Deborah Bloomfield

Fire ant rafts enable these invertebrates to survive floods by aggregating in floating islands of living organisms. For a long time, their formation was thought to come down to something called the “Cheerios effect” – but new research has revealed that actually, pheromones could be a better fit as a trigger for the phenomenon. The […]

Ah, the honeymoon phase – when everything is new and exciting, and you can’t keep your hands off each other. It’s thrilling, nerve-wracking… and a really bad time to be making important financial or career decisions. For many years, science wasn’t clear on exactly why our brains go to mush when we’re falling in love, […]

Have you ever driven through what appeared from a distance to be an active patch of rainfall coming from dense cloud cover, just to find the land underneath dry as a bone? That’s virga, baby! Virga, from the Latin word meaning “rod” or “branch”, refers to the wisps attached to the underside of rain clouds […]

While leaving product reviews is a pastime for some, one reviewer left a comment on a body lotion product that read more like a public service announcement. A warning to those not keen on spider-kind: the review suggested that the smell of the body lotion was attracting wolf spiders from far and wide. Let’s take […]

We could soon be living in an apres-ski world if global temperatures continue to soar, according to the findings of a study. After analyzing the expected future precipitation at more than 2,000 European ski resorts under different climate eventualities, the authors found that more than half will experience a severe lack of snow if temperatures […]

Venus is truly an odd twin of Earth. Despite its similar size, the planet has such a thick, hot atmosphere that it would crush you and cook you if you were to stand on its surface. And the space oddities don’t end there. As all the other planets spin anticlockwise on their axes, Venus spins […]

At some point, perhaps during a terrible business seminar run by an ’80s guy, you may have come across the story of a boiled frog. According to the story, if you place a frog directly into boiling water it will jump out immediately, but if you place it in cold water and slowly raise the […]

Today, January 8 (at 7:18 am UT) Astrobotic launched its Peregrine Mission One towards the Moon, the first US mission to land on the Moon in 50 years. It is the third private company attempting to reach our natural satellite and the first one from the US. However, the company has since announced that an […]

Kingo, one of the world’s most beloved lowland gorillas who inspired three decades of conservation, has sadly passed away at the grand old (estimated) age of 45. His body was found in Djéké Triangle Forest, Republic of Congo, on December 26, 2023, and his death is believed to be related to his advanced age. The […]

2023 was the year when the hype around artificial intelligence (AI) went into hyperdrive. Following its release in late 2022, ChatGPT-3 made AI technology accessible and genuinely useful to the general public, prompting the development of numerous other Large Language Models (LLM) by some of Silicon Valley’s mightiest giants. AI was the word on everyone’s […]

For a quarter of a century, we have known that the universe is experiencing an accelerated expansion. We call the culprit dark energy, but we are yet to know its true nature. In the current best model, dark energy is a cosmological constant – its value at every point in space and time is always […]

For the first time, NASA is about to publicly unveil the X-59, an experimental aircraft that’s designed to pull off a remarkable engineering feat: supersonic flight without a sonic boom.  The game-changing plane will be rolling out of its Californian hangar on Friday, January 12. NASA is calling this moment a “historic milestone in aviation […]

Our lives are becoming increasingly data driven. Our phones monitor our time and internet usage and online surveys discern our opinions and likes. These data harvests are used for telling us how well we’ve slept or what we might like to buy. Numbers are becoming more important for everyday life, yet people’s numerical skills are […]

As a science website, it’s easy to get bogged down in questions like “is there life on Enceladus” and “where are all the aliens“, when people are struggling with more basic (but fun!) questions like “why can’t we power our cars with magnets” and “could people breathe the air on Mars“. One fun question we […]

So-called Odd Radio Circles (ORCs) are the products of vast outflows of gas from galaxies generating stars at a phenomenal rate. A team of astronomers have concluded supernovae within those galaxies are pumping out enormous winds, with the ORCs as the end product. That might have been the explanation all along, had it not been […]

More than 30 new-to-science species of bacteria have been discovered in patient samples at the University Hospital Basel, Switzerland. Some of these are clinically relevant, and so could open up new avenues of research for those seeking to better understand, or find treatments for, the associated infections. The findings also highlight just how many pathogens are […]

Despite controversy, human remains are on their way to the Moon today, after Space burial firm Celestis, which promises to launch the remains of loved ones into space, purchased space on board private firm Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander. The mission has been criticized by the Navajo Nation (amongst others) for ignoring the sacred position the […]

We’re sorry to inform you that you probably have herpes. The good news, should you choose to view it that way, is that you’re in good company. Well over 3 billion people around the world are thought to be carriers of herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), which means that a decent proportion of them […]

The city of Lexington, Kentucky has sent a message via laser to the TRAPPIST-1 system, officially in the hope of attracting tourists from one of the many Earth-like planets there. Some may suspect the real agenda is to attract visitors from closer to home, but we’ll let you be the judge of that. There’s plenty […]

Long COVID is perhaps most famous for the “brain fog” it can cause in those who have it, but that’s far from the only symptom. The physical symptoms can be equally debilitating, including long-lasting and extreme fatigue, especially after exercise – and thanks to a new study out of Amsterdam, now we know what causes […]