Deborah Bloomfield

According to a new study, we may have been thinking about dolphins’ echolocation all wrong. Rather than using it to “see” the world around them, as in constructing a picture of their environment from the way sound bounces off objects, the animals may in fact be “feeling” their surroundings instead. Echolocation is the ability to […]

On July 1, the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope reported the discovery of A11pl3Z, an object whose orbit looked like it came from another star. Now we know that this is indeed the case. The interstellar object has been given the name 3I/ATLAS, and we now know it’s a comet. The object, […]

Living through just one US president might feel like it lasts forever – but imagine living through 40 of them. That’s an unlikely feat for us humans unless we somehow figure out how to live longer (or if we ended up with a string of presidents serving short terms), but it’s a reality for Jonathan […]

A remarkable collection of wooden tools dated to around 300,000 years ago has been discovered at an archaeological site in southwest China. Specially designed to harvest vegetation, the assemblage reveals how prehistoric hominids in this subtropical environment relied heavily on plants for their diet, while also highlighting the surprising technological skill of East Asian humans […]

If you were swimming through just the right part of the ocean as day turns to night, torch in hand, you might spot a great white shark with glowing eyes. It would be a striking sight, though possibly your last. That eerie glow reveals a fascinating feature in shark eyes, and it’s the same reason […]

In 2026, the most exclusive meal from a Michelin-starred chef will not be eaten anywhere on Earth. Instead, it will be consumed on board the International Space Station (ISS), when European astronaut Sophie Adenot brings on her epsilon mission the work of Anne-Sophie Pic, the world’s most Michelin-starred female chef. As a species, we have […]

An asteroid discovered last year and briefly thought to be a threat to Earth has a one-in-23 chance of hitting the Moon, according to NASA estimates based on JWST data. A new paper outlines how this could be a spectacular one-in-5,000-year event, potentially ejecting material towards Earth. Asteroid 2024 YR4 was first discovered on December […]

Studying life in the ocean is never without its challenges, while some species can be studied via drone, or by opportunistic citizen scientists, studying microscopic life presents even more problems. To really see coral and the symbiotic microalgae that live within them, scientists have developed a new microscope.  Called the Benthic Underwater Microscope Imaging PAM, […]

Something’s stirring in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) – and a strange “hole” of cold water in the North Atlantic may provide new clues about what’s up. But is the system on the brink of full-blown collapse, or will it keep churning on despite mounting pressure? The AMOC is “the conveyor belt of the […]

Figuring out the day length of Earth is more complicated than you might imagine. While on average a day is 24 hours long, throughout the year the planet’s rotation can speed up and slow down, with one of the biggest factors being the drag caused by the Moon as it gets closer and further away […]

A longstanding mystery surrounding the Vitruvian man – yes, that Vitruvian man – has a new solution. The weird part? It comes from inside your mouth. The Renaissance man You know the Vitruvian Man. He’s perhaps second only to the Mona Lisa in terms of iconic imagery in Western history: a notebook sketch of a […]

Scientists had high hopes for the sample of asteroid Ryugu collected by the Japanese Hayabusa-2 probe. The actual findings have surpassed those expectations, and the latest one adds to the extraordinary body of knowledge: researchers have found a mineral on Ryugu that shouldn’t be there. The mineral is called djerfisherite, and it has been found […]

While climate change, species extinctions, and increasing carbon dioxide levels might feel like media buzzwords at this point, they all remain very real threats to biodiversity across the globe, and by extension, the future of our planet. Some have even argued that these are warning signs that we are living through a sixth mass extinction. […]

For years, Steven Kilburn had felt uneasy when driving a particular stretch of road between Pikesville, Baltimore, and Frederick, Maryland. It was an uncanny feeling, not based in any solid memory; just an overwhelming sense of wrongness, like he was being watched.  According to Steven, the feeling first started one night while driving home from […]

“I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.” So sang Lee Greenwood in 1984, and it’s fair to say it was a sentiment shared by almost everyone in the nation. Not so anymore, however – as data from a new Gallup poll has shown a record low of only 58 […]

If you go down to the beach for a spot of rock pooling this summer, just be mindful of exactly which species you might come across. One person in Japan had a very lucky escape when she picked up a cone snail, not realizing that the creature inside the pretty shell had the power to […]

Using the oldest DNA sample from Egypt to date, researchers have extracted and sequenced the entire genome of an adult male who lived in the region between 4,500 to 4,800 years ago, and in doing so have revealed insights into the possible movements of his ancestors. This is not the first time such an effort […]

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has begun its first-ever collisions of oxygen ions, in the latest attempt to understand the early universe. The LHC is largely famous for its proton-proton collisions, which ultimately led to the discovery of the Higgs boson and the Higgs field responsible for giving mass to elementary particles such as electrons, […]

Grease is the word – at least, it was for Neanderthals living in what is now Germany some 125,000 years ago. New research shows that our extinct cousins collected huge quantities of animal bones at a dedicated “fat factory”, where they intensively processed them to extract bone grease, adding vital nutrients to their diet. It […]

On July 3, 2025, at 3:54 pm ET, the Earth will officially reach its furthest point from the Sun for this year. This is called aphelion. Our planet’s orbit is very close to a circle, but it is not a circle. It’s an ellipse, so the Earth gets closer and farther from the Sun as […]