Deborah Bloomfield

They might not look like anything fancy – indeed, they often look more like a glamorous rock or a strange seaweed than an animal – but a humble sea sponge might someday save your life. This broad bag of organisms produces an unknowable variety of antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, antimalarial, or anti-inflammation chemicals, making them fascinating […]

Astronomers and engineers at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have pushed the observatory’s capabilities to the highest resolution yet. They were able to see features 5 milli-arcseconds apart in observations of the aged star R Leporis. That is equivalent to seeing a school bus on the surface of the Moon and it is a […]

Late last week, global temperatures briefly passed a benchmark that climate scientists have been dreading. Provisional data suggests the mean global temperature likely crossed a critical threshold of 2°C (3.6°F) above pre-industrial levels last Friday for the first time in recorded history. “Provisional ERA5 global temperature for 17th November from @CopernicusECMWF was 1.17°C above 1991-2020 […]

Archaeologists believe they have located the site of the long-lost Monastery of Deer in Northeast Scotland. The site is not only significant in its own right but is also important for the history of Scots Gaelic. It is thought that the earliest examples of this form of Celtic language were produced at this monastery in […]

The use of echolocation is one of the defining characteristics of toothed whales and dolphins, allowing them to navigate, communicate, and hunt in their underwater home. Now, a new study has provided fresh insight into how these creatures evolved to get their “built-in sonar”. To find out more about how dolphins and whales developed the […]

Penguin plumage may look like adorable little tuxedos, but new research has shown they serve a very practical purpose too. It seems African penguins and two of their close relatives use the dots on their bellies as “name tags” that enable them to identify one another, even amid a bustling throng of other penguins. Humans […]

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president known for his infamously anti-environmental stance, is reportedly being investigated by federal police after a man matching his description was seen “harassing” a humpback whale.  The incident occurred in June 2023 off the coast of São Sebastião, a seaside municipality in the state of São Paulo. According to O Globo, […]

SpaceX’s Starship rocket successfully blasted off on its second test flight on Saturday morning – and then came to an abrupt end just 8 minutes later. But whilst the explosion of both the first-stage booster and ship has dashed the hopes of putting astronauts back on the Moon in 2025, many are still considering the […]

Scientists at the Schmidt Ocean Institute have discovered a new hydrothermal vent field off the Western Galápagos Islands – one that has been speculated about for around 20 years, but never actually located until now. To finally pin the evasive vents down, the team had some help from a group of obliging squat lobsters, whose […]

With a penis that’s seven times too large to fit inside the vaginal opening of its species, the serotine bat, Eptesicus serotinus, has had to get creative when it comes to sexual reproduction. It’s physically impossible for the massive appendage to achieve penetration post-erection, but video footage has revealed how they’ve evolved to achieve contact […]

A deep space experiment traveling on NASA’s Psyche spacecraft has just beamed a message via laser to Earth from far beyond the Moon for the first time, an achievement that could transform how spacecraft communicate. In the farthest-ever demonstration of this type of optical communication, the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) beamed a near-infrared laser […]

If you’ve ever wondered what the world looked like to an ancient Roman, now’s your chance to cruise over the ancient vista and explore its many grand sites.  A new 3D digital model of ancient Rome has been launched that allows users to virtually explore the capital of the Roman Empire in the fourth century […]

Using satellite images and aerial photography, archaeologists have uncovered a network of previously unknown and huge Bronze Age sites at the heart of Europe. The team believe these newly identified structures could explain how contemporary megaforts, the largest prehistoric constructions made before the Iron Age, came into being.  The research was led by archaeologists from […]

While we were all tucked up in bed in the early hours of Halloween, Portugal was about to start a record-breaking streak. For six days in a row, more energy was produced from renewable energy sources than was consumed across the entire country. A record-breaking streak The new record was set between 4 am local […]

Since living through a pandemic, we’ve all recently become acutely aware of the stresses associated with living in close quarters with a single group of people for a prolonged time. Spare a thought, then, for the six men and women who entered the Russian Academy of Science’s SIRIUS-23 project last Tuesday – and won’t come […]

During the early stages of their invasion of Ukraine, Russia experienced a significant loss when its flagship, the Moskva, was sunk by Ukrainian forces in the Black Sea. The vessel’s destruction was a surprise not only to the Russians, but also to many who observed this conflict at the time, but now researchers believe they […]

Earlier this month, two astronauts were on a repair mission outside the International Space Station (ISS) when they dropped a tool bag. While it’s easy to think spotting the dropped object from space could be a bit tricky, with the help of a telescope, it’s now been photographed in action. The image of the tool […]

Hypnosis doesn’t work on everyone, with some people being particularly responsive to suggestion while others are more difficult to mesmerize. To try and understand why certain individuals are so easily entranced, researchers have recorded the brain activity of a group of volunteers while attempting to hypnotize them, revealing key differences between the brains of the […]

Have you ever pulled an all-nighter and wound up feeling wired, hyper, even a bit like you’re drunk? Well, scientists are looking to harness that feeling to see if it could help people suffering from depression, and a new study in mice has uncovered the changes in the sleep-deprived brain that seem to cause it. […]

At most day spas and retreats, mud baths take about 20 minutes. At the thermal baths of San Casciano dei Bagni, near Siena, Italy, however, they can last for 2,300 years – and it appears to work wonders. It was last year, after three years of excavations, that the team working on this ancient site […]