Deborah Bloomfield

As North America prepares to marvel at a total solar eclipse this coming Monday, the only thing that viewers need to worry about is how to protect their eyes while observing the event. Yet things weren’t quite so chilled in ancient times, when eclipses often provoked panic and bloodshed among those watching from the ground. […]

Chomping into a big ol’ hunk of watermelon is a rite of passage into the summer months for some of us, but for people with chronic kidney disease (CKD), too much can actually end up being dangerous. That was the case for three patients with CKD featured in a new case study, who ended up […]

This article first appeared in Issue 18 of our digital magazine CURIOUS.  When it comes to astronomy, sight is the sense that we as a species mostly rely on. Contrary to popular belief there is some sound in space – the sonification of many cosmic events can deliver intriguing insights – and a lucky few can […]

Earlier this morning, residents of New York City and the surrounding areas experienced an earthquake that officials are so far measuring as 4.8 on the Richter scale. Though this is thankfully on the milder side of things, as earthquakes go, it’s a rarity in this part of the world. The US Geological Survey (USGS) puts […]

The camel spider might just be the most misunderstood arachnid on the planet. Also known as a wind scorpion, it’s neither a spider nor a scorpion.  What is a camel spider? The camel spider is an eight-legged arachnid, but it’s not a true spider. Belonging to the order Solifugae, it sits between spiders and scorpions […]

During the 1869 solar eclipse, two astronomers identified an emission line in the spectrum from the Sun’s corona that didn’t match any known substance. Some decided it must be a new element, and it was named coronium, although others favored newtonium. Eventually it became clear no such element exists, and that the emission line at […]

As natural as it is, it’s kind of amazing that the human body can create and excrete a special kind of food to keep a baby alive and healthy without any other input. And we’re hardly alone: mammals as a class are literally named after the fact that they have boobs with which to feed […]

The Great American Eclipse will grace the skies of North America on April 8 – and it has inevitably attracted a foul-smelling cloud of ludicrous conspiracy theories. Among the most ridiculous involves a favorite target of easily debunkable delusions: the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN.   The story goes that CERN […]

Astronomers have spotted evidence of the meteorological phenomenon known as a glory on another planet. If this were Mars or Jupiter it would be remarkable enough, but the planet in question is WASP-76b, which is millions of times further away than either of them, outside the Solar System. A glory consists of one or more […]

For the first time since 1997, the US Census is changing the way it categorizes people by race and ethnicity. The next national census in 2030 will include a category for people who identify as “Middle Eastern or North African”. The move, announced by the White House last week, was made in light of a […]

Kylie, a wild dolphin in Scotland, was seen chatting with her adopted family of harbor porpoises in their “language” back in 2022, representing a remarkable world first in cross-species communication. After 14 years away from her species (the common dolphin, Delphinus delphis), Kylie had spent so much time around porpoises that she even started to […]

Ask just about any mathematician, and they’ll tell you the same thing: you can’t predict the primes. Indeed, the pseudorandomness of these building blocks of mathematics – defined as numbers that can only be divided by themselves and one – is as close to a truism as you can get in the subject. Or is […]

If you went to the doctor with some physical problem – IBS, say, or painful arthritis; maybe even something as serious as Parkinson’s disease – you’d probably be a bit annoyed if you were sent home with medication you later found out was little more than a sugar pill. Especially if you had been charged […]

The Dead Sea is one of the planet’s saltiest bodies of water. Technically a land-locked lake, rather than a sea, it’s nestled between Jordan, Israel, and Palestine, and as its total lack of fish, bird, or plant life is a testament to, it really is quite dead. Why is the Dead Sea so salty? The […]

As the rush for copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, and other rare earth elements heats up, the impact of mining on Africa’s great apes may be even higher than previously thought. New research has looked at where African mining areas overlap with great ape habitats and found that one-third of the continent’s gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos […]

A series of ancient engravings found on volcanic boulders in southern Peru might represent music that was performed during shamanic rituals involving hallucinogenic plants 2,000 years ago. Consisting of what appears to be dancing human figures surrounded by zigzagging lines and other geometric forms, the enigmatic art eludes concrete interpretation, although a new analysis suggests […]

NASA is set to create a new “Coordinated Lunar Time” ahead of upcoming missions by the US and others to the Moon. Currently, there is no agreed time zone on the Moon. Uncrewed missions generally use the time corresponding to the craft’s country of origin, while the crewed Apollo missions used Ground Elapsed Time (GET), […]

Stars close to the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center of our galaxy live in constant danger, but many of them seize the opportunity to look younger than their true age anyway. That can be achieved by eating neighboring stars. Astronomers are sometimes puzzled by stars where different ways to estimate their ages produce […]

The idea of someone knowing you’ve been up to sexy shenanigans is cringe-inducing enough as it is, but now imagine getting stuck in a blob of tree resin during the deed and someone finding said blob millions of years later. That’s the case for some unfortunate mid-Cretaceous water striders trapped in a piece of amber […]

In 2022, NASA sent a spaceship to slam into an asteroid about the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza in an attempt to alter its course. The mission was a success, and demonstrated that it is possible to redirect objects in space, great news for a planet that isn’t a huge fan of being […]