Deborah Bloomfield

This article first appeared in Issue 18 of our digital magazine CURIOUS.  The hot springs in Fjallabak Nature Reserve, Iceland, are a tourist trap for adventurous humans looking to bask in the restorative warm waters and take in an unbeatable mountain view. However, as the BBC’s new three-part series Wild Scandinavia demonstrates, it’s also a popular spot among wolf spiders.  Advertisement Reaching […]

Remember a couple of months back when people thought a stingray named Charlotte was about to pop out a shark-ray hybrid? The aquarium responsible for her care has now posted an update on her pregnancy – and sadly it doesn’t feature little baby shingrays. Sharing a video of Charlotte on social media, the Aquarium & […]

An astronomer has suggested a new solution to the Fermi Paradox, which implies that the “great filter” may still lie in our near future. First, a little background. With 200 billion trillion (ish) stars in the universe and 13.7 billion years that have elapsed since it all began, you might be wondering where all the […]

An argument has broken out on the Internet about how long it would take you to break out of a time loop if you had to remain there until you have beaten Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. “Average man has never played chess, but he knows all of the rules. Each time he loses, the […]

The gamma-ray burst GRB 221009A was so far off the charts for these events that we would only expect to see something this bright once every thousand years. Naturally, astronomers expected some phenomenal event to be responsible – but instead, they found what looks like a perfectly ordinary supernova, with few clues as to why […]

A study of white dwarf stars has some sorry news for the Earth’s future, suggesting that even if it is not consumed when the Sun is at its largest, it may one day be torn apart by the solar corpse. Despite the occasional megaflare, the Sun is a very stable star. It has to be, […]

Antarctica is an ice-capped continent with blistering cold temperatures, but it also harbors red-hot volcanic activity.  There are a dozen volcanoes in Antarctica, the majority of which are located in West Antarctica and Marie Byrd Land. One study in 2017 identified 138 volcanoes in this part of the continent alone. While most of these are […]

An experimental drone has blasted off on its near-supersonic speed test flight, zipping through the sky at speeds of Mach 0.9 – that’s 1,111 kilometers (690 miles) per hour. This is just the beginning of things, though. Venus Aerospace, the company that developed the drone, ultimately wants to achieve speeds of Mach 9, nine times […]

A small asteroid being tracked by astronomers is about to make a close approach to Earth, passing within 0.00012 Astronomical Units (AU) of Earth. The asteroid is being tracked by NASA, and is small at around 2.2 to 4.9 meters (7.2 feet to 16 feet). According to an analysis by astronomers, the asteroid will be about 0.03 Lunar […]

Trying to identify a new species of animal isn’t the easiest task in the world, but the lucky people who do manage to find one appear to have quite the sense of humor when it comes to giving them a scientific name. Here are some of our favorites. Advertisement Gelae fish Fun fact: Gelae fish […]

An insect invasion in the trillions sounds like the stuff of sci-fi – but as early as next month, the US is set to see two mega-broods of cicadas rise up from the soil in a rare double emergence event.  If that sounds like your worst nightmare (or you’re hoping to witness the phenomenon), the […]

The ancient Egyptians are famous for their reverence of celestial bodies, yet the role that the Milky Way played in their cosmology remains poorly understood by Egyptologists. However, according to a new analysis, the band of stars that streaks across the sky may have had a number of mythological functions, acting as a path to […]

NASA engineers have discovered the source of Voyager 1’s mysterious glitch, which left it sending back a repeating pattern of 1s and 0s rather than useful data. Voyager 1 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 […]

Male blue whales have been witnessed battling for the chance to mate with a female off the coast of Australia in arguably the most formidable combat on Earth. When male whales sense a female is fertile, they start to follow her. In many whale species, the female leads the males on a dance. The males […]

Sometimes we get a glimpse of extremely rare animals that can’t fail to delight. From underwater cuties like the dumbo octopus to a rare pink elephant calf in South Africa, catching a glimpse of something that special brings an extra sense of joy. That is exactly what happened to the Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa (KJ) Martu rangers […]

The northern white rhino faces a biological puzzle: with just two infertile females left, how can the species survive? Scientists might just have the answer, as they say the cells of dead individuals could bolster the northern white rhino gene pool, giving rise not just to more animals, but to a genetically robust population.  While […]

There are so many awesome things about math, but one of the most reassuring is its certainty. If something can be proven – not always a given, we grant you – then it’s proven forever; no going back a few centuries later and realizing you were wrong all along because nipples exist. Take pi, for […]

Up to 80 percent of carbon emissions pumped out since 2016 can be traced back to just 57 companies, according to a new report.  Published by the independent think tank InfluenceMap, the report was produced using the Carbon Majors Database. Among the 57 entities they name and shame, there’s an array of nation-states, state-owned firms, […]

If we ask you to imagine a henge, we’d bet your mind instantly goes to the now-iconic Stonehenge in Wiltshire, UK. This prehistoric megalithic structure is, in the minds of many people, the quintessential example of a henge. It’s even in the name, right? Well, not quite. Stonehenge isn’t actually recognized as a true henge, […]

A “coywolf” is the nickname given to eastern coyotes, a hybrid of wolves and coyotes that also contain a fair share of genes from domestic dogs. This remarkable canid mutt has enjoyed a population boom over the past century and can now be found in plains, parks, and back alleys across much of eastern North […]