Deborah Bloomfield

A 450-million-year-old extinct marine organism is back not with a bang, but more of a gentle thud, after researchers recreated it in the form of a soft robotic replica. It’s hoped that it’s the first of many such robots that could be used to give us a better understanding of how extinct organisms moved, and […]

Synthetic DNA might sound like the stuff of science fiction, but it’s fast becoming a reality. Researchers have created a yeast cell with a genome that’s over 50 percent synthetic, including the world’s first entirely synthetic chromosome. Scientists have previously produced synthetic bacterial and viral genomes, but the next step up was eukaryotic – a […]

There is a type of bamboo known as henon, Phyllostachys nigra var. henonis, which only flowers once every 120 years. Though this may seem like a long time to put off flowering, the bamboo dies shortly afterward, so let’s not be so quick to judge. With a gap of over a century between flowering, botanists […]

For the last five decades, researchers have suspected that our planet’s major geological events occur in a cycle – but couldn’t get the data to properly back it up. However, with technology coming on in leaps and bounds, geologists have since been able to show that Earth does in fact have a beating geological heart, […]

We all have a pretty good idea of what “bad weather” means: wind, rain, sub-zero temperatures, that kind of thing – but where would you go to find the worst weather on Earth?  It sounds like an impossible question. After all, how do you quantify “bad”? Windiest, yes; highest rainfall, sure; most toes turned into […]

Humanity may have conducted its first-ever fight in space last week after Israel claims its air force shot down an “aerial threat” outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) claims that it shot down a surface-to-surface missile allegedly fired from Yemen on October 30 using its Arrow system. According to the Telegraph, […]

Thanks to an experimental spinal implant in his lower back, a man with Parkinson’s disease has experienced a drastic improvement in his ability to walk without falling. Marc Gauthier, a 63-year-old from Bordeaux in France, was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative condition over 20 years ago. The disease is characterized by uncontrollable movements and coordination problems, […]

Astronomers believe that it takes around 7 billion years (about half the age of the universe) to end up with a galaxy such as ours. So you can imagine their surprise when they observed ceers-2112, a galaxy with the same shape as the Milky Way, being well-ordered, and quite massive, just 2 billion years after […]

In 1905, the remains of mummified baboons were discovered in Egypt, sparking over a century of speculation as to how they came to be so far from home. Now, in a study that marries biology and history to answer questions surrounding the origin of these ancient interlopers, we finally have some idea of where they […]

Lost species, or those only observed from a few encounters, are often presumed to have gone extinct or exist in extremely limited numbers. One of the reasons it’s hard to be sure is that most of these species live in remote, inaccessible areas and are elusive, coming out only at night or hiding away in […]

The world’s first eyeball and partial-face transplant has been declared a success. Although doctors are still uncertain whether he will regain his vision, the patient believes the groundbreaking surgery has given him a “second chance at life”.  Aaron James, a 46-year-old military veteran from Arkansas, suffered from a 7,200-volt electric shock while working as a […]

On November 12, 1933, one man allegedly photographed something strange and mysterious lurking in Loch Ness, Scotland. It has now been 90 years since this famous photo appeared to the public, and the frenzy it generated is very much still alive.  Creating a legend It was apparently a sunny Sunday afternoon in the Scottish Highlands […]

In a new study, people with alcohol use disorder (AUD) have been observed to regain thickness in their cortex, the outermost layer of brain tissue that can become thinner in people with AUD, over an extended period of attempted abstinence from alcohol. The study participants, who had experienced AUD for years, had cortical thickness statistically […]

The cause of Tutankhamun’s untimely death in his late teens remains one of the great archaeological mysteries, although there is evidence to suggest that the Boy King may have met his end after falling from his chariot. Speculating that the ancient Pharaoh could hold the distinction of being Africa’s first traffic fatality, the authors of […]

Researchers have been able to trap electrons in a three-dimensional crystal for the first time, a breakthrough that allowed them to start toying with the quantum effects that the electrons produce when in a state called an electronic “flat band” – and that includes superconductivity. An electron moving through a 3D material would interact with […]

The Trace Gas Orbiter mission, a European Space Agency craft, has reported the first detection of visible light of nightglow on Mars. This effect, well known on Earth and photographed by many astronauts, was expected to also happen on Mars. But it had never been seen before in visible light. The nightglow looks similar but […]

In the forests of West Africa, chimpanzees are engaging in a never-before-seen behavior. To spy on rival gangs, chimps will tactically move to higher ground to get a better view and gather information. They will then use this “reconnaissance intel” to decide their next steps. This is an age-old tactic of human warfare, but a […]

How would you feel about a radically different calendar, one that organized the year into 13 months, each with exactly 28 days? Well, this nearly became a reality for the world following the First World War, but people were so unhappy about it that it never came about. Messing with time Fiddling with calendars is […]