Deborah Bloomfield

Ceres, a dwarf planet and queen of the Asteroid Belt, continues to be a fascinating world. When it was visited by NASA’s Dawn, signs of geological activity – including ice volcanoes – were abundant. The spacecraft also reported the presence of several organic-rich regions. The assumption was that comets and asteroids brought those to the […]

Antarctica, the icy continent, is experiencing a surprising transformation as its fringes turn green with plant life in the wake of warming temperatures. This remarkable change is vividly captured in a new map created by NASA’s Earth Observatory using data from archives of satellite imagery. The amount of green vegetation on the Antarctic Peninsula has […]

Galaxies are broadly divided into three groups. You have the spirals like the Milky Way and Andromeda, the irregular galaxies, and the elliptical galaxies. This latter group tends to have the most massive and usually most aged population of stars. The idea is that these elliptical galaxies arrive at their final shape through collisions across […]

Envy is a complex emotion that can take different forms and is often shaped by both social and biological influences. Now, researchers have described a “new” kind of envy imbalance that is directed toward the opposite sex. The team found that women tend to envy men for perceived social advantages, including their salaries and prestige, […]

Take a heart out of a human and – provided you keep it stored under very exact conditions for transplantation – it can carry on beating. How? Well, it could come down to the organ’s “little brain,” as new research has identified that a cluster of neurons may play a much more significant role in […]

The first battery made from carbon-14 encased within a diamond that can replace a standard lithium-ion battery has been produced, culminating from years of research.  As the original, the battery might fetch a price far above a conventional gemstone from collectors, but its makers have bigger goals than the jewelry market. Instruments powered by such […]

Something’s cooking down inside Earth. At the center of our planet, temperatures reach approximately 5,200°C (9,392°F), almost as hot as the surface of the Sun. Driving this hellish heat is a medley of god-like forces that have persisted for billions of years.  The Earth’s core is divided into two separate regions: the outer core – […]

The European Space Agency is about to have a way to get solar eclipses on demand in space, a crucial approach to studying the solar corona. The solar corona is the extremely hot atmosphere of the Sun and has a massive impact on Earth and our technologies, which is why it is important to monitor […]

Just how similar were Neanderthals to Homo sapiens? Are we a single inseparable species or just siblings (perhaps merely cousins) in the great, messy family tree of humans? These questions have been debated since Neanderthal fossils were first unearthed in the 19th century, but a new paper aims to advance the discussion and move it […]

Welcome to True Crime in Science. Over six episodes, we will discuss some well-known true crime cases, as well as some cases you may not have heard of, and then delve further into the science and the forensic details behind them. Watch episode two on Harold Shipman now. In episode one, which you can watch […]

Whether they’re trekking 1,450 kilometers (900 miles) or discovering new viruses, cats are pretty great. Unless, of course, you’re allergic. But what if there was a way to create felines that don’t leave your throat feeling akin to sandpaper? It’s early days, but new research into the protein that triggers allergies to cats has hinted […]

If you’ve ever visited a medieval castle – or read a book about them, or watched a TV show about them, or just have one of those friends who likes to come out with weird bits of trivia every now and then – then you’ll have heard this one before: the staircases in castles, it […]

The addition of lead to gasoline in the United States was responsible for 151 million cases of psychiatric disorders such as depression, anxiety, and hyperactivity among Americans, a new study concludes. The cost of doing the same thing to what the rest of the world calls petrol is yet to be calculated, but presumably scales […]

Portrayals of futuristic activity seldom include nature in its wildest state. Sure, there are intriguing visions of the future where the two coexist but usually, we see the wild in opposition to the sleek aluminum-colored vision of the day after tomorrow. In reality, this is not true. Around the world, nature and cutting-edge technologies already […]

Scientists may have figured out how the earliest known culture in North America spread so rapidly across the continent. By reconstructing the diet of a toddler who lived almost 13,000 years ago in what is now Montana, the study authors discovered that the youngster and his tribe were likely specialist mammoth hunters who exploited this […]

The oldest known wild bird – an albatross named Wisdom – has laid an egg at the ripe old age of 74, after finding a new mate earlier this year. Wisdom was first identified and banded by biologists after she laid an egg at Midway Atoll in 1956. As albatrosses do not lay eggs before […]

We are getting better at discovering small asteroids and predicting where they are going to hit our planet. For the first time this year, four asteroids were successfully found and their orbit and predicted ahead of their collision with our planet. The fourth one was predicted and flew over Russia just yesterday, disintegrating into a […]

Humanity’s longstanding friendship with dogs may be even deeper than previously realized. Archaeological remains of a well-loved hound in Alaska suggest that people in the Americas had a close relationship with canine companions at least 12,000 years ago, around 2,000 years earlier than physical evidence previously suggested.  Back in 2018, archaeologists unearthed a tibia, or […]

The importance of the North Star, Polaris, is so great we use it as a metaphor for something that reliably guides us; it’s aspirational enough for companies to name themselves after it. In the days of GPS, its use may have declined, but memories of its importance linger on. However, there is no equivalent South […]

Some animals capture people’s imaginations more than others and old favourites return to familiar spots time and time again. Whether it’s the world’s oldest wild bird or a tortoise birthday party, we love to celebrate animals we recognize. Good news from California: Frosty the orca is back. Frosty was spotted on November 24 by whale […]