Deborah Bloomfield

Wander into the wrong bit of forest in Gabon’s Lopé National Park and you could find yourself surrounded by a troop of over 800 primates. Here, mandrills are known to roam the forest in enormous groups called “hordes,” and suffice to say, it’s not a party you want to crash with your puny human teeth. […]

In the age of wireless technology and streaming services, CDs could be considered an obsolete medium, primarily used by 21st-century Luddites clinging to a way to play their tragically untrendy music. However, for an invention that’s over 40 years old, compact discs are pleasantly sophisticated technology (if you look closely). The rest of this article […]

A team studying the spectra of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS has found evidence of “galactic cosmic ray processing”. While interesting and certainly worth knowing, it really isn’t the best news that astronomers have ever received. It may be very disappointing indeed. In case you’re just catching up, on July 1, 2025, astronomers at the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact […]

Chameleons have spiral optic nerves, CT scans and 3D modelling reveal. The discovery explains how the lizards can literally keep an eye out for prey in almost every direction, moving their eyeballs as if each has a mind of its own. Chameleons are most famous for their capacity to mimic the colors of their environment, […]

Blue Origin, the private space firm headed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, is set to launch its New Glenn rocket on Wednesday, sending two NASA orbiters to Mars. While traditionally NASA has launched its own spacecraft, satellites, and orbiters into space, since President Ronald Reagan signed the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984, the space agency […]

In 1989, an employee at CERN made a decision that would change the world. Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist working at the intergovernmental organization, had developed a system that would allow scientists to quickly share information via hypertext that linked documents across a network. This system was the blueprint for what would become the […]

Maybe Neanderthals were not wiped out in a catastrophic event some 40,000 years ago. In fact, perhaps they never truly disappeared in a definite sense. New research has examined the flow of genes between prehistoric human populations using mathematical models, concluding that Neanderthals were effectively absorbed into Homo sapiens through frequent bouts of interbreeding.  The […]

Conferences represent an important component of the scientific and wider academic landscape. They’re a great opportunity to showcase work, rub shoulders with individuals from all career levels, and engage in the latest debates and discussions. These events have historically been marquee showplaces for academia and industry, but they are increasingly important for young and early-career […]

A case report tells the story of a family who shared their Kansas home with 2,055 brown recluse spiders over five and a half years. Spiders have a pretty bad reputation amongst humans for a group of species that is so good at pest control. But while most species are harmless, there are a few […]

Our high school years were, many of us may have been told, the best days of our lives. But that’s no longer the case, according to the work of Dartmouth University Professor David Blanchflower and colleagues – and the formerly inescapable “U curve” of well-being is now more of an uphill struggle towards happiness. “There […]

This week, remarkable new findings suggest the universe’s expansion may be slowing down, a new site reveals that Oldowan tools saw early humans through 300,000 years of battling the elements, and a 115-million-year-old fossil is the first-ever ankylosaur hatchling to be discovered. Finally, we ask: could you eat dinosaur meat? And if so, what would […]

Whenever there is a supermoon, a closer-than-average full Moon, there is also a new Moon that is farther than average. But the coming new Moon will not be just a little farther than average – it’ll be the farthest it will be for the next decade and more. The orbit of the Moon around the […]

Sensory experiences in early childhood could have different effects on the developing male and female brain, according to a new study looking at sound preferences in mice. And if you didn’t think mice had especially strong opinions about different sounds, prepare to be intrigued.  The researchers, based at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, exposed litters […]

Meet Ice XXI, a newly identified form of ice that can exist at room temperature (albeit very briefly). Creating it is no small feat, as it requires crushing loads of pressure, far more intense than the pressure found at the bottom of the deepest ocean trench.  If you’re an Earth-bound human, you’re undoubtedly most familiar […]

Hurricane Melissa was a catastrophic event. It was the third-most intense Atlantic Hurricane on record and the strongest of 2025. It was the strongest ever to make landfall in Jamaica, where it hit the Caribbean island on October 28, 2025. This cyclone has caused the death of over 83 people in Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican […]

Earlier this week, the Sun released two large solar flares in quick succession. Associated coronal mass ejections headed close to Earth may still make direct hits. While skywatchers anticipated a high latitude auroral treat for the eyes, R3 radio blackouts occurred across half the planet, raising the questions: why do these radio blackouts occur, and […]

When I get up to stand, it doesn’t occur to me to question how I can move because, well, we’ve figured it out. But there was a time when the way our tissues and nerves produced movement was a complete mystery. Turns out, the quest to figure such a simple thing out inspired one of […]

This year, for the first time in history, we got the first image of the polar region of the Sun. The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter mission was shifted to an orbit with a tilt compared to the plane of the Solar System, and this has led to the first exciting observations. The first science […]

The first-of-its-kind event unfolded on November 2, 2025, in the waters off the coast of Skjervøy in Northern Norway. At least six whale-watching boats were in the area when some started to notice some unusual behavior among a group of orcas, primarily females and juveniles, splashing around the water surface, close to the island of […]

They say stare into the abyss and the abyss stares back, and no truer could that be than when you shine your light into a field or garden at night. You see, all those little dots of light reflecting back at you? There’s a good chance they’re spider eyes. The rest of this article is […]