Deborah Bloomfield

While studying a remote, coral-covered island in the Mediterranean, scientists were shocked to discover that it has become riddled with some of the highest levels of microplastic pollution ever recorded in the region. The discovery was made in the volcanic bay of Illa Grossa, located on the Columbretes Islands marine reserve around 50 kilometers (31 […]

This week on Break It Down: We’ve just seen our third-ever interstellar object whizzing though the Solar System, eating cheese really might give you nightmares (but so might dessert), cavers are rewarded with a treasure trove of blind, mummified invertebrates including the only known cave-adapted wasp, the Neanderthal fat factory is just as delicious as […]

An exceptional celestial finding is about to go up for auction at Sotheby’s this month. Meteorite NWA 16788 doesn’t have the catchiest name but it will soon be famous, as it is likely to become the “most valuable” meteorite in the world once it does; the estimated sale price is $2-4 million. At 24.5 kilograms […]

Surgery is always risky, and when you’re operating on an animal rather than a person, the logistics involved can be pretty serious, especially when that animal typically lives in the water. Kimalu, a beluga whale, has just become the first known beluga in the world to recover from general anesthesia after an operation to remove […]

Space, famously, is the final frontier. That makes just about everything we do there unprecedented – and sometimes, they’re un-succeeded, too. One such event – never before tried; never since repeated – was the flight of Soyuz T-15. With a crew of just two cosmonauts, featuring a Soviet space station on its last legs, and […]

A bison got into hot water in the most literal sense in Yellowstone Park on June 21, 2025. The fatal error was witnessed by visitors to the park who saw it stumble into a shallow area before disappearing into deeper water. These springs are so difficult to navigate safely that the decision has been made […]

The US Department of Defense has acknowledged that climate change is one of the biggest threats to global security currently facing the world. In a twist of irony, the biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions of any institution on Earth is, uh, their military. Between 2010 to 2019, the US armed forces pumped out 636 […]

We’ve all been there – playing a game of “Chubby Bunny” only to find that actually, you can’t quite fit as many marshmallows in your mouth as you thought. A common European adder found itself in a similar situation on a Danish island, where it was filmed trying – and failing – to eat a […]

Spacecraft are not like the starships you see in movies. There is no endless supply of dilithium or hypermatter that lets you travel however long you want. Fuel is scarce, and you are bound by orbital mechanics. Still, we are pretty clever at traveling to space and have sent probes to many worlds, and even […]

According to the influential medical journal, The Lancet, President Trump’s decision to cut the majority of US funding for foreign humanitarian aid could result in over 14 million additional deaths by 2030. Many of those at risk of excess premature deaths would be children, the report warns. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is […]

Among the breathless heights of the Tibetan Plateau, a fascinating hybrid animal is commonly seen lugging backpacks and showing off its horns. Its name is the dzo, or dzomo; the product of interspecies romping between a yak and a cow. The yak-cattle hybrids are known as “dzo” if they’re male and “dzomo” if they’re female. […]

In 2019, researchers with the XENON Collaboration saw something unexpected. The device is designed to find evidence of the elusive dark matter, a hypothetical substance that is believed (with good reason) to exist everywhere. Instead, it saw something weird happening to the xenon in the device. One of the atoms decayed. This was a surprise […]

Take a weeble, run it through a Minecraft filter, build it almost entirely of open air, and what have you got? It’s called a Bille, and as a monostable tetrahedron – that is, a four-sided shape that will always come to rest on the same side, no matter how it’s tossed or thrown around – […]

One of the most divisive debates in modern neuroscience has finally been resolved by a new study showing that our brains continue to form new neurons throughout our lives. Until now, scientists had been split over whether this process – known as neurogenesis – stops after childhood, yet the new research suggests that new brain […]

Earlier this year, US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr made a controversial suggestion as to how to tackle the problem of H5N1 bird flu: consider letting it run through poultry farms. Multiple experts criticized the idea – but where do they stand nearly four months later, with bird flu having continued to spread in […]

Other than at a research station or occasional expedition, humans have never settled in Antarctica. While the evidence suggests the continent was once home to rainforests, swamps, and dinosaurs, by the time ancient humans made their way out of Africa, it was too cold and remote to support human habitation without modern equipment. There are […]

The Alaskan wilderness may soon be on the menu for fossil fuel giants. The Trump administration’s plan to roll back Biden-era federal protections across millions of acres in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve has taken a step forward, setting the stage to open this fragile landscape to oil and gas extraction. On July 1, the US […]

A breakthrough gene therapy has helped restore hearing in both children and adults with a genetic form of deafness or severe hearing impairment, a new study reports. Improvements in hearing were notable just one month after a single injection for the majority of patients, with all individuals experiencing considerable enhancement within six months. The therapy, […]

In 1963, a man in Turkey’s Nevşehir Province broke through a basement wall and uncovered a massive underground city. The man (not named in reports from the time) sledgehammered his wall and found a tunnel behind it, and beyond that, more tunnels. Exploration would later reveal it was an underground city up to 18 stories deep, complete with […]

The pitter patter of little penguin feet can now be heard at Chester Zoo in the UK, after it recently welcomed 10 adorable Humboldt penguin chicks – one of whom is being raised by a same-sex couple. Dynamic duo Scampi and Flounder (we told you, great names abound in this colony) were signed up for […]