Deborah Bloomfield

Last week, as is its wont, Southern California experienced an earthquake. Rated a magnitude 5.2 by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the quake was strong enough to unnerve, but not so bad as to result in much damage. But that didn’t stop one particular group of residents from mounting an emergency defense.  “Elephants have […]

The Trump administration recently debuted a new look for the official COVID-19 page on the White House website. The headline, complete with superimposed full-body photo of POTUS himself, loudly trumpets the so-called lab leak theory as “the true origins of COVID-19”. However, there is no consensus on the origins of COVID-19 as yet, and framing […]

More than 10,000 years ago, a group of Indigenous Americans with close genetic ties to the mysterious Clovis people buried a member of their tribe in a cavern in Nevada that we now call Spirit Cave. Against all odds, the mummified remains of this prehistoric man eventually helped to settle a legal and cultural dispute […]

The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched ACES, or the Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space, to the International Space Station (ISS). This project will measure time with a precision never reached before in space. The goal is to use this cutting-edge tech in both testing established theories and looking at what might exist behind them. […]

The general public are showing “ignorance and apathy” towards the threat of bird flu, say the authors of a new editorial, based on a survey they conducted of US residents. It found that many were unaware of or unwilling to take simple precautions that might decrease their risk of exposure to the virus. “These attitudes […]

Paleontologists are being forced to compete with rich collectors for access to dinosaur skeletons. When it comes to T. rexes in particular, the outcome is predictable, and science is suffering, a new study reveals. Science has always had an awkward relationship with extreme wealth. For centuries, progress relied on those with enough inherited wealth to […]

It isn’t just humans that have a taste for alcohol. Chimpanzees will search around in the jungle and hunt for fermented fruit, seemingly wanting to catch a buzz from the psychoactive effects of ethanol. In fact, new evidence suggests that our great ape cousins might also use alcohol as a social lubricant, just like Homo […]

If you’re interested in space and have spent any time online over the last few days, you may have seen a claim that there will be an unusual(ish) astronomical event this week, as a “triple conjunction” will turn the Moon into a pleasing smiley face in the sky. According to various posts, on the morning […]

A US national marine monument found in the middle of the Pacific Ocean has recently lost one of its key federal protections, after an executive order from President Donald Trump opened up parts of the monument to commercial fishing. One of the largest marine protected areas in the world, the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National […]

Monarchs have donned regnal names after having ascended to their thrones since ancient times. When it comes to Popes, this is a standard and important practice, and the name chosen has a lot of symbolism from honoring deceased popes to setting one’s own pontificate. But it has not always been like this. Getting elected to […]

NASA astronaut and keen astrophotographer Don Pettit returned to Earth on his 70th birthday on Sunday, April 21, completing a 220-day stint on the International Space Station (ISS). While on board, he and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner orbited the Earth 3,520 times, traveling 150.2 million kilometers (93.3 million miles) since they docked […]

A genomic analysis of roses has shown the ancestral rose was not red, white, or pink but yellow, which would have proven deeply frustrating to those in search of a rhyme. The work provides a description of the ancestral rose, including the number of petals. The scientists responsible for this discovery expect it will make […]

Imagine you’re living in a time when tourist resorts are dotted around the Solar System. You take a job promoting some of these resorts and are looking for a selling point. Everyone’s talked about the view of Saturn’s rings from one of its moons so much that it’s time for some new pitch. Which planet’s […]

If we were to rewind the clock back 4.5 billion years, our planet would be massively different. And seeing Earth from space, you’d notice a glaring omission: the Moon would not be there. Its arrival will come only after a Mars-like body ends up hitting our planet. This cataclysmic event changed our planet and threw […]

Quantum entanglement comes in a new form, one that could be used to make quantum information technology smaller, once it becomes practical outside the laboratory. The work relies on the fact that when photons are restricted to spaces smaller than their wavelengths two of their properties merge into one. Quantum entanglement links the destinies of […]

Astronomers think there could be as many as 100 million black holes in our galaxy, most with a similar mass to our Sun, but they are not that easy to find. With no light able to escape them, black holes are usually detected when they are eating, since their feeding frenzies emit a lot of […]

As the only surviving members of the Hominini tribe, us Homo sapiens have the important responsibility of piecing together our family tree, documenting all those extinct human species upon whose hairy shoulders we stand. Yet the more fossils we discover, the messier the picture seems to get, and the harder it becomes to figure out […]

This week, we visited the How To Fix Our Broken Planet exhibit at the Natural History Museum, London, to discuss how whale earwax is spilling the ocean’s secrets. RFK Jr has claimed that we will “know” the cause of autism by September, a statement that science says is very unlikely, the world’s oldest analog computer […]

It would be incredibly useful if humans (just like sharks and elephants) could continuously grow new teeth throughout their lifetime, replacing those lost to disease, neglect, and bar fights. This is the fundamental idea that’s inspiring scientists to explore the prospect of lab-grown teeth.  In a new study, scientists at King’s College London and Imperial […]

When Mount St Helens erupted in 1980, the resulting lava, ash, and debris turned the landscape barren for miles around. It was clear the land would take a long time to recover from the eruption. But one team of scientists had an idea about how they could help speed up the process: sending a few […]