Deborah Bloomfield

A poem of praise for the famous sultan Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub (Saladin) has been misdated, a new paper argues, and refers not to an unusually close planetary conjunction but to the supernova of 1181. If the claim is correct, the poem’s words could be of scientific value to astronomers hoping to establish how […]

In the latest of many, many predictions of the end of the world, the Earth is set to end on Tuesday, September 23, 2025, according to a conspiracy theory going wild on TikTok and X.  Every now and then, someone (sometimes, but not always, Isaac Newton) suggests that the world is about to end in […]

Fast-moving objects like interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS may be planet-forming seeds, potentially helping to solve an old Solar System mystery. On July 1, 2025, astronomers spotted an object moving through the Solar System at nearly twice the velocity of previous interstellar visitors ‘Oumuamua and Comet Borisov. The object, which was confirmed to be an interstellar comet […]

Imagine yourself by a stream in Shuitangba, China, 6 million years ago. The birds are singing, the Sun is shining, and you’ve just woken up to find a wolf-sized otter sniffing your toes. That impressive beast is Siamogale melilutra, and it’s the largest known carnivore in its ecosystem. The rest of this article is behind […]

Will Ferrell’s tongue approaching white dog poop to the backing track of Tristan Und Isolde by Richard Wagner is a scene few will be able to forget after watching Step Brothers. As punishments go it’s a pretty good one chosen by the bullies victimizing Brennan and Dale, and it’s also kind of intriguing. What’s going on with white dog poop? […]

On Thursday, September 18, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) met to vote on possible changes to its recommendations to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with respect to three different vaccines: MMRV (measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella), hepatitis B, and COVID-19. After Thursday’s meeting ended in confusion, with some key […]

If you’ve never had sex, your genetics could be partly responsible – but not as much as your physical characteristics, location, and behavior. That’s the conclusion drawn from a new study that analyzed the observable characteristics and genetics of more than 400,000 adults from the UK and Australia – though the researchers say that a […]

This week, scientists digging in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert have discovered a new species of pachycephalosaur that pushes back their emergence by 15 million years. We now have the first-ever full history of an asteroid, from its discovery to collecting its meteorites, and scientists are baffled by marine “y-larvae” whose adult form remains a mystery. Finally, […]

They say music is the language of the soul, which is fitting given a pivotal soundtrack of classical music once saved the souls of roughly 2,000 beluga whales in the Chukchi Peninsula, the easternmost peninsula of Asia. Here, in 1985, an enormous herd of beluga whales was spotted by local residents, which was no doubt a pleasing sight at […]

The 35th Ig Nobel prizes honor (or dishonor) research on the pizza preferences of lizards, the effect of garlic consumption on breast milk, and Teflon’s place in a weight loss program. Two studies on the effects of alcohol – on bats’ flying capacity and humans speaking a second language – have won aviation and peace […]

Most people consider the Italian polymath Galileo Galilei to be the father of telescopic astronomy, although a lesser-known English physicist named Thomas Harriot may actually have been the first to observe the Moon through a lens. Despite not publishing a single word of his scientific output, Harriot was a prolific scholar who discovered numerous laws […]

For every job, there is an appropriate tool. If you want to weigh yourself, you hop on the bathroom scales; if you’re looking to measure out some flour or sugar, you use a smaller version from the kitchen. Scientists in the lab have their own, hypersensitive scales, capable of measuring down to an individual thousandth-of-a-gram […]

Few feelings can top getting into a bed with fresh sheets and laying your weary head down on the cool side of the pillow, but are we getting bedtime all wrong? There was a time it wasn’t so comfy, back when we were living in the great outdoors rather than tucked away in houses, and […]

On Thursday, September 18, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) – which advises the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on vaccines – met to vote on updates to guidance for three vaccines. With some of the discussions postponed to Friday, September 19, scientists from around the world have been explaining what […]

This week on Break It Down: Homo habilis might not have been the apex predator we thought it was, the oldest and most complete pachycephalosaur reveals why they were so weirdly dome-headed, we’ve been able to track an asteroid’s full life story for the first time, nobody knows what these mysterious larvae grow up to […]

Half of the wildebeests in the Serengeti are seemingly “missing” in the latest survey of the region. An AI-driven model has unexpectedly shown there are fewer than 600,000 wildebeests in this part of East Africa – less than half the previous estimate of 1.3 million.  This raises some big questions: has the wildebeest population collapsed? […]

Star Wars has reached the deep sea as a new-to-science species has been named in honor of Chewbacca, everyone’s favourite Wookiee. A type of coral, it was first discovered on the seabed in Hawaiʻi and then seen again near the Mariana Trench. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or […]

For nearly a century, one color has ruled America’s roads every school morning: that unmistakable glossy yellow. It’s not by chance – it’s all thanks to one determined educator called Frank W. Cyr. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. Cyr, a professor […]

Class is back in session for another year, and that means new stationery, pumpkin spice everything in stores, and – albeit less welcome – the spread of respiratory viruses.  Only a few months ago, we introduced you to the Nimbus variant of COVID-19; but, there’s yet another new variant we think you should know about. […]

Big cats have all manner of impressive skills, from being the apex predator to the ancestor of modern humans, to surviving in all manner of habitats. Now a jaguar has broken a record by swimming six times the previous distance thought to be possible for the species. The rest of this article is behind a […]