Deborah Bloomfield

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 […]

If those are two ends of a spectrum, then beating your 7-year-old nibling at an elementary board game probably falls somewhere in the middle – but it’s precisely that which a new preprint, possibly written to justify a group outing to a pizza place, is tackling. “We prove[d] an optimal strategy for the children’s game […]

Some of the oldest air ever studied by scientists was trapped inside rock over 800 million years ago. Cracking the rock open and allowing the air to escape, the team who found it got a pretty astonishing surprise about the ancient atmosphere of Earth. When studying the Earth’s atmosphere in the ancient past, scientists have […]

If you ever wondered what would happen if you were to throw a black hole at a star, well astronomers now have an answer: it goes “boom” in a truly distinctive way. Researchers have spotted an interesting supernova event that had never-before-seen behavior. A study revealed the involvement of a black hole and its interaction […]

Chinese and American scientists claim to be the first to make large enough quantities of diamonds with a hexagonal structure to test their physical properties. The substance has been sought for 60 years, reflecting the extraordinary anticipated hardness of the gemstones. The team responsible may have scooped another team who described a method for achieving […]

A 500-year-old Inca document made of alpaca wool and human hair was made by an unknown individual of low social status, shattering the common belief that only high-ranking imperial officials knew how to produce these strange thread-based records. Known as a khipu, the artifact forms part of a “proto-writing” tradition that was widespread in the […]