Deborah Bloomfield

A decade ago, in April 2014, the source of the water for the town of Flint in Michigan was switched from Lake Huron and the Detroit River to the Flint River. The move by local and state administration was made to save $5-7 million, but ended up exposing 100,000 people – including up to 12,000 […]

Astronomers are running regular checks on a star system that currently requires a telescope to see because they expect it will soon be bright enough to view with the naked eye. According to one prediction, this could happen any time from now until September, although there’s reason to think we might need to wait another […]

The Stone Age was a tough time to be alive. On top of dealing with ferocious predators, unforgiving weather, and the constant struggle for food, there was the ever-present deadly threat of bacterial poisoning from food, tainted water, and – oddly enough – kissing.  In a new study, scientists at Stockholm University and the Swedish […]

Subterranean salamanders, once thought to dwell exclusively in their underwater caverns, spend a surprising amount of time aboveground, new research has revealed. The blind beasties, called olms, have been spotted venturing out of their underground caves in northern Italy and scoping things out at the surface. The olm (Proteus anguinus) are bizarre creatures, once thought […]

Spelunkers in Oregon risk encountering a group of cave robbers, famous for their hook-like legs used to snatch prey out of the air. Known as Trogloraptor, this genus of cave spiders has only been found deep within caves, where it lies in wait ready to pounce with two sets of teeth. Trogloraptor cave spiders were […]

Medium-sized animals dominate the top places in the running section of the animal Olympics, and now we know why, thanks to a new model of muscle performance. For many important criteria, animals find it’s good to be big. Insects may be able to lift astonishing weights relative to their size, but in absolute terms the […]

For centuries, people living in what is now south-central Connecticut have heard strange noises emanating from underground. Local Native Americans named the area Machimoodus, meaning “the place with bad noises” in Algonquian dialects, a fitting name given the disconcerting sound – like thunder, gunshot, or a crunch – that can ring out in the area […]

The UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) has recently been showing off its latest laser directed energy weapon (LDEW) known as DragonFire. At the MOD’s missile range in the Hebrides, a picturesque archipelago off the west coast of the Scottish mainland, DragonFire was recently used on an airborne target. Precise details on the test were not […]

You’ve probably heard at some point in your life – either from a well-meaning trivia fan or a malevolent self-esteem hunter – that our ears and noses are the only two body parts that never stop growing. To be fair, it kind of seems like it’s true, right? If you imagine an old person –perhaps […]

Nikola Tesla, famed for his work on alternating current, was one hell of an inventor, mechanical engineer and physicist. His inventions have been found to work better than expected even 100 years after he noted them down. However, nobody can be right 100 percent of the time, and Nikola Tesla had his fair share of […]

You’ve most likely heard of the placebo effect. In a nutshell, it’s the idea that a treatment with no active ingredients or proven medical benefit can still help your symptoms if you believe it will work. Placebos are probably best known for their use in clinical trial design – something to compare a new drug […]

Primitive stone tools found in Ukraine have been dated to 1.4 million years ago, making them the oldest known human-made artifacts in Europe. Prior to this discovery, the continent’s earliest prehistoric utensils were thought to reside in Spain and France, yet the newly-dated tools from the east radically alter the story of when and how […]

Things in microgravity work differently. Flames are round, your bones lose density, and the calluses on your feet disappear. Liquids also behave weirdly, and a group of forensic scientists wondered how bloodstain patterns would be affected in reduced gravity – so they took a flight to find out. The team performed the microgravity experiment on […]

You’d be forgiven for the terms “flightless birds” and “Antarctica” conjuring up images of happy little penguins waddling about on the ice. But with new research in hand, let us take you back 50 million years ago to discover a much scarier creature lurking on the then-warmer continent: terror birds. Dr Carolina Acosta Hospitaleche and […]

The Earth’s geological timeline is an essential tool for understanding how it has changed, and planetary scientists have sought to replicate it for planets and moons we have explored. However, the existing timeline for the Moon was created when we knew a lot less about its history, and is increasingly dated. A new effort attempts […]

Think of a lion; think of a gorilla; think of an otter. In your head, are the males bigger than the females? Well, a new study is set to challenge over 100 years of bias in this area of research. By looking at over 400 mammal species, the team found some surprising results – in […]

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Point Nemo in the southern Pacific Ocean is said to be the most remote location on the planet. When ships pass through it, they are 2,689 kilometers (1,671 miles) away from the nearest land. When the International Space Station passes overhead, the nearest humans to the sailors are the astronauts on board the station, given […]

It’s a bit of a cliché to say empires rise and fall, but have you ever wondered what the oldest empire in recorded history was? Well that title seems to go to the Akkadian Empire, the first known multinational empire in the world. The Akkadian Empire existed for a short time between 2334-2218 BCE, and […]

A pioneering aerospace vehicle made its debut powered flight last week – and it was all thanks to a monstrous aircraft armed with a wingspan longer than a football field. With a wingspan of 117 meters (384 feet), Stratolaunch’s Roc is considered the world’s largest plane in operation. When empty, the twin-body plane weighs a […]