Deborah Bloomfield

Nearly 3.5 years after it received its first approval for use, the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is set to be withdrawn worldwide. It’s a headline that’ll certainly be an attention-grabber – the vaccine has gained a bit of a reputation in its time, after all – but what’s the reason behind it being discontinued? It’s not […]

Japan has added fin whales – a marine mammal that’s vulnerable to extinction – to its list of commercial whaling species in a move that conservationists have dubbed “an appalling step backwards”. Advertisement The Government of Japan announced on May 9 that fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) are fair game for whalers within the country’s exclusive […]

An update from Neuralink on its first in-human brain implant has revealed that the study hasn’t all been smooth sailing – part of the implant’s system of ultra-thin electrodes has experienced a problem. Advertisement The N1 device was surgically implanted into 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh earlier this year, as part of the company’s goal to create […]

The Yellowstone Caldera –  one of the world’s largest active volcanic systems – is a sleeping giant that will raise havoc when it wakes from its slumber. The good news is that the supervolcano is not “overdue” for an eruption, despite what you may have read online. The bad news is that volcanic activity is […]

Some incredible things take place in the human body after we die, especially if we happen to kick the bucket in the great outdoors. Research has revealed how corpses seem to share a universal community of microbes that guide us on the path to skeletonization, something known as the decomposition ecosystem, and it brings with […]

Imagine a world in which Chicxulub hadn’t put an end to The Age Of Dinosaurs: would mammals have risen? Would humans exist? Or would the dinosauroids rule the day? Advertisement The dinosauroid is a hypothetical animal that’s been suggested as a possible next step for a group of carnivorous dinosaurs. What could they have looked […]

Say humanity one day needed to move our star. Maybe an alien berserker is headed our way and would arrive in a few tens of thousand of years, or we discovered we were about to head through a region of dark matter in our galaxy that would wreak havoc on our Solar System. Perhaps we […]

The Chinese National Space Agency is attempting something no one else has done before: collecting rocks from the far side of the Moon and bringing them back to Earth. The ambitious Chang’e 6 mission is now orbiting the Moon ahead of landing and it is filled with scientific payload beyond the sample retrieval apparatus. But […]

New NASA research suggests that their upcoming space telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman, will be able to look for primordial black holes, which can be smaller than regular black holes, with masses even smaller than a planet like ours. Well, as long as these objects exist, that is. But you might be wondering: what are […]

A spoonful of olive oil a day could help keep dementia at bay, according to a new study. From observations of almost 100,000 adults over 28 years, the researchers found that consuming more than 7 grams (0.25 ounces) of olive oil per day was associated with a 28 percent lower risk of dementia-related death, irrespective […]

In 1981, while conducting a redshift survey of the distribution of galaxies, astronomers spotted something (or nothing) that they weren’t expecting. Advertisement “[W]e discovered that the redshift distributions in each of the three northern fields showed an identical 6,000 [kilometers per second] gap. Because these fields were separated by angles of ~35°, this suggested the […]

Evidence has been found that a subduction event, the driver of plate tectonics, occurred exceptionally early in Earth’s formation, contradicting existing models. To explain how this occurred, planetary scientists are pointing the finger at mantle plumes set off by Earth’s collision with Theia, the Mars-sized object whose impact created the Moon.  Advertisement Earth is the […]

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Astronomers using JWST report that a hellish super-Earth called 55 Cancri e might have a thick atmosphere made up of either of carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide. If confirmed, it would be the first known rocky planet beyond the Solar System to have a dense atmosphere.   Advertisement Earth is a rocky planet and its […]

In a world first, scientists have repurposed an existing drug and shown it could help fix faulty proteins thought to be involved in long COVID. The drug, naltrexone, is typically used to treat substance use disorders, but the team believe their research shows its potential to help millions of people living with long COVID and […]

Behold the Colorado River toad. Also known as the Sonoran Desert toad, these bulbous fellas pack a psychedelic punch just below the surface. Their venom, which they can secrete through glands on their skin, contains a hallucinogenic compound, which the scientists behind a new study say could be a potent antidepressant. Advertisement Psychedelics have received […]

The more we learn about the world and the cosmos, the more we have had to let go of ideas of our own importance. We discovered that the world is not the center of the universe around which all objects rotate. Then we found that the Earth rotated around the Sun, and believed that that […]

When an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in the last days of World War Two, much of the city’s life was eviscerated. Around 140,000 people were killed and over 60,000 buildings were destroyed or damaged in a moment. Amid the rubble and ruins, however, glimmers of life held on. Against the odds, several trees […]

The collaborative power of the animal world is pretty impressive at the best of times – from teams of orcas working together to bumblebees sharing knowledge and the strength in numbers that comes from a large flock. Inspired by this idea of animal swarms, researchers have developed robot snails that not only traverse the ground […]

In 1974, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched its program to make vaccines accessible to children across the globe. Now, 50 years later, a new study suggests that vaccination has had a significant impact on public health, helping to avoid millions of deaths. Advertisement Though WHO’s Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) began with the goal […]