Deborah Bloomfield

Baleen whales have paired blowholes, while toothed whales have just one. This has led scientists to suspect that baleen whales, like humans and many land creatures, can use subtle differences in the strength of a scent to detect the direction it’s coming from. It’s not an easy hypothesis to test, however, given that the largest […]

Observing the most energetic events in the universe is not an easy task. They are so energetic that they are excellent at penetrating matter, so the traditional approach of telescopes – mirrors and detectors – has to be adapted to catch the powerful light of X-rays and gamma rays. Now, astronomers have revealed the most […]

Down in the Três Lagoas municipality of Mato Grosso do Sul state, in Brazil lives a very special individual. Alvinho is the world’s only known living albino anteater and he is just as fascinating as he is downright adorable.  Alvin was found on a ranch clinging to his mother’s back in 2022. He is a […]

The world’s largest cruise ship – the Icon of the Seas – set sail from Miami on its maiden voyage last weekend. Not everyone was celebrating the departure of the all-singing, all-dancing colossus, however. Although it’s been pitched as a climate-friendly vessel, numerous environmental groups have raised concerns about the huge amounts of methane that […]

A new vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, has been developed using an innovative DNA delivery system. Tests in mice have shown promising results so far, and the scientists behind it hope this could be the answer to developing vaccines against some of our trickier viral customers, such as flu and HIV. The vaccine […]

As we age, the ways that we sense the world around us start to change with our bodies. Our senses of taste, smell, hearing, and sight become less sharp. Now, new research has shown that even our perception of color dims over time. Researchers from University College London (UCL) recently compared how the pupils of […]

Hybrid hogs — a genetic blend of wild boars and domestic pigs — rocked up in Canadian farms around 30 years ago in an attempt to spice up the country’s livestock produce. Over the past three decades, countless numbers of them have escaped and bred like crazy, earning themselves the title of the most prolific […]

Using a new analytical technique, scientists have been able to study brain images from more than 6,000 children to identify connectivity patterns that are common to people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Most of our behaviors are controlled by coordinated communication between neurons in different areas of the brain. Neuroscientists can get a sense of how […]

The direction of time seems pretty obvious; it goes from the past towards the future, though the reason why that is the case is unclear. This arrow of time has been linked to entropy, the measurement of the disorder of a system. Over time, in an isolated system, entropy always increases. This process is irreversible. […]

It’s hard not to love octopuses – they’re bizarre-looking, hugely intelligent, and get up to plenty of shenanigans. That makes what happens to them all the more tragic; after the females of some octopus species lay their eggs, they stop eating, slowly withering away until they die. The trigger of this process, known as the […]

A study of almost a billion stars in infrared light has revealed many currently invisible to us at other wavelengths, including new categories of rapidly changing objects. One of these, dubbed “old smokers”, are aging red giants that can suddenly release clouds of dark material that prevent light from escaping. Dust blocks our view of […]

The speed of light in a vacuum is the same wherever you measure it in the universe, according to Einstein’s special theory of relativity. Whether you’re sat on Earth, Mars, or Zoozve, if you measure the speed of light you’ll find it chugging along at a cool 299,792,458 meters per second (983,571,056.43 feet per second), […]

Forget nuts and bolts. Japanese scientists have created a two-legged “biohybrid robot” that combines living biological muscle with an artificial skeleton.  To create the robot, researchers at the University of Tokyo grew skeletal muscle in molds to create strips. They then fashioned the lightweight skeleton out of styrene board, a flexible silicone-based body, acrylic resin […]

Archaeologists from the Université Bordeaux have constructed a continent-wide database of personal ornaments worn by Europeans 34,000-24,000 years ago, a period known as the Gravettian technocomplex. Combining the locations at which these were found with genetic data revealed nine distinct cultures. “We demonstrate that Gravettian ornament variability cannot be explained solely by isolation-by-distance,” the authors […]

Spiral galaxies, like our own Milky Way, are fairly common in the Universe. And – without showing too much favoritism – they are also insanely pretty. New observations from JWST on relatively near galaxies have provided even more insights into the spiral structures in images that are beyond spectacular. The observations were conducted as part […]

When it comes to the information that we’re faced with every day – be that scientific or otherwise – it’s not always easy to know what information to trust, and which sources are reliable. Fortunately, some of the ideas and thought processes that underpin the scientific method can actually help us to navigate the news, […]

We’re often told to pay attention to the color of our urine as an indicator of factors like dehydration – but as you gaze into the toilet bowl, have you ever wondered how exactly pee gets its yellow color? A recent study has answered that long-standing question, pointing to a newly discovered enzyme produced by […]

A video showing the Menkaure pyramid at Giza in Egypt undergoing renovations has sparked criticism online, with people comparing it to straightening the Leaning Tower of Piza. The project, aimed at restoring the pyramid’s outer casing to the state it was originally built in, began work earlier this week. The Menkaure pyramid is located next […]

On July 2, 1937, while attempting to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, Amelia Earhart’s plane disappeared somewhere between Lae, New Guinea, her last known location, and Howland Island where she was headed next. And thus started a mystery that has never properly been answered. Despite an initial 16-day search involving 66 aircraft […]

For the first time in the history of robot dogs and space travel, a four-legged robodog has been controlled by a human outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. Only robots with wheels have been controlled remotely from space before now.  The “Surface Avatar” test carried out in January saw European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Marcus Wandt […]