Deborah Bloomfield

You’re lucky enough to be alive at the same time as the biggest animal to have ever inhabited the planet. At 33.5 meters (110 feet) long and weighing more than 150,000 kilograms (330,000 pounds), the blue whale takes the crown overall. If we look to land animals, you’re dealing with dinosaurs. So, given how humongous […]

A mysterious and pre-teased NASA conference from the Perseverance team has gone live and announced their findings: the “clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars”. Earlier this week, NASA pre-trailed an “exciting” announcement coming from the Perseverance rover team. The release was light on what would be announced, but now we have […]

Researchers from Stanford University have developed a brain-computer interface (BCI) that can decode users’ “inner speech” and convert it into words. The device successfully allowed four paralyzed patients to communicate and represents a massive breakthrough in this field, although its ability to tap into people’s thoughts raises a number of concerns about mind-reading and data […]

The platypus is a deeply unusual animal for a collection of reasons, not least because it is considered to be the most venomous mammal on the planet. Just a small handful of mammals can deliver a dose of venom – and the duck-billed platypus sting is often cited as the most agonizing. Platypus venom isn’t potent […]

The European wildcat Felis silvestris can breed with domestic cats (F. catus) to produce fertile offspring. Not only does this mean that pets on the loose in areas that overlap with wildcat territory could get up to hijinks, but it also means their subsequent hybrid offspring can also go on to do the same.  Why […]

While the mention of blood might conjure up images of a crimson red liquid, it turns out the animal world isn’t keen to stick to just the one color (or any color at all) when it comes to this particular body fluid. In fact, scuttling about the forests of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands […]

“Take two bottles into the shower?” asks one now-classic commercial from the UK. “Not me – I just want to wash my hair and go.”  And you can! With a miracle product known as 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner – but should you? How does it even work? Surely it can’t really replace the talents of […]

Take a wander through the outskirts of south London and you might stumble across a fragment of Earth’s deep past: a collection of rocks forged more than 2 billion years ago. Older than the first stirrings of complex life, they are among the most ancient rocks in Western Europe. But what are they doing in […]

On Tuesday, US Congress held the latest hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), the relatively new term for Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) of the past. “The federal government has been hiding information from Americans for decades. We have spent years seeking information on the assassinations of President Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, Reverend King, and other government […]

In 40,000 years, long after its mission is over, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft will have a close encounter with Gliese 445. It won’t be the probe’s last. The Voyager probes were launched in 1977 and have been traveling ever since. At the moment, Voyager 1 is around 168 AU from the Earth, having become the […]

A gamma ray burst (GRB) unlike anything we detected before has released some of the most powerful photons in the universe four times in the course of 24 hours. The event was not the most powerful GRB ever detected, but was easily the longest. It’s only a few decades since astronomers thought supernovae were the […]

An investigation into shark meat being sold at grocery stores, seafood markets, and online in the US has found that a concerning amount comes from vulnerable through to critically endangered species, and is commonly presented to shoppers with ambiguous or incorrect labeling. Carried out as part of a seafood forensics course at the University of […]

A team of scientists in Finland and the UK has revealed that myocardial infarctions (the fancy medical term for heart attacks) may not be solely caused by cholesterol buildup and lifestyle factors. Evidence has been found that infectious bacteria linked to the mouth could help trigger heart attacks. The rest of this article is behind […]

Whilst standing on Antarctica or the Arctic during winter, you might not notice too much of a difference, looking down at the snow-covered ice. But the Arctic and Antarctic are very different, as you would soon discover if you were able to keep drilling your way down through the ice. For a start, if you […]

Glass cells filled with liquid crystals respond to light to make the first time crystals visible to the naked eye, even if you’d still get a better view using magnification. Previous time crystals have mostly been curiosities, but the makers claim these could be used to store data more efficiently or make almost unforgeable watermarks.  […]

A recently discovered meteor shower that peaks just once every five years is expected to reach its crescendo this week. Known as the chi Cygnids, the rare shower has been slowly increasing in intensity since late August, leading to predictions that it could light up the sky between September 13 and 15. The rest of […]

Back in September 2023, scientists monitoring seismic activity across the world were all met with a mysterious signal making its way throughout the whole of the planet. “We were baffled – the signal was unlike any previously recorded,” Stephen Hicks, Research Fellow in Computational Seismology at UCL, and Kristian Svennevig, Senior Researcher at the Geological […]

Volcanoes are well known for being, you know, fiery and hot. And yet, they can be found dotting the floor of the famously frigid deep ocean – a place where their existence seems to defy intuition. Why do they appear there? How do they survive? And what happens when they erupt? Turns out, some of […]

In 1977, a rhino was born at Dvůr Králové Zoo. She was named Nasi, and came as a bit of a surprised because her mother, a northern white rhino called Nasima, had only had contact with one male rhino. Why was that so strange? Well, he was an entirely different species. Hybrids like Nasi crop […]

A planetary science conference has heard how to redirect threatening asteroids so they don’t come back and endanger the Earth at a later date. You’d think that would be a key feature of any mission to protect the planet, but that assumes the mission is run by scientists, not chief financial officers. When Hollywood imagines […]