Deborah Bloomfield

An animation of an asteroid’s close approach to Earth has attracted a lot of views over the last few days, largely because of just how close it appears.  The animation, shared by Facebook page Cosmoknowledge on Sunday, shows asteroid 99942 Apophis’s path, culminating in its closest approach on April 13, 2029. To be clear, there […]

Somebody on the Internet has asked a question that comes up from time to time: “How did the human race survive for thousands of years without vaccines?” Well, the answer, as has been explained to the poster in X’s (formerly known as Twitter) community note feature, is that the human race did survive without vaccines […]

Using little more than a tusk, scientists have pieced together the lifetime travels of a single woolly mammoth that wandered North America more than 14,000 years ago. Starting life in the western Yukon, the mammoth traveled hundreds of kilometers through northwestern Canada before arriving at her final resting place, an early human settlement in present-day […]

Astronomers have estimated the size and activity of a supermassive black hole discovered in one of the most distant galaxies we have ever seen. Because the speed of light is finite, looking farther into the universe is like looking farther back in time. The light from this galaxy comes from just 400 million years after […]

In many countries around the world, people are living longer – but is there a pattern to this? That was the question posed by a team of demographers and it turns out, the answer is yes. Despite some differences in how it reaches this point, life expectancy is increasing, and with it, the longevity gap […]

It’s time to meet The Hulk of the fish world. Well, sort of – one species of medaka fish (Oryzias celebensis), might not have been exposed to lethal levels of gamma radiation, but does change color when they get angry. And you won’t like them when they’re angry. Normally, this species of medaka fish is […]

Once upon a time, half a million people perhaps lived on a vast archipelago that stretched out of Australia’s north coast. Unfortunately, the prehistoric homeland was eventually lost to the ocean waves due to intense sea level rise that hit the globe some 14,000 years ago.  Scientists led by Griffith University have recently been studying […]

Some fish can walk, but the armored catfish goes one step further in wriggling its way across desert environments in search of resources. Wriggling is the wrong word, however, as scientists considered the mode of locomotion to be so unusual as deserving of its own word: reffling. The armored catfish reffles its way across land […]

Researchers have been able to achieve quantum coherence at room temperature – this is the ability of a quantum system to maintain a well-defined state without being affected by external disturbances. This breakthrough is an important step forward in the development of quantum computers. It is easier to work with them if you do not […]

Men are naturally better navigators than women, right? It’s a pervasive assumption that has become deeply ingrained in Western thinking. But it may not be completely true. According to a new and comprehensive study, there is good reason to doubt that any apparent difference between the wayfinding abilities of males and females is due to […]

“Ugh, nobody has any common sense these days!” We’ve probably all said it at one time or another, even though common sense is supposed to be this universal ability to know and understand something. A new study, however, suggests that there’s nothing universal about it at all – our sense of common sense may actually […]

A series of statements attributed to British astronomers and astronauts have sparked speculation the JWST has found evidence for alien life. Those quoted are respected names, but since at least one of them has been misquoted, there’s probably more smoke than fire. Even if something has been found, it’s almost certainly hints of little green […]

What did the galaxies in the early universe look like? Researchers now think they have a clearer idea, and like many of us in the Northern Hemisphere are battling with freezing temperatures and dreaming of summer. So, in their beach-themed analogy, galaxies at the edge of what we can see are close in shape to […]

Here’s a fun fact to annoy people with; depending on how pedantic you are as a person, you could call the Sun blue-green. In fact, you have NASA’s permission to do so. “So, the sun actually emits energy at all wavelengths from radio to gamma ray. But,” NASA explained ahead of the 2017 eclipse, “it […]

It’s almost four years since COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic. Although the state of emergency has now passed, and vaccines and treatment advances have helped turn the tide, the virus is very much still out there. The latest variant, JN.1, has brought with it some unexpected new symptoms – but how worried should we […]

After thousands of years of cohabiting with domesticated dogs, it’s surprising to think that we still don’t fully understand why our furry companions wag their tails. Hoping to finally crack this canine conundrum, the authors of a new opinion piece speculate that the behavior may have arisen to satisfy humans’ intrinsic sense of rhythm. While […]

Salmon is a great source of protein, omega-3 fatty acids, and various important nutrients – it also makes a great hat (if you happen to be an orca in the late 80s), but that’s neither here nor there. When buying it in the grocery store you have two options: wild caught or from the farm. […]

You may recognize Choriaster granulatus from such subreddits as r/mildlypenis, r/intentionallypenis, and r/oddlyarousing. The starfish is famous for its penis-like “arms” – but what you’re really looking at is a whole lot of head. C. granulatus, commonly known as the granulated sea star, is found across the Indo-Pacific. It enjoys warm waters and chilling on […]

When astronauts head to Mars, they will experience time dilation. That’s to be expected. In fact, your feet and your head experience time dilation, with your head aging ever so slightly faster than your feet. But how much time dilation will they experience (relative to Earth observers)? First off, let’s check we’re all on the […]

NASA’s Stardust mission to Comet Wild 2 has revealed its secrets very slowly. They’re finally coming together, however, and the results are showing that the outer Solar System in its early days was not the simple place previously thought. How one comet came to have dust from widely separated parts of the early Solar System […]