Deborah Bloomfield

The only known filmed interview with Georges Lemaître, the Catholic priest and physicist who originally proposed the Big Bang theory back in 1931, has finally been rediscovered – nearly 60 years after it was originally aired on Belgian TV. “What a gem, this interview,” Thomas Hertog, cosmologist and professor of theoretical physics at KU Leuven, […]

Those with dreams of getting rich quick might be willing to try anything from necropants to Bitcoin but unlike the uncertain world of Internet investments, gold famously holds its value. Unfortunately just because you find the biggest nugget in history does not mean you will be set for life. Even today if you pan for […]

A new type of ice is changing our understanding of water, as scientists discovered a frozen structure that more closely mirrors the molecular arrangement of a liquid, despite being a solid. The new ice type is amorphous, to use a polite phrase, which essentially means the organization of its molecules is a mess. Something to […]

The sight of blood and gore can provoke a vastly different response from person to person – while some can binge-watch splatter films with glee, some people can’t bear the thought of the crimson life juice without fainting. Why, if we all (hopefully) have blood coursing through our bodies as we speak, is it such […]

With the radioactive capsule that recently went missing and was then found against all odds, Redditors have been sharing various stories of when people have not been so lucky, and had run-ins with radioactive materials. In one particularly distressing incident in Mexico City in 1962, a family came into prolonged exposure to a radioactive source, […]

Possibly the hardest part of being a good scientist is admitting when you’re wrong – particularly when you are very, very wrong. So full credit to Professor Gregory Retallack of the University of Oregon and team who published a paper that turned out to be wrong by a factor of more than a hundred million, […]

A Japanese zoo has solved the mystery of how a female gibbon in their care became pregnant while being kept alone in an enclosure. Before you get too carried away imagining a beautiful miracle, you should know that the answer was a glory hole. In February 2021, Momo gave birth, surprising her keepers at the […]

A mother in Brazil recently gave birth to a two-foot-tall baby weighing 16lb (7.3kg). Angerson Santos was born via caesarean section at Hospital Padre Colombo in Parintins, Amazonas State. Angerson eclipsed the heaviest baby girl on record, who was 15lb (6.8kg) when she was born in 2016, but neither come close to the heaviest baby […]

Netflix have unveiled how they plan to tackle account sharing: where people share their Netflix login details with somebody living outside of their home.  The streaming giant has planned to end password-sharing for some time, and has now updated its FAQ section, revealing how it is going to be policed. The firm, which allows sharing […]

Forty-five percent of male university students believe that they could locate the nubis on a diagram of the female reproductive system.  “The problem?” author and Vice reporter Sophia Smith Galer wrote on Twitter. “I made the nubis up.” Advertisement Smith Galer commissioned a piece of research with UK polling firm Savanta, ahead of the launch […]

A neutron star 11.400 light-years away is doomed to eventually collide with its giant companion. By the time it does, the giant will also be a neutron star, setting off an explosion that will seed the galaxy for thousands of light-years around with precious metals, known as a kilonova.  The makeup of the universe depends […]

A collaboration between the US government and military contractors have completed a milestone test of their Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC), achieving a blistering speed of Mach 5 and succeeding in all test objectives. The tests were designed to get more data on the hypersonic scramjet missile system that will form the next generation of […]

If you have one or have inspected one for long enough, you may have wondered what that seam-like structure of thicker skin is that runs from your penis, down through the center of your scrotum to your anus. “In adults and children, the penile and scrotal raphe vary in shape and thickness between individuals and […]

If you asked what’s the deepest trench on Earth, almost everyone would answer the Mariana Trench. They’d be right – at around 11,000 meters (36,000 feet), the Mariana Trench dwarfs any other oceanic trench out there. But if you asked “what is the deepest continental trench in the world?”, few would be able to answer. […]

A group of bioengineers may have solved the problem of grafting flat sheets of artificial skin onto awkward areas of the body by growing skin in complex, 3D shapes. Aptly termed “biological clothing”, the technique could make it possible to construct seamless 3D tissues that can be transplanted directly onto the body. Take the human […]

Almost a hundred years ago, a fossilized fish skull was pulled from a coal mine in Lancashire, England. However, neither the miners nor the paleontologists who initially studied the discovery realized the true value of the find. Now, a CT scan reveals a brain relic unmatched for any vertebrate of similar age, providing a record […]

While you might think panning for gold was left behind in the 1800s, you would be very much mistaken. Amateur gold panning trips, centers, and even social media groups can offer the would-be prospector the chance to hit rich and find some gold. But should you be so lucky as to find a nugget, do […]

Here are a few horrifying statistics that have come out of several studies: women are 73 percent more likely than men to be seriously injured in a frontal car crash, almost twice as likely to become trapped in the wreckage of a car crash, and 17 percent more likely to die in a car crash. […]

As early human tool use turned to weaponry, our ancient ancestors got creative with bones as projectiles. In Europe, bone points were used during the Upper Palaeolithic, and now the discovery of a projectile lodged in a mastodon’s rib cage has shown that in the Americas, bone points date back as far as 13,900 years […]

For Brits in the eighth and early ninth centuries, Viking raids were just part of life. There you’d be, hoeing your turnips, when along comes a rampaging horde to ransack the local monastery and steal the king’s daughter. It usually didn’t last long – they were smash and grabs rather than invasions. That is, until […]