Deborah Bloomfield

Almost all human languages follow Zipf’s law of abbreviation – and it turns out, so do bird songs. This strange observation shows how many systems, not just human language, are guided by an unwritten, surprisingly consistent mathematical order. What is Zipf’s law of abbreviation? Developed by American linguist George Kingsley Zipf in the 1930s, Zipf’s […]

Many suspect that California’s San Andreas Fault is brewing yet another major earthquake. However, it might not necessarily play out as scientists thought it would – just look at the recent disaster in Myanmar. In a new study, researchers from the California Institute of Technology took a close look at the Mw7.7 Mandalay earthquake that […]

Commissioners of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) have decided to allow black bear hunting for the first time in 10 years within the state of Florida. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. The decision was made based on a […]

A survey of US adults has revealed efforts to boost vaccinations against preventable cancers may be aiming for the wrong target, which would certainly explain their limited post-pandemic success. When a sample of 22,344 people were asked if they were aware of the human papillomavirus (HPV), more than a third were not. Even among those […]

Until now, it was generally assumed that the ability to produce projectile weapons like bow-fired arrows was exclusive to Homo sapiens, yet the puzzling discovery of a series of arrowheads that predate the arrival of our species may be about to change all that. Found at the Obi-Rakhmat rock shelter in Uzbekistan, the small, sharp […]

A new study on Uranus has found it is hotter than we thought, prompting scientists to suggest we should return to the ice giant. While Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are regularly visited by human spacecraft, the outer planets Neptune and Uranus have only been seen up close once, as Voyager 2 flew past them on […]

Researchers in Mexico have uncovered the lost ancient Maya city of Sak-Bahlán, locating it using information outlined in a letter written in 1698 CE.  After the Maya people known as Lakandon-Ch’ol were forced out of their capital, Lakam Tun (“Great Rock”) in 1586, they moved further into the jungle, creating the city of Sak-Bahlán, or […]

The origin of Earth’s water is an open question. The Earth should have formed from pretty dry materials, so at least some of the water comes from extraterrestrial sources. Comets were the first possible culprit considered, but observations suggested that it was not the case. Now, new work brings the comet back to the table. […]

There is an absolutely incredible cosmic object called PKS 1424+240. It is a blazar, a supermassive black hole that is spewing a jet of plasma at really high speed. This source has been a bit of a puzzle; the material on the jet doesn’t look like it’s moving that fast as far as jets are […]

Though the Earth doesn’t make a fuss about it, it is bombarded with around 44,000 kilograms (48.5 tons) of meteoritic material every day. Most of it burns up harmlessly in our atmosphere, but some material does make it to the ground.  Fortunately, the Earth is pretty big, and you are unlikely to see one hit […]

The fall of 1883 was like no other. In the twilight hours, the sunsets and sunrises beamed with a shockingly vivid red color, tinged with flashes of green and purple. When the night finally arrived, the Moon glowed an oddly blue hue. Although the effects were seen as far as Europe and the Americas, the […]

Scientists witnessed the first stages of a common accent developing in Antarctica among its ever-changing population of scientists who spend months together at research stations on the isolated continent.  Antarctica has no native population or permanent residents, but it does have a transitory community of scientists and support staff who live there for part of […]

In scenes that wouldn’t be out of place in The Last Of Us, rabbits with zombie-like growths sprouting out of their heads have been spotted hopping around Colorado in recent days. Residents have shared photos of the nightmarish creatures on social media, with users comparing them to “Frankenstein” and branding them “demon-rabbits” – so what […]

Pain sucks. Burning, aching, stabbing. Emotional, physiological, existential. There’s all kinds to choose from, and modern medicine has innovated many clever ways to overcome it. Thing is, as much as pain is unpleasant, it’s also vital. A reminder that if we touch the fire or prod the thorn, we could injure ourselves. Pain, really, keeps […]

Off the coast of Great Britain is something of a deep-sea mystery. Seismic data gathered here during gas exploration revealed a feature on the seabed about 130 kilometers (80.7 miles) off England’s Humber Estuary. Known as the Silverpit Crater, it’s a huge dip that’s about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) wide and characterized by striking concentric […]

Listen: sometimes medicine is gross. Poop transplants exist and are weirdly effective at a whole bunch of things; Ozempic has its roots in Gila monster venom. Premarin, the most common form of estrogen prescribed to menopausal women in the US, is literally named after its main ingredient, Pregnant mare urine. So, when we tell you […]

When we first started to leave Earth’s atmosphere, strapping test pilots into spacecraft and blasting them into the vacuum of space, we expected there to be a few surprises in store. And we were not disappointed. For instance, dating back to the Apollo program, many astronauts have reported mysterious bright flashes of light in their […]

More than 1,300 years ago, a boy and a girl were buried on two sides of England’s south coast. Today, their DNA reveals they both had West African roots, a surprising find that suggests early medieval Europe was far more connected and cosmopolitan than the history books suggest. Archaeologists made the discovery through genetic analysis […]

If you’ve ever lived with a pet, you know that they can have a whole host of facial expressions, and apparently, this trait isn’t confined to domesticated creatures. Look no further than the Tibetan fox; while they are perfectly adapted for life in the Himalayas, they might also have the most judgmental faces in the […]

Fossilized teeth discovered in Ethiopia have revealed a new-to-science species of Australopithecus, a genus of early hominins that lived from the Pliocene to the Early Pleistocene. Not only does it add to our busy human family tree, but the discovery proves they were living alongside the oldest specimens of Homo, the genus of early humans […]