Deborah Bloomfield

A new material that could dramatically reduce the amount of lithium used in batteries has been identified by artificial intelligence (AI). Discoveries like this would have taken years in times gone by, but sky-rocketing computer power now means they can be found in days. The new material was recently sniffed out during a joint venture […]

It’s now legal for authorities in the Netherlands to shoot wolves with paintball guns, after a court ruling on Wednesday deemed it an appropriate measure to deal with “a serious threat to public safety”. The move comes after wolves in Hoge Veluwe National Park, in the Gelderland province of the country, became increasingly less fearful […]

A new COVID-19 variant, JN.1, has taken the title of the most prevalent variant of the virus in the US, and also worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “JN.1 remains the most widely circulating variant of SARS-CoV-2 in the United States and globally,” states their latest report. In fact, as […]

Earlier this week, for only the eighth time ever, an asteroid that actually came with a rare 95-minute warning exploded in the sky over Germany and the hunt began for any potential pieces of meteorite that survived burning up in the atmosphere and fell to Earth. Now, researchers think they have found them.  Fragments of […]

Color-changing cars have suddenly sped into reality and could soon be making their way to a highway near you. So, who’s developing this dazzling technology? How does it work? And what hurdles are there to overcome? How do color changing cars work? The first color-changing car to be revealed to the public was BMW’s iX […]

A sample of reports related to extraterrestrial intelligence will give you two things: pseudoscientific accounts that aliens have visited Earth based on little to no evidence, and scientific searches with no sign of progress. It’s easy therefore to consign the idea of aliens to, if not quite the same folder as fairies, at least “hobbits” […]

A species of fungus that has decimated bat populations around the world has been detected in the intestines of the famous mummy known as Ötzi. Discovered in 1991 in the mountains bordering Italy and Austria, the so-called Iceman is believed to have lived around 5,200 years ago and is the oldest natural mummy ever found […]

Human remains that are over 2,000 to 2,500 years old have been recovered by archaeologists within the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). The discovery, what is essentially a new “bog body”, was made in peatland at an excavation site in Bellaghy in October 2023. At the time, police were made aware that human bones […]

This week NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter took its final flight, a newly discovered astronomical object is either the heaviest known neutron star or the lightest black hole, and a new gene therapy enables an 11-year-old boy to hear for the first time. Finally, we investigate the history behind BMI, and why it is not a […]

Swab, swirl, drop – then pray there’s only one line. Nearly four long years after COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic, many of us are familiar with the routine of lateral flow tests (LFTs) for the virus. But that time has also seen new variants pop up, including JN.1, which is now the most prevalent […]

One of the things we first learn about the animal kingdom is the difference between warm and cold-blooded animals. While reptiles bask in the sun to get warm, mammals – including those in the sea – must eat regularly to gain the energy needed to sustain a constant internal temperature. However, one mammal, trapped on a resource-poor Mediterranean […]

A single burst of light is precisely aimed at a tiny drone flying at breakneck speed far in the distance. Instants later, the deactivated drone crashes into the sea. Not a sound made, no human casualties, no messy explosions. A lethal, multimillion-dollar drone cleanly taken out by a shot that cost less than a good […]

Job-hunting is never fun, and even just the thought of updating your resume can fill you with dread. But what if we told you there’s a way to hack your next interview, to strike that delicate balance of showing off your skills without sounding like an arrogant jerk? Well, luckily for you, psychologists might just […]

In the latest series of True Detective, True Detective: Night Country, a team of researchers go missing in the Alaskan Arctic and are later found frozen together in a horrifying human “corpsicle”. The series contains spooky parallels to real life, and sparks some interesting questions around human cryogenics. In an interview with Vanity Fair, director and […]

A group of potty-mouthed parrots living at a British zoo are to be sworn into a larger flock in an attempt to teach them some manners. The eight African greys have become a star attraction at the Lincolnshire Wildlife Park for their tendency to turn the air blue, yet zookeepers have now seemingly had enough […]

While T. rex and other large ancient predators had the advantage of size and frankly enormous teeth when it came to intimidating their prey, smaller dinosaurs didn’t have quite the same arsenal of claws and fangs to rely on. Instead, a new paper has suggested that to source their prey, these small feathered dinos used […]

When the doomed submersible the Titan imploded as the crew attempted to explore the wreck of the Titanic in June 2023, people began asking a lot of questions about implosions, including why the Titanic itself didn’t implode despite being at a lower depth. One such question, asked a number of times over the last year, […]

Superconductive materials can transmit electricity without resistance, making them fundamental for advanced and efficient technologies. The current drawback is that this property is only obtained below a certain temperature, often pretty close to absolute zero. Even high-temperature superconductors remain below freezing – but scientists are hunting for the material that would be superconductive at room […]

Charged molecules do not form a boundary layer between saltwater and air as previously thought, new research reveals. Indeed, they are depleted there relative to their abundance in the liquid as a whole. Instead, at a depth of a few molecule’s diameters an ion-enrichment layer lurks, like some mythical beast waiting to surprise. The discovery […]