Deborah Bloomfield

When searching for alien civilizations in the universe, we often look at the development of life on Earth for clues as to what to look for.  It makes sense to do so. We have only found intelligent life (ish) life on this planet, so it’s sensible to look for the sort of signatures emitted from […]

Maritime archaeologists have recently returned to the site of a sunken medieval shipwreck to carry out a new geophysical survey, hoping to uncover more of the vessel’s long-lost story. Known as the Avaldsnes ship, the 600-year-old wreck is found in a shallow body of water less than 1 meter (3 feet) deep in an intertidal […]

In 2010, researchers at Google estimated that a total of 1,022,000 words existed in the English language and that the number grows by around 8,500 every single year. It all seems a bit much. Could it be possible to communicate effectively with, let’s say, just 120 or so words? That’s the idea behind Toki Pona, […]

A planet with a radius 55 percent larger than Earth’s has been found in the habitable zone of a relatively nearby star. A second planet, closer in size to the Earth, is suspected to also lie within the habitable zone of the same system – which would make it the smallest habitable zone planet yet […]

Brace yourself folks this is not good news. King and gentoo penguins on islands between the Antarctic mainland and South America have been found dead from bird flu for the first time. Bird flu has been spreading across the globe, even causing the death of a polar bear in Alaska, and has now been reported […]

There are plenty of conspiracy theories available on the internet. If you want to believe the world is flat and that if you walk off the edge you simply teleport your way to the other side like Pac-Man, you’d better believe that there’s someone on the internet who will support you in your weirdly specific […]

The Yellow Emperor of China and the Scorpion King of Egypt are two elusive figures from the ancient past that inhabit the foggy world between myth and history. Is it possible that they are the same person? It’s a sensational theory, but one which a Chinese researcher believes they have proof for.  In a new […]

Scientists at the University of Córdoba in Spain have come up with a way of incorporating hemoglobin – the key component of red blood cells – into a battery, creating a prototype that kept working for between 20 and 30 days. Zinc-air batteries are one of the most sustainable alternatives we have to the ubiquitous […]

Supermassive black holes can certainly be messy eaters. They are not exactly plugholes that devour every last drop. In fact, they are more like toddlers. Sure, they might be gluttons and try to get a lot of food in their mouths, but they will also make a mess. So imagine finding a mess even when […]

Around 9,000 years ago, during what’s known as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, the ancient inhabitants of the Middle East developed the curious custom of plastering the skulls of their dead. Often, these coated crania were then decorated with colorful pigments and other adornments to make them appear more lifelike, although historians are unsure exactly why and […]

The test results are in and it’s not a clean bill of health for the US. Statistics released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday have revealed what’s been described as an “out of control” epidemic of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the country. The findings come from the CDC’s most […]

The beauty of Northern and Southern Lights is undeniable, and it is always wonderful when they are caught doing something weird – stunning peculiar behavior that hints at the cosmic forces that make these events possible. Have you ever seen the aurorae do little curls? Well, now is your chance. Taken by astrophotographer Jeff Dai, […]

One of the last people to live inside an “iron lung” has recently joined TikTok and uses the platform to share fascinating insights into his very unique story.  Paul Alexander contracted polio at the age of six in 1952 when an outbreak swept through his hometown of Dallas, Texas. Polio is an infectious disease caused […]

Behold the X-ray sky as you have never seen it before. The space telescope eROSITA has been observing the sky for several years and researchers have now published the map of half of the sky. It is the largest map of high-energy sources ever created. The data was collected between December 2019 and June 2020 […]

In 1986 Venezuela, a peculiar, venom-esque goo began seeping from a busy highway connecting the Simón Bolívar International Airport and the capital city of Caracas. As quickly as it appeared, the mysterious goo, named La Mancha Negra or the black spot, began to spread, turning the highway into a motorist death trap. The black goo […]

The first continents emerged about 3.5 billion years ago, but geologists are unclear on the initial formation process. A new explanation attributes their rise to an association of three types of coarse-grained rocks, collectively called granitoids, that might look very familiar to someone with a recent home renovation. Once the Earth cooled and developed oceans, […]

Science’s understanding of a mysterious and rare disorder known as Alice in Wonderland syndrome just got a little bit better thanks to a study that mapped a brain circuit that seems to be involved in the condition. The research, which has been posted as a preprint and is yet to be peer-reviewed, identified a network […]

A potentially hazardous asteroid the size of a stadium is set to make a flyby of Earth tomorrow at a distance of around 2,850,000 kilometers (1,770,000 miles). Space rock fans can view a live stream of the asteroid, courtesy of the Virtual Telescope Project. Asteroid 2008 OS7, as the name suggests, was first seen during […]

Did Alzheimer’s ail the elderly in antiquity? With dementia cases on the rise in modern times, it’s an intriguing question and, thankfully, a new study has some answers. Dementia, of which Alzheimer’s is the most common type, is not a specific disease, but rather a term used to describe symptoms related to memory loss. Today, it […]

Periodical cicadas don’t emerge often – only once every 13 or 17 years, to be precise – but when they do they arrive in their millions, and even billions. It’s now accepted that this pattern of emergence helps them avoid falling in sync with any predators, but how do they know to emerge all at […]