset, you can find the giant chalk figure of a butt-naked man wielding a bat and a mighty erection. The origins of this figure – the Cerne Abbas Giant – have been debated for centuries, but a new study believes it might finally have the answer.  There […]

Over 111 years after it sank, the Titanic continues to fascinate and surprise the public. For instance, did you know that it was found by a team that was pretending to look for the wreck of the Titanic? Or that – despite what the Internet believes – it partly imploded as it sank? Or that a […]

If we want to find the necessary conditions for life on the surface of another planet, let alone life itself, we should stop hoping for carbon in its atmosphere, a new paper argues. Instead, it is an absence, or at least shortage, of atmospheric carbon that could be the sign we’re getting close. All life […]