Deborah Bloomfield

Over 60 years ago, a family in Mexico began to fall mysteriously ill. Fevers, fatigue, and strange symptoms swept through the household, but no one could explain why. The cause wasn’t in the water, nor in the food. It was a small metal capsule containing cobalt-60, a radioactive material, that had been sitting quietly in […]

Small, scarce, and shy, the white-bellied pangolin has one of the highest number of chromosomes among all mammals: a total of 114 chromosomes. However, this is just the beginning of these animals’ bizarre genetic quirks.  Pangolins are a family of small, scale-covered mammals that includes eight species, four of which live in Asia and four […]

Many people expect that the future of humanity will involve Mars. The Red Planet is close enough and not immediately deadly like Venus. That makes it a good enough candidate for future human exploration, and maybe even settling the place. But good enough doesn’t make it good. Unlike Milton’s Lucifer, we can not make a […]

From the early days of JWST’s scientific observations of the distant universe, scientists started noticing a population of curious objects. They are very red, extremely compact, and there are a lot of them. They were nicknamed “Little Red Dots,” and they are so distant that their light had to travel for at least 12 billion […]

Sea otters are surprising creatures. They’re athletic, intelligent, and actually incredibly scandalous with disturbingly precise diets (don’t be fooled by all that fluffy hand holding). Another surprise they’ve been keeping from you? Sometimes their bones and teeth are purple. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access […]

Who’s the true king of the carnivorans? Lions, tigers, or bears, perhaps? Turns out there’s something else the Tin Man should’ve been afraid of – well, at least if The Wizard of Oz took place a little closer to the sea. This fearsome animal? The southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina), also known as the largest […]

For hundreds of years, sailors have reported freak, gigantic waves hundreds of feet high, and seemingly appearing out of nowhere. Hundreds of leagues from land, or any other witnesses, they would swallow up ships whole, only rarely leaving a survivor or two to tell the tale.  But, well, sailors have said a lot of stuff […]

When Professor Bernal Rodríguez-Herrera at the University of Costa Rica received a phone call about some ugly bats in San Ramon, Costa Rica, he didn’t think much of it. “Most people think all bats are ugly, so I didn’t take the report very seriously at first,” he said. As it happened, what they had spotted […]

The Salmon River in Alaska winds for many kilometers through wild forest, tundra, and stunning mountain valleys. Once containing the purest water, sustaining fish and other wildlife, it’s now cloudy and orange from climate change and the thawing of permafrost. This change not only alters the landscape, but it’s also unleashing toxicity that threatens ecosystems, […]

We often think of heavy animals as fairly solid; the blue whale, African elephants, and rhinos all seem fairly substantial because of their sheer volume. However, there is one creature that swims in Earth’s oceans that has its own heavy title, and yet is mainly made up of soft, squishy parts. Meet the lion’s mane […]

An intruder has been detected in the Canadian Arctic for the first time, and it’s not good news for the health of our planet. The bay barnacle is a known invasive species that’s been making its unwelcome mark on European waters and the Pacific ocean, disrupting ecosystems as it spreads. There was a time we […]

Sometimes when you’re a professional, the tools used by regular folks just won’t do. Formula One racers have those games console-looking steering wheels; award-winning photographers depend on more than the lens on their smartphone; and housekeepers, maids, cleaners, janitors, and other professional tidier-uppers use microfiber cloths.  But what actually are these special towels, and why […]

This is the story of a stowaway rat, who hopped on a transatlantic flight, caused mass panic, had its travel plans rudely interrupted by a one-way trip to a scientific facility, and is now teaching the world a whole lot about global disease transmission. Sit back, relax, and let us tell you a tale.  In […]

Every year, for the last 17 years, the Royal Observatory of Greenwich has awarded the ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year, and we are stunned by the sheer amount of photographic talent and celestial beauty that can be combined in this selection of images. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign […]

Global warming is a tricksy beast. In some places, it’s transforming once-lush environments into barren deserts; in others, it’s doing essentially the opposite – albeit through an irony-fueled, monkey’s paw kind of interpretation of “re-green the Earth’s deserts”. Now, a new set of photos from NASA has laid bare a striking example of the latter […]

Researchers at The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) may have just cracked one of medicine’s biggest challenges: how to stop influenza in its tracks, no matter the strain. A carefully designed triple antibody cocktail protected mice from nearly every flu strain tested, including highly dangerous avian and swine variants. Current approved flu drugs target viral enzymes. Sounds good, […]

Analysis of a bear skull found at a Roman amphitheater east of Belgrade reveals that while the bear was brown, its fate was grizzly, probably dying from an infected wound. In the process, it provides the first direct confirmation of widespread accounts that bears and gladiators fought to the death for the Romans’ entertainment. The […]

Mine spiders have seen a surge in popularity recently as many are realizing for the first time that some of the planet’s most impressive arachnids live their whole lives in dark and remote places. While there isn’t just one genus of cave-dwelling arachnids, there’s a host of impressive spiders to be found in caves and […]

Compasses were the trusted companions of sailors, explorers, and travelers for centuries, offering a simple way to find north. A small magnetized needle is set on a tiny pivot, allowing it to move and align itself with the invisible force of Earth’s magnetic field. But this simple tool has a major flaw. In certain places […]

According to several surveys, a large number of people (66 percent, in one conducted on students) have experienced getting “blackout drunk”, where chunks of time are forgotten after consuming alcohol – yet this is a topic that, until relatively recently, we didn’t understand a lot about. One of the problems with finding out about the […]