Deborah Bloomfield

In 2008, humans on Earth sent a message to exoplanet Gliese 581c. The message will arrive at the planet in 2029. If (an “if” of astronomical proportions) there were aliens there, the earliest we could expect a reply is 2050. Discovered in 2007, Gliese 581c is the second planet discovered in the Gliese 581 system, […]

Robotic surgery has reached a new milestone after a robot successfully – and autonomously – performed gallbladder removal operations while listening and responding to voice commands. Just as a human trainee would be directed by a senior surgeon, the robot was able to act on verbal instructions after having been initially trained on videos of […]

Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus) don’t believe in waste, digesting not only the muscle and fat of their prey, but the bones as well. Where other predators might eat the flesh off the bone, or regurgitate up the parts they can’t digest, these snakes use the whole creature – and now we know how. The fact […]

Alchemists, you’ll be overjoyed to hear that you can create gold in a lab. All you need is a nuclear reaction, a particle accelerator, or the blast of a supernova. Most of the gold on Earth came from outer space. When massive stars exploded in supernovae or neutron stars collided, they unleashed staggering energy that […]

Scientists have got their hands on the oldest animal proteins yet, extracted from 18-million-year-old fossilized mammal teeth in East Africa, pushing the record back by an astonishing 14 to 15 million years. Even older partial fragments of proteins were obtained in North America from a rhino tooth dating up to 24 million years old, offering […]

Six of the US’s most prominent medical organizations and an unnamed physician have teamed up to sue health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, as well as the heads of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and National Institutes of Health (NIH), over what’s been called a “baseless and […]

The eruptions of volcanoes in Chile have been influenced by the expansion and contraction of the glaciers above them, a major geology conference has been told. Although the findings indicate southern Chile can expect more volcanic activity in future, the more important side of the research is the implications it holds for Antarctica. Decades of […]

For roughly the first 100 million years of the universe, there were no stars. This is what we call the “Cosmic Dark Ages”. We have never probed this time of the universe as it is very difficult to do so. Without light from stars to trace, astronomers have to use radio waves to measure a […]

Magic mushrooms have been extensively studied for their potential mental health benefits, yet new research suggests that the psychoactive compound in these trippy fungi may also have powerful anti-aging properties. Using cultured human cells and live mice, the study authors showed that psilocybin appears to significantly slow down cellular aging while also keeping older rodents […]

Sharks have teeth on their skin. It’s a weird idea to get your head around, we know, but that’s not even the big news. New research has revealed that the pulp found within the adapted gnashers on sharks’ skin may enable them to change color. The shark in question is the blue shark (Prionace glauca), […]

Put down your beach volleyball and take off your Crocs, summer fans, as this year your favorite season will be a little bit shorter than usual. As reliable as the seasons are, they do not always last the same amount of time. The seasons, as you are probably aware, are the result of the Earth’s […]

At least, that’s the finding of a new study from researchers at the UK’s Aberystwyth University. “Telling a joke may seem simple,” said Gil Greengross, a lecturer in Aberystwyth’s Psychology Department and lead author of the study, in a statement this week, “but having a good sense of humour is a complex and unique trait influenced […]

Interstellar visitor Comet 3I/ATLAS was discovered just a week ago and ever since, astronomers across the world have been hard at work following it, trying to gather as much data on it as possible. The initial data on this object already suggested marked differences between it and the previous two known interstellar objects that crossed […]

OpenAI’s ChatGPT, though it still continues to make up plausible-sounding nonsense when it is fresh out of factual information, remains an impressive tool. Despite concerns over copyright, the model (and others) has impressed users with its ability to generate roughly the text you are looking for (albeit, again, likely with a few factual errors). Researchers […]

We’re right in the peak of tick season, but if you’ve been feeling like this year has been worse than usual, you’re not wrong. Parts of the US are seeing record numbers of emergency room visits for tick bites, so it’s a good time to remind ourselves about the risks of tickborne diseases and how […]

When Egyptologists excavated the site of Deir el-Bahri in Luxor in the 1920s, they were shocked to find that the statues of Hatshepsut, a revered female pharaoh, were defaced and shattered into pieces. This was no accident, nor an act of mindless vandalism; it was as if someone were trying to actively remove her image […]

Neanderthals living in what is now Belgium made a kind of prehistoric Swiss Army Knife from the bones of a cave lion some 130,000 years ago. Found in the hugely significant Scladina Cave – which once yielded the remains of a well-preserved Neanderthal child – the ancient utensils provide the first evidence that our extinct […]

Even arachnophobes must reluctantly admit that jumping spiders are the cutest of all arachnids. With their fuzzy bodies and puppy-dog eyes, they look less like something from a horror film and more like a cutesy character from a Pixar movie. Beyond their charming appearance, there’s also some fascinating science behind this highly successful family of […]

Getting accurate information on animal species can be quite a challenge, especially when they live deep within the sea. One of those animals is the Pacific sleeper shark (Somniosus pacificus), which, despite its widespread distribution, remains quite elusive – so it was a surprise to scientists carrying out an experiment in the South China Sea […]

Humans once lived among enormous, wingless birds in New Zealand, but within a few hundred years of our species arrival, they were wiped out. Now, Colossal Biosciences has announced its plans to functionally de-extinct the moa, building complete genomes for all nine species as part of a Māori-led initiative. “When humans first arrived on Aotearoa […]