Deborah Bloomfield

Researchers at ETH Zurich have found traces of arsenic in particulate matter, clouds, and rainwater. Using new optimized measurement techniques, they have identified various ways that the toxic substance is transported into the atmosphere. Among these is a surprising route that involves previously underappreciated biological processes. Advertisement Arsenic is a naturally occurring but highly toxic […]

This week on Break It Down: unexpected and unexplained structures have been discovered hiding under the Pacific Ocean, the oldest equatorial dinosaur fossil in the world dates back a whopping 230 million years, a painted dog penis bone has been found in a ritual shaft in England (some puns write themselves), cave art from France […]

We’ve all heard some variation of this rumor: the average person “eats” eight spiders a year. And this isn’t a reference to the FDA’s standards for bug bits in food – this delicacy purportedly comes courtesy of the critters themselves, who apparently offer themselves up freely by crawling into our mouths as we sleep. We […]

The renowned physicist Richard Feynman is reputed to have once said that “physics is to math what sex is to masturbation”. Exactly what comparison he was making, he didn’t clarify – but if the orgasm gap is anything to go by, he presumably meant that math is often more fun, more effective, and better at […]

A cave shelter near Paris already known to host unique Palaeolithic art also appears to hold a three-dimensional map or model of the area around it, two archaeologists have claimed. If true, this would likely make it the oldest known representation of its kind, and certainly unmatched in scale from the era. Advertisement The caves […]

In the quest to find the world’s oldest ice, scientists have successfully drilled a 2,800-meter (9,186-foot) long ice core, reaching where the Antarctic ice sheet meets bedrock. The incredible feat reveals a continuous record of Earth’s climate that dates back at least 1.2 million years. Advertisement The ice core was obtained from a remote site […]

The US Space Force’s mysterious X-37B space plane has been orbiting Earth non-stop for just over a year. Doing what? That remains unclear, though its masters have disclosed some of its activities in 2024. Advertisement X-37B blasted off on its latest mission on December 28, 2023, quietly surpassing the 365-day mark without any official announcement […]

Quick! Think of a color. Now think of a number between one and 10. What did you choose? Advertisement If a common factoid is to be believed, the answer is most likely “blue” and “seven”. And we know what you’re thinking: that there must be some kind of confirmation bias at play here; that huge […]

As wildfires continued to rage on the outskirts of Los Angeles and beyond on Wednesday, California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a video posted to social media: “This time of year traditionally has not been fire season but now, we disabuse any notion that there is a season, it’s year-round in the state of California.” […]

When we consider 3D space, there are only two classes of particles: bosons and fermions, each having unique features that make them stand apart. But the universe can get a bit weirder – certain interactions between particles behave like a particle themselves, and we call them quasiparticles. Researchers have discovered a whole new class of […]

The animal kingdom can get pretty weird when it comes to sex and relationships. Different creatures have evolved all sorts of methods to pass on their genes to the next generation and beat out competitors in the process. For the Japanese rice fish, researchers have discovered that it’s all about how many times a day the […]

Mammalian ears are pretty damn strange. For humans, they’re a bit unsightly, they’re made of cartilage yet somehow sneak in three bones, and they get bigger as we age. Now, we’ve got a new weird ear fact to add to the list: they started out as gills. Our ears used to be gills? The outer […]

One of the largest collections of human and animal bones ever seen in a Roman feature in Britain has been discovered inside a ritual shaft at an ancient chalk quarry. Located in Surrey, southeast England, the 2,000-year-old pit contains the remains of 21 people as well as a dog penis bone that appears to have […]

A bunch of evidence has shown that ketamine could be used in therapy for depression, although how it achieves this remains somewhat unclear. In a new study, tiny zebrafish suffering from a sense of exhaustion and futility might provide some clues. Advertisement Ketamine is often half-jokingly called a “horse tranquilizer” because of its use in […]

Saber teeth such as those that belonged to apex Ice Age predators were superbly shaped for puncturing prey and subduing them, a new study has found. In one sense that is unsurprising, since many different mammalian carnivores evolved similar shapes independently. On the other hand, it raises the question of why none of the species […]

Quantum computers are the next major leap in computing, bringing the peculiar properties of quantum mechanics to the operations of computers. They run on qubits – quantum bits – which can be used to do calculations much faster than regular computer bits. There are hurdles to overcome though, and one of them is to make […]

If asked about the specifics of a random day in their life, most people would struggle to answer without flicking back through a journal, or digging into their Instagram story archive – but that’s not the case for everyone. For people with highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), or hyperthymesia, they can instead recall the most […]

Inefficient wastewater treatment may be exposing as many as 7 percent of people in the US to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – known as “forever chemicals” – in their drinking water, according to a new study. Advertisement Examining the wastewater from eight large municipal wastewater treatment facilities, with sizes comparable to those serving 70 […]

A physicist believes he may have solved the notorious “grandfather paradox”, suggesting that time travel to the past may not be ruled out by this particular branch of physics. Advertisement First off, what is the grandfather paradox? Unlike the bootstrap paradox, which gets a little messy, the grandfather paradox is fairly simple to explain. Say […]

In the very early hours of January 10, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will attempt the inaugural launch of its massive orbital rocket New Glenn. So far, the private space company has sent up into the atmosphere its New Shepard rocket, whose job is to send stuff to the edge of space and come back down. […]