Deborah Bloomfield

Here’s a fun way to think about the timescales involved in evolution: sharks have been around so long that they have likely been around the Milky Way twice. Just as the Earth rotates around the Sun, the Sun (with all the planets in tow) rotates around the center of the galaxy. We’re moving at around […]

Scientists and philosophers have collaborated to present what they argue is a new law of nature: complex systems evolve in similar ways whether or not they involve life. These systems not only become more complex with time, but also achieve greater diversity and patterning. With confidence some may see as hubris, the authors place this […]

Over 500 years after it was painted, analysis of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of Italian noblewoman Lisa del Giocondo is still revealing its secrets.  Earlier this year, one Italian researcher claimed to have identified where the Mona Lisa was painted after identifying the bridge as the Romito Etruscan-Roman bridge in the municipality of Laterina, in the […]

Plasma waves that chirp and whistle like the dawn chorus have been found around the innermost planet. The discovery provides insights into the weak magnetic field of Mercury and gives us a preview of what the BepiColombo spacecraft will be able to study once it is in orbit around the planet. These observations come from […]

Mummies have been found on every continent on Earth (if you include the penguin mummies of Antarctica). You’ll no doubt be aware of the intentionally prepared mummies made by ancient civilizations to honor their dead, but it’s also possible for mummification to occur under extreme natural circumstances.  The key is to disrupt the natural stages […]

High in the atmosphere of WASP-17b are clouds of tiny quartz particles, like minuscule grains of sand. The discovery is proof of the capacity of the JWST to probe the composition of distant planets – in this case, one 1,300 light years away. It’s also a great reminder of how good we have it on […]

The plight of plastic pollution has reached the insects. For the first time, scientists have documented ants becoming entangled in plastic fibers. The impact and extent of the phenomenon aren’t immediately clear, but it marks another milestone in the planet’s deepening problem with plastic pollution. Armand Rausell-Moreno from the National Museum of Natural Sciences in […]

Space tourism firm Space Perspective has unveiled designs for a “space spa” to be fitted in their Spaceship Neptune capsules, which they hope to begin launching in 2024. During the early days of the Apollo missions, NASA didn’t think about peeing and pooping too much. When the first American man – Alan Shepard – went […]

What’s your favorite food? And what foods make you turn up your nose in disgust? These are probably easy questions to answer, but have you ever stopped to wonder how you know what flavors you love and what flavors you hate?  You’ve probably seen that diagram of a tongue split into zones for five different tastes, […]

Museums, far from dusty remnants of the past, are a hotbed of discovery for the general public and researchers alike. In fact, a fossil exhibit in Luxembourg’s National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) has revealed a brand-new genus of pliosaur and with it, changed what we know about the ocean predators’ emergence. The fossil was […]

When modern humans migrated out of Africa around 75,000 years ago, they hooked up with Neanderthals and rampantly interbred with them, leaving a genetic legacy that still lives on today in most people of European descent. However, it turns out, the Neanderthal genome was already seeded with the DNA of Homo sapiens at this point […]

Rewilding has become something of a buzzword in recent years and for good reason. Reintroducing species into habitats they have been lost from is proven to help restore ecosystems, and brings with it a whole host of benefits from flood management to carbon capture. Now, potentially the world’s most ambitious rewilding plan has been hatched. […]

This past March, Philadelphia hosted one of the world’s largest annual laboratory science events of the year – Pittcon. This dynamic and transnational conference brought together 1,100 technical sessions, 450 exhibitors, and more than 15,000 visitors. It truly was the epicenter of discovery, learning, and interaction. And there is more to come. What is Pittcon? […]

Have you heard of the thymus? New research suggests it’s high time we paid more attention to it, after finding that a computerized tomography (CT) scan of the oft-forgotten organ can uncover immune system aging. The thymus is a small organ located in the upper part of the chest and is home to immature T-cells, […]

Smartphones have been a part of our lives for so long that it’s difficult for many of us to remember the Before Times, but even 20 years ago the kind of tech we see in today’s phones would have been unimaginable. As their role in modern society has increased, scientists have scrambled to try and […]

A video showing an “en caul” birth has been widely shared on X (still aka Twitter) and Instagram, introducing a new batch of people to the fact that some babies are born inside their amniotic sacs. The video, from an unknown source but shared first by kids.mood on Instagram, shows a baby wriggling around inside […]

The houting, a fish that lived in North Sea estuaries and was officially classified as extinct in 2008, turns out to be alive and kicking… or flopping. According to research from the University of Amsterdam and the Natural History Museum, London, the species is actually quite common. But the story is more complicated than it […]

One of the world’s largest frog species is on the brink of extinction due to a devastating combination of infectious disease, climate change, and habitat loss. Once widespread across the Caribbean, the critically endangered mountain chicken frog can now only be found on the island of Dominica, where just 21 of the giant amphibians remain. […]

The menacing grimace of a stargazer earned wildlife photographer Pietro Formis Highly Commended for Animal Portraits in the Wildlife Photographer Of The Year 2023 competition. Captured in Rijeka, Croatia, it depicts a Mediterranean stargazer (Uranoscopus scaber) laying in wait on the seabed in a portrait aptly named Death In Waiting. As ambush predators, stargazers wiggle […]

At least in astronomy, AI seems to be delivering on the promise of helping humans by doing tedious time-consuming jobs. A series of robotic telescopes and machine learning algorithms have been able to work together to first detect a possible supernova, then follow up the observations to confirm it, classify its type, and then share […]