Deborah Bloomfield

Over 50 years after the last time it was reported, researchers have rediscovered the sailback houndshark, stumbling upon the long-lost species during a survey of fisheries in Papua New Guinea. If you haven’t heard of this shark before, don’t be surprised; not only has it been missing for a significant amount of time, but the […]

A team from Nagoya University in Japan and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) have used a new method to gauge the age of gas giant Jupiter, suggesting it could be used to pin down the timings of when the planets of the Solar System formed. Figuring out the age of the planets is, […]

Comet 3I/ATLAS is not beating the allegations that it is a supremely weird object. The fastest interstellar comet yet is also breaking records in other aspects, in particular in its outgassing of carbon dioxide, higher than all but one comet observed by humanity. Astronomers have used JWST to conduct a very brief observation of this […]

A woman who crushed up a whole black widow spider and injected it in an effort to get high in the 1990s ended up having a very bad time when the arachnid’s venom kicked in. The unpleasant trip saw her spend a few days in the intensive care unit (ICU) with breathing difficulties, muscle cramping, […]

A 44-year-old man with treatment-resistant depression (TRD) has achieved what researchers describe as “remission” of his symptoms after undergoing an experimental brain stimulation procedure. This is the only such case that has been reported to date, and the findings are still awaiting peer-review; but for a condition where the options for patients are severely limited, […]

Pythagoras was undoubtedly a clever man, though his odd ideas about beans are still up for debate. What he’s best remembered for, however, is his mastery of triangles, a fact most of us were reminded of repeatedly in high school geometry through the Pythagorean theorem. But did the famed philosopher actually invent the formula that […]

The latest research on asteroid Bennu has revealed its heterogeneous origin and a parent world with flowing water, adding to the evidence that this small and somewhat dangerous rock is extremely complex. Researchers have revealed the presence of a variety of materials in Bennu, some older than the Solar System, as well as new evidence […]

We might not know whether aliens exist (no, they weren’t at a Miami mall last year, although first contact would be far from the weirdest thing to happen in Florida), but that hasn’t stopped people from preparing for their potential arrival to Earth. Some people might stockpile weapons, others might DIY welcome signs, but back […]

Hurricane Erin, the first of the 2025 season, has been raging off the coast of the Caribbean and the US Eastern Seaboard this last week. Thankfully it did not make landfall, because this storm rapidly transformed from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in little over a day, producing heavy rains and rip […]

If you’ve ever seen a mammoth skull, you’ll have noticed the gaping nasal cavity that sits front and center, like a giant, singular eye socket. Without knowing what the animal looked like when it was alive, you’d swear that the thing was an enormous one-eyed monster, so it’s hardly surprising that these fossilized pachyderm remains […]

This week on Break It Down: Tracks left in ancient rock suggest fish crawled out of the seas 10 million years earlier than we thought, a 140,000-year-old child’s skull is the earliest evidence Neanderthals and Homo sapiens got it on yet, a bright orange nurse shark makes history as the first example of xanthism in […]

There are just two northern white rhinos left in the world. Najin and Fatu, a mother and daughter pair. They can’t continue the species on alone, but a world-first attempt was made to bring a new northern white rhino calf into the world using frozen samples, in vitro fertilization (IVF), and a surrogate southern white […]

The Solar System does not have a clear border. The influence of the Sun in certain domains is small enough for the Voyager probes to have escaped into interstellar space, but there are comets and larger worlds orbiting our Sun at incredibly far distances. Astronomers have been wondering what might lurk in those dark regions, […]

In a remote area of Coos County, Oregon, a mighty Douglas fir is burning. The tree, known as the Doerner fir, is thought to be between 450 to 500 years old and has lost about 15 meters (50 feet) in height since the fire started on August 16. The rest of this article is behind […]

What is heavier: 1 kilogram of feathers or 1 kilogram of steel? Whilst the answer to this classic riddle is that they both weigh the same amount, it may be surprising to discover that the color of a feather can result in different weights.  When we think of feathers, especially from a tropical bird, we […]

Prehistoric sled dogs in the Siberian Arctic ate a mix of fish, reindeer and polar bear, according to a new analysis of 9,000-year-old turds. Recovered from the early Holocene site of Zhokhov in the extreme north of Russia, the paleofeces contained high rates of various parasitic worms, which may have severely compromised the dogs’ ability […]

The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope has been a game-changer. It has delivered some of the highest resolution views we have ever taken of the Sun. Now, it has provided the highest resolution observations of coronal loops during a solar flare. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe […]

Modeling of the consequences of a giant body smashing into Jupiter has undermined one of the main theories used to explain the strange nature of its solid core. Not everyone is satisfied with the alternatives, however, so the quest to make sense of the innards of the king of planets will go on. Although most […]

It might seem hard to believe, but the ancestors of today’s whales were once land-dwelling animals. Given that they’re now very much residents of the ocean, clearly they left land for water at some point – but what did that look like? For a long time, the answer to that question was a mystery – […]

Many languages talk about the future in ways that are strikingly different from English. And whether we notice it or not, those differences may shape or reflect how we think, how we behave, and even the choices we make every day. In English, there’s a hard future tense that marks what lies ahead, clearly separating […]