Deborah Bloomfield

The centrifugal force is pretty cool. It could be used one day to create artificial gravity onboard space stations (saving sci-fi films a lot of budget in the process) sparing astronauts the strange effects of microgravity on their bodies. It is also responsible for the fact that the earth bulges in the middle, and as […]

The MAVEN Mars orbiter witnessed a brief restoration of the long-lost Martian magnetosphere and a temporary tripling of its ionosphere, where the Sun ionizes the upper atmosphere. The stream of charged particles known as the solar wind waxes and wanes. Mostly these are close enough to an average figure that the effects on planets are […]

Around 1,200 tonnes of fish have washed ashore along the coast of Japan. While the cause is still under investigation, authorities were keen to dampen conspiracy theories that it’s related to the recent release of water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Colossal quantities of dead sardines and mackerel have washed up along a stretch […]

The height differences between Neolithic male and female people in northern Europe may have been influenced by cultural factors. That’s the findings of a new study that suggests genetics and dietary factors are not sufficient to explain the differences in height of these ancient people who lived around 8,000 to 6,000 years ago. Today, we […]

Among the menagerie of types of glowing upper atmospheric phenomena, one has been named the “green ghost”. The first spectral imaging of one such ghost reveals the presence of iron and nickel in dust falling on the planet at the right time for electrical storms to produce an other-worldly glow. Lights in the sky have […]

After spending over two decades behind bars, Kathleen Folbigg’s convictions for killing her four children have now been quashed thanks to scientific evidence that suggested they died as a result of rare genetic conditions, not murder or manslaughter. Folbigg, now 56, is expected to seek one of the highest compensation payouts ever seen in Australia […]

Life is pain, highness – but not all pain is created equal. Despite being by definition a subjective experience, there are some facts about pain we all pretty much accept as true. Getting stuck by a pin is less painful than breaking your collarbone, for example, and literally anything is easier than treading on a […]

Someone on Reddit recently asked for help with the age-old question “so, if I dropped.. let’s say a pumpkin into the ocean once it reaches a certain depth… would it just implode? If so, why?” Let’s work backward, as the why is actually fairly simple. Implosions are where objects collapse in on themselves, the result […]

Picture a flow diagram of a human aging through numerous stages of their life, from baby to toddler then child and teen to adult and elderly person. Chances are, you imagined the youngest person on the left and the eldest on the right. This might seem like the “natural” way to order things, but not […]

There are crests, spines, and spikes aplenty amongst snakes and lizards, and whilst we can all agree it makes some of them look like hardcore, real-life dragons, little is known about the potential costs of having horns. A new study, however, suggests that it may come down to how snakes and lizards forage their food. […]

A few years ago, coconut oil was king, touted for its supposed health benefits, and used for everything from teeth cleaning to repelling bugs (it was even suggested as a bogus COVID treatment). Once hailed as a “superfood”, research is now suggesting that the oil may not be as good for us as the “clean […]

A Reddit user recently asked the question “what is the difference between taking paracetamol and Ibuprofen?”, revealing that a large number of other users also didn’t know the difference. While both are taken to relieve pain, paracetamol (known as acetaminophen in the USA, or the brand name Tylenol) and ibuprofen work quite differently. Paracetamol, one […]

Voyager 1 is the second-longest operating spacecraft in human history, losing out only to Voyager 2 which launched a few weeks earlier in 1977.* The spacecraft has traveled further than any human-made object, crossing the heliopause and heading into interstellar space. While doing this, it has continued to send back useful data to Earth, helping […]

It seems every other day there is a conservation-related problem, with species being declared extinct and lost from the biodiversity of Earth’s natural world. Today however, we bring good conservation news from the bird keepers of Chester Zoo in the UK, where two incredibly rare Mitchell’s lorikeet chicks (Trichoglossus forsteni mitchellii) have hatched.  The first […]

Taking a whiff of an ancient Egyptian tomb probably isn’t very high on your sightseeing bucket list, but you might be pleasantly surprised by some of the smells that can persist here (ignoring the thousands of years of dust and decay).  New research has found that certain aromatic plants used in ancient Egyptian funerary rituals, […]

Researchers studying the effects of death on the brain have finally identified the sequence of events that lead up to the permanent cessation of neural activity. Not only do these findings shed light on the strange phenomena reported by people who have undergone near-death experiences, but they could also lead to new medical interventions designed […]

If you want to know what an esthetically pleasing male butt looks like, look no further. A new paper has the answer for you, showing the right proportions and angles for what is to be considered the most desirable masculine rear-end one can find. And we have to agree those are good butts. Plastic surgery […]

Patients with endometriosis around the world are still being given controversial advice to “treat” their condition by getting pregnant, despite a lack of evidence that it actually works, new data reveals. The survey of over 3,000 patients with a medical diagnosis of endometriosis was run by a team from the University of Adelaide, the University […]

What do you do when your job is to talk to extraterrestrial intelligence, but no one has found any? Go have a chat with the nearest thing. A team from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute teamed up with whale researchers and had a 20-minute conversation with a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) named Twain. Many […]

The scimitar-horned oryx (Oryx dammah), a species of antelope that was declared Extinct in the Wild by the IUCN, has been downgraded to Endangered. Conservation efforts to protect different species of animals usually take either an ex-situ approach, meaning the animal is looked after away from their natural environment, or an in-situ approach, meaning the […]