Deborah Bloomfield

Magnetic deposits laid down during the Ediacaran Period, 630 million years ago to 541 million years ago, are not inexplicable fluctuations, some researchers argue. Instead, there is a pattern encoded in the rocks of Morocco’s Anti-Atlas Mountains consistent with rapid shifts in the planet’s magnetic field. The Earth’s magnetic field is stable enough that people […]

Two weeks ago, interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was at conjunction, on the opposite side of the Sun with respect to Earth. Last week, it reached perihelion, the closest point it would ever get to the Sun. Now it is back from behind the Sun and we can see it again. In fact, Earth is moving towards […]

On November 2, 2000, astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev entered the International Space Station (ISS). That means that for the last 25 years, there have always been some humans in space – a quarter of a century in which a few members of our species have not been on the […]

People are ever so slightly horrified and a little grossed out after learning the foamy truth about how horses sweat.  Every now and then on the Internet, people rediscover something weird about animals that breaks their expectations. For instance, in 2020, people (including myself) were pretty shocked to find out what koalas sound like, while […]

The Maldives has become the first country in the world to successfully implement a generational tobacco ban, with the new law making it illegal for anyone born on or after January 1, 2007, to buy, use, or sell any form of tobacco. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or […]

History is full of crummy times. Flip to any chapter in the human story, and you’ll find that peace and prosperity are the exception, not the norm. Sure, periods of plenty and politeness have been enjoyed, but they often came crashing down in an outbreak of violence or, if you were lucky, they slowly rotted away into obscurity. However, of […]

There’s a curious tale that often circulates on internet forums and podcasts, a legend of a 15-meter (50-foot) snake said to lurk in the depths of Central Africa, known to lunge from the jungle and strike at passing helicopters when disturbed. Like most stories in cryptozoology, it’s almost certainly nonsense – but it’s one hell […]

In 1977, NASA launched the Voyager probes to explore the outer reaches of the Solar System and the interstellar space beyond. Eventually, both spacecraft encountered a blazing “wall of fire” at the system’s boundary, recording temperatures between 30,000 and 50,000 kelvin (about 54,000 to 90,000 degrees Fahrenheit) as they passed through. There are a few […]

This week, could the world’s first meteorite collision with a moving vehicle explain this Tesla’s melted windscreen? Of Earth’s 34 vital signs, 22 are now at record levels, and a 42,000-year-old sharp, yellow crayon suggests Neanderthals were creating art. Finally, we take a look at true crime; why it’s so widely enjoyed, and is consuming […]

Ice blankets about 98 percent of Antarctica, concealing nearly all of its land beneath a frozen shell. But thanks to remarkable advances in imaging technology, scientists can now reveal what the continent truly looks like beneath all that ice. The Bedmap2 was created back in 2013 using vast amounts of data on surface elevation, ice […]

Before a spacecraft is sent to another world, it is thoroughly sterilized. Space agencies take planetary protection very seriously. We do not want to spread Earthly life elsewhere or think we have discovered a possible life signal on another world, when we’ve actually simply caught a stowaway. It is possible, though, that some bacteria can […]

In 2017, epic footage from a helicopter showed a saltwater crocodile carrying a freshwater crocodile in its mouth like a carrot stick. Freshwater crocodiles are proficient hunters themselves, but they’re dwarfed by the might of one of Earth’s apex predators – aka, an animal with no natural predators. The saltwater crocodile, making light lunch of […]

Avoiding predators is a tricky business in the animal world, which leads to masters of mimicry and camouflage at every turn. From blending in with the background to strength in numbers, species have lots of tricks up their sleeves. For the bird-dung spiders, that trick is to resemble the droppings of their predators.  The rest of […]

A report published in 2020 by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife details the bizarre and unfortunate fate of a bald eagle that was found floating face down in Highland Lake in Bridgton, like the opening scene of an ornithological murder mystery. There were no witnesses to the eagle’s demise, but the suspect […]

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is about to be studied from not one but two locations in deep space. The comet has just gone through perihelion, the closest approach to the Sun, but unfortunately, it is on the opposite side of our star. Over the last few days, it has become visible again, but it can’t be […]

It’s appropriate, at Halloween, to be learning about a creature nicknamed “the bone devourer” – which is honestly somehow less troubling than its proper name: the zombie worm. But the scariest thing of all? They seem to be vanishing. “Basically, we’re talking about potential species loss,” said Fabio De Leo, senior staff scientist with Ocean […]

A worrying rise in social media posts, suggesting that people leave their Halloween pumpkins in the woods to feed wildlife after October 31, has seen wildlife experts concerned. Thousands of discarded pumpkins are left in woods across Britain, according to The Telegraph. While well-meaning pumpkin carvers might think they are doing the local fauna a kindness, leaving your […]

The nearby dwarf galaxy Segue 1 is exceptionally faint for its mass, which has puzzled astronomers almost since its discovery. A new paper proposes this could be because it hosts a ridiculously oversized supermassive black hole, relative to Segue 1’s population of stars. They have calculated that a black hole about 450,000 times the mass […]

It’s good news for the smallest and most endangered cetacean of them all, as a recent survey confirmed sightings of between 7 and 10 vaquitas – and the birth of new calves. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. It was only two […]

Biosecurity isn’t typically very funny, but please, I beg of you, commit a few moments to watching this discussion at the Australian Senate about honeybee breeding. The year is 2016, and a lot of people at the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee are about to learn that bees explode when they […]