Deborah Bloomfield

Fresh evidence suggests that early humans in Europe were mastering fire around 245,000 years ago. If this latest assessment is on point, it indicates our distant relatives may have been sat around a campfire, perhaps sharing food and building social bonds, up to 50,000 years earlier than previously thought.   In a new study, researchers […]

A study of the orbit of known space objects has found that the Earth is safe from impact events for at least around 1,000 years. NASA and other observatories track the orbits of objects discovered in the Solar System, keeping a particular eye on “near Earth objects” (NEOs) 140 meters (460 feet) and larger in […]

Scientists used sound waves to estimate the composition of the Earth’s upper mantle and found evidence that around a quadrillion tons of diamonds may be buried somewhere over 160 kilometers (100 miles) deep beneath our feet. The research, based on decades of seismic activity data, was reported in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems back in […]

A team of amateur sleuths that previously claimed to have identified the infamous Zodiac Killer has now made further allegations that the FBI “secretly listed” the suspect since 2016. If true, it would suggest that law enforcement missed a chance to arrest the man, who has been dead since 2018.  Case Breakers, a non-profit run […]

There are roughly 32,000 known asteroids that get close to our planet – an impressive number of objects, which has tripled in the last 10 years thanks to wider efforts in planetary defense. Almost half of all those detections (14,400) came from the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey, a project developed at the University of Arizona. […]

The Gulf Stream, part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and often described as one of the planet’s major climate tipping points, has been slowing down for some time now.  One paper attempted to discern the flow of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) over the centuries by looking at sediment, temperature data, and […]

In case you were worried that the current iteration of generative AIs are too nice and empathetic, scientists have got you covered – a new language model has been trained on the worst part of the internet, the Dark Web.  Given perhaps the funniest name yet, DarkBERT (yes, that’s actually its name) is a generative […]

Humans have been French kissing since long before the language of amour was invented, which means we may have been spreading diseases by snogging throughout our history. Highlighting the ancient roots of kissing in a new article, researchers say the first documented smooch can be traced back to 4,500 years ago in Mesopotamia, although it’s […]

The largest underwater scanning project in history has been used to create the first-ever digital replica of the Titanic, offering a glimpse of one of the world’s most famous shipwrecks with unbelievable clarity. The new scan captures the sunken remains of the Titanic in its entirety, revealing a complete three-dimensional view of the shipwreck caked […]

Spinosaurid bones found in Castellón, Spain, represent a new genus, palaeontologists have concluded. The dinosaur in question is estimated to have grown to a fearsome 10-11 meters (33-36 feet) long. Following the recent discovery of the moderately sized Vallibonavenatrix cani nearby, the identification indicates the Iberian Peninsula was a center for spinosaurid diversity in the […]

A new study has concluded that Bernie Madoff, the New York financier responsible for defrauding thousands of investors out of some $65 billion in the world’s largest Ponzi scheme, was almost certainly a psychopath – finding that the late banker and con artist had a near-100 percent hit rate on established checklists of psychopathic traits. […]

A shark has attacked and probably killed an Australian surfer in a rare but deadly encounter. The victim, eyewitnesses claim, was attacked multiple times before disappearing under the waves, which is extremely unusual behavior. The victim, 46-year-old Simon Baccanello, was surfing on a popular beach at Walkers Rocks, part of the Lake Newland Conservation Park […]

Traces of human DNA are not the only thing left behind after sexual intercourse. A new study has found that bacterial DNA is also transferred between males and females during penetrative vaginal sex, and that these microbial signatures could be invaluable to forensic scientists working to catch sex criminals. PhD student Ruby Dixon, working with […]

A new study using satellite data has found that New York City is sinking at a relatively fast rate, with some urban areas sinking much faster than others. According to the team, one contributing factor is the sheer weight of the city’s high-rise buildings. The team, led by US Geological Survey research geophysicist Tom Parsons, […]

Back in 2020, “Adventurous Lisa” and 10 other Tasmanian devils were reintroduced to mainland Australia having gone extinct in the region around 3,000 years ago. Now Lisa has given birth to three joeys adding to the growing populations of these little marsupials. The 11 individuals were released by Aussie Ark with partners Re:wild, WildArk, and […]

Population genetics indicates that ancestors of modern humans were split into three populations, that only occasionally interbred, for hundreds of thousands of years. These groups then partially recombined to create the humanity that lives today. This places the division and reuniting long before Homo Sapiens’ great migration out of Africa. The human family tree is […]

In the Hudson Bay region of Canada, you can experience a strange phenomenon; weighing ever so slightly less than you do anywhere else in the world. It’s not much of a party trick, you would weigh about four-thousandths of a percent less than at the average location on the planet, but the cause is quite […]

There are few things more difficult than studying the end of the world, and how humanity would react before it. If you try when the world isn’t ending, then you probably won’t get an accurate impression, given that the world isn’t really ending. If you try while the world is actually ending, people won’t be […]

The recent discovery of over 1,000 bone tools in a Neanderthal cave in Siberia has ignited a debate over whether our extinct cousins were capable of producing utensils from animal skeletons as well as stone. To assess whether this osseous assemblage was a one-off, the authors of an as-yet un-peer-reviewed study looked for similar artifacts […]