Deborah Bloomfield

An expedition near the town of Kardzhali in Bulgaria led to the discovery of a curious and complex cave. Named the Utroba (утроба) Cave, which is Bulgarian for “womb”, it’s marked with carvings and rocky niches, one of which looks remarkably similar to that of a human vulva – so was it born of natural […]

Oxford students were the most lethal and violent of all the contemporary social and professional groups in medieval Oxford, London, and York, new research suggests. A digital mapping project led by Cambridge’s Violence Research Centre has plotted crime scene locations from three of medieval England’s largest cities. The Medieval Murder Maps project draws on 14th-century […]

Carbon microcrystals with “unique morphological peculiarities” have been lurking in the dust left behind by a meteorite that exploded over southern Russia in February 2013. Measuring 18 meters (59 feet) across, the Chelyabinsk meteor blew apart high in the atmosphere, creating a dust plume that circumnavigated the entire planet within four days. After recovering some […]

In decades gone by, rumors swirled around the forests of Africa that spoke of a strange chimpanzee-gorilla hybrid, known as koolakamba. They’ve been the subject of a small handful of studies since the 19th century, but hard proof – or even sturdy evidence – of their existence has continued to allude scientists. One of the […]

Astronomers have used the observations by the Gaia satellite from the European Space Agency (ESA) to work out exactly how much mass the Milky Way has. And it turns out it is less than previous estimates, placing the total at 206 billion times the mass of our Sun. The Gaia data is the most detailed […]

The supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the heart of galaxy M87 has been found to spin, causing its jet to oscillate by around 10 degrees. The newly released findings confirm one of the most important features of black holes that astronomers have suspected for a long time but have not previously been able to confirm […]

Aside from the possibility of accidentally overdosing on wasabi, eating sushi is usually a relatively safe activity. However, as with all uncooked foods, raw fish can contain bacteria and other pathogens that have the potential to cause food poisoning, and the results of a new study suggest that we should be taking these harmful microbes […]

At least nine orcas have died after getting trapped in commercial fishing equipment off the coast of Alaska in 2023 so far. This figure is already significantly higher than many previous years combined, raising speculation that the increase in fatalities could be the result of a “new behavior” within the species. NOAA Fisheries released a […]

For decades people have been stumped by the existence of “fairy circles”, strange circular patterns found in arid regions of Namibia and Western Australia. Various explanations have been proposed over the years for the formations – from harvester termites to Turing mechanisms.  Complicating the mystery, or perhaps giving us the information we need to solve […]

The closest supernova to Earth in the last decade has provided astronomers with intriguing new insights into what happens to these stars just before they go boom. And it turns out that some of them lose a lot of weight in an incredibly brief window of time. SN 2023ixf exploded in the Pinwheel galaxy, a […]

This article first appeared in Issue 12 of our free digital magazine CURIOUS. The rate of decomposition of the human body varies enormously depending on where it lies after its last breath. Kept in the cool conditions of a morgue, you can buy yourself time to plan a funeral and even embalm the body to keep […]

Japan’s “Moon Sniper” mission has sent back an eerie photo of the Earth, testing the cameras that will help the lander with an ambitious landing on the lunar surface. Usually, when probes land on the Moon, the missions behind them are attempting to land in a zone that is kilometers wide. Earlier this month, the […]

Researchers have found a way to extract audio from still images and soundless video after a professor was inspired to do so by the sci-fi TV show Fringe. In the TV show, the FBI is able to extract recorded sound from a melted pane of glass. Den of Geek called the idea a “ridiculous pseudo-science […]

It turns out humans aren’t the only ones who enjoy a cheeky spa day – whales have been spotted having a grand old time frolicking about in seaweed, appearing to use the slimy sea algae as a body cleanser as well as for play. Although it’s been well-documented that many cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) […]

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) is a collection of floating trash about twice the size of Texas. It’s perhaps the most dramatic example, but by no means alone when it comes to islands of floating trash – and yet there’s something else to be found here other than discarded human garbage. The diversity of […]

There’s something quite humbling in watching astronauts struggling to walk on the Moon. Billions of dollars are spent getting them up there, they put in years of training, sometimes delivering a speech that will echo through the ages, and when they finally get on the Moon they start stumbling around like newborn deer attempting to […]

Recent research has revealed that it’s possible to use the signals beamed out from your Wi-Fi router into a sneaky surveillance system, capable of tracking the movement of people and even reading text through walls. One example of this technology was recently demonstrated by a team of computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University who developed […]

The OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return capsule landed back on Earth on Sunday and the procedure to safely collect the sample from its belly has begun. The capsule was taken to NASA’s Johnson Space Center where its lid was opened inside a special glovebox to ensure no contamination. Inside NASA has found what it called “black […]

Trilobites are among the most common fossils, some of which include the earliest-known sexual weaponry, and yet for all the specimens we have to work from, nobody’s found any direct evidence of what they had for dinner. Now, a first-of-its-kind fossil has been described that contains preserved stomach contents dating back 465 million years! It’s […]

Quiet quitting is an increasingly popular term for employees who “check out” and no longer put in additional effort at work, usually in favor of a healthier work-life balance. Now, new research has identified a curious link between the use of psilocybin, from magic mushrooms, and a reduction in working overtime among employees. The results […]