Deborah Bloomfield

The highlands of Northwestern Thailand are scattered with dozens of caves that house some extremely curious human burials from the ancient past. They consist of large wooden coffins – often several meters long and crafted from a single tree trunk – that are mounted above the floor on wooden stilts.  The 40 or so burial […]

“Mathematics,” Carl Friedrich Gauss is said to have claimed, “is the queen of the sciences.” Of course, as one of history’s most famous and influential mathematicians, he was a little biased; ask a physicist, and she may well reply with the famous observation that “physics is to mathematics what sex is to masturbation.” But whether […]

A row of about 20 Mancala game boards has been discovered in a Kenyan wildlife conservancy, suggesting local herders may have whittled their days away playing the popular strategy game thousands of years ago. The boards were found carved into a rock ledge, and while it’s impossible to determine their age, researchers say the discovery […]

New research is showing that the population of wolves living in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) is genetically different from their counterparts outside of the region. Remarkably, the irradiated wolves appear to have developed protective mutations that increase their odds of surviving cancer.  Populations of wolves, as well as other animals, have boomed in the […]

Oceans inside moons seem to be quite common among the satellites of the giant planets of the Solar System, and researchers believe they can add one more to the list: Mimas. The small Saturnian moon is popular for its cratered surface, one of which makes it look remarkably like Star Wars’ Death Star. But it […]

In early February, CERN’s restricted council held a special meeting to discuss one important item in its future: the next particle accelerator that they are going to build. CERN is home to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most complex single machine in the world. The proposed design for the next-generation international collaboration particle smasher […]

Geologists have unearthed new evidence that the Pacific Ocean plate is wracked with colossal faults, caused by the plate slowly drifting westward and plunging into the Earth’s mantle. The researchers believe their findings, if accurate, have the potential to redefine what we previously understood about how our planet works.  From our human perspective, Earth seems […]

Since the creation of nuclear weapons, we have lived in a world where an all-out war could destroy humanity many times over. Studies have found that just 100 or so warheads could plunge the world into nuclear winter, which could claim up to 1 billion lives. As of 2023, we have an approximated 12,500 nuclear […]

The centaur Chariklo has two dense rings orbiting it. In attempting to explain their survival astronomers have proposed a yet-to-be-detected satellite, which they say may be keeping the rings in line. Saturn’s rings have been known for almost four centuries, but in the last 50 years we have learned they are only the most dramatic […]

Back in December 2020, Chang’e-5 flew to the Moon, landed, collected rocks, and brought them back to Earth. This was the first collection of lunar material in 45 years and it is delivering fascinating insights into the composition and history of the Moon. The samples have once again confirmed the presence of water on the […]

One of the deepest metal mines in Europe – the Pyhäsalmi Mine in central Finland – is to be turned into an enormous gravity battery capable of storing 2 megawatts of energy. As the planet moves towards renewable energy, we are faced with the problem of storage. The problem is that the wind doesn’t blow […]

An incredibly preserved fossilized frog, dating to over 100 million years ago, has been discovered in China. Not only is it the oldest such frog ever found, but it still has a belly full of eggs, offering palaeontologists a fascinating snapshot in time and a rare glimpse into the species’ life history. The team behind […]

Researchers are always looking for ways to make vaccines more effective, but the latest find is a bit of an unusual one. According to a new study, alternating arms when receiving the first two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine can modestly improve the body’s immune response. The potential impact of switching arms for multi-dose vaccines […]

New light has been shed on how molecules leave a solution to become part of a growing crystal. Since crystals’ properties depend on their size and shape, and these are influenced by their growth rate, the research opens the door to modifying crystal formation to improve usability. Crystals are far more common and crucial than […]

In a famous scene in X2 (of the first cinematic X-Men films), Magneto uses his magnetic powers to rip the iron out of somebody’s body, before going on a rampage using the iron like a bullet. Of course, the movie goes to great pains to show that the reason Magneto is able to do this […]

A rare, unusually-colored bottlenose dolphin has caught the eye of Australian researchers. Its unique skin pattern has been attributed to piebaldism, earning the marine mammal the nickname “Speckles”. Researchers say that Speckles is the first piebald dolphin ever seen in Australian waters. Speckles was spotted near a research vessel in Hervey Bay, Queensland, on the […]

NASA’s Perseverance rover has captured an image of the Ingenuity helicopter’s final resting place, after it stopped functioning late last month. Ingenuity was an impressive little robot, becoming the first to make a powered, controlled flight on a planet other than Earth in April 2021. That’s no easy feat, given the wildly different conditions on […]

A legal battle over the safety of adding fluoride to drinking water in the US is currently in full swing, with plaintiffs arguing that the chemical poses a threat to the neurodevelopment of children. Judge Edward Chen of the US District Court for the Northern District of California has been hearing expert testimony since January […]

New species are discovered all the time – and while some fit nicely into previously created taxonomic families, others are so funky that they get a whole new naming system created just for them. Introducing the St George’s Cross Medusa (Santjordia pagesi) a brand new medusa jellyfish species from deep waters off the coast of […]

China is the undisputed world champion of dam building. Not only do they have more working large dams than every other country in the world, but they also hold the record for the largest capacity hydroelectric power station in operation: the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. Now, the East Asian superpower is in […]