Deborah Bloomfield

The universe is flooded with billions of chemicals, each a tiny pinprick of potential. And we’ve only identified 1 percent of them. Scientists believe undiscovered chemical compounds could help remove greenhouse gases, or trigger a medical breakthrough much like penicillin did. But let’s just get this out there first: it’s not that chemists aren’t curious. […]

Weirdly enough, David Lynch got it right when he wrote the line, “The owls are not what they seem,” during a particularly odd moment in Twin Peaks. For much of history, and across the world, various people have seen owls as wholly contradictory creatures. In fact, as the zoologist Desmond Morris has argued, very few […]

“I knew there was a chance I could easily be killed by this whale,” whale scientist Nan Hauser can be heard saying in a 2021 interview with BBC Earth. Hauser was recollecting an unusual and shocking encounter between herself, a humpback whale, and a tiger shark. While it sounds like the cast of a “walks […]

Money makes the world go round but who in the world has the most of it? Back in 2021, there was a change at the top: The US was stripped of its title as the richest country in the world (by net worth), and China became the world’s wealthiest nation. The switch-up in the global […]

An extreme drought has seen river levels fall to record lows throughout parts of the Brazilian Amazon, exposing a series of pre-Hispanic rock carvings. Last seen over a decade ago when the region experienced a similar water shortage, the ancient engravings depict human faces and other forms, though it’s unclear who sculpted the artworks or […]

This week you can listen to the sound of Earth’s largest living organism, NASA is struggling to open the lid on its asteroid sample, and a lost continent has been located 155 million years after it broke from Australia. Finally, we look at the only known physical remains of a first-generation human hybrid. Subscribe to […]

When we hear “Aegean Sea”, it often conjures up images of Ancient Greece, relaxing beach holidays, or sparkling blue waters. But underneath the glittery surface lies Kolumbo, an active submarine volcano that in 1650, erupted and triggered a destructive tsunami. Thanks to modern imaging technology, researchers have now successfully reconstructed the event, finally solving the […]

Climate change appears to have driven a large-scale hybridization event in the Arctic between two subspecies of puffins. In the wake of warming temperatures in northern Norway, the habits of the two family members have merged and seemingly resulted in prolific canoodling between the pair.  The large-bodied subspecies of Atlantic puffins (Fratercula arctica naumanni) used […]

If you stray into the more health and wellness-focused parts of the internet, it won’t be too long before you find someone deriding the so-called evils of seed oils. One that seems to bear the brunt of a lot of this ill-feeling is canola oil – but is it really all bad? It’s time we […]

Bats are remarkable little creatures, with a long lifespan and an impressive resistance to both cancer and viral infection that has researchers very interested. So how have they managed to get blessed with these traits? “In terms of the immune system, I want to be a bat,” said Dr Linfa Wang, professor in the emerging […]

Medical history has seen humans try their hands at all kinds of peculiar cures to tackle deadly diseases (even Isaac Newton was at it with these toad-vomit lozenges for bubonic plague). While the modern phrase “first do no harm” feels as if it’s been ignored at certain points in history, it’s also true that early […]

A typhoon took a shearwater bird on an epic journey when it swept up the bird, beginning an 11-hour journey that saw the bird complete five full circular loops. Tracking data revealed that the unfortunate male reached speeds of 90 to 170 kilometers per hour (55.2 to 105.6 miles per hour) soaring to an altitude […]

The ancients knew of five planets, objects that moved against the background stars, if one didn’t count the Sun and Moon. Copernicus revealed the Earth was actually one of these, made different only by our presence here, but the assumption remained that this was all there was, passing comets aside.  Then in 1781, William Herschell […]

The idea of an oasis rising in the middle of a desert to quench the thirst of a stranded soul might sound like something out of a survival movie, but it has become the reality in one of the driest places on Earth.  In Death Valley National Park, the aftermath of Hurricane Hilary has created […]

Caecilians, a mysterious type of limbless amphibian that dwells underground, just got even weirder. Young caecilians effectively eat their mother alive, munching on her tissues to aid with their early development. The mother produces a special layer of fatty skin tissue, which their babies gnaw off using specialized teeth and consume. Mmm, delicious. It was […]

It’s a pretty human thing to think about our mortality, particularly when it comes to the prospect of how it might happen. For some, they might be worried about dying in their sleep – but thankfully, unless you have a particular medical condition, the chance of that happening is relatively low. There are a number […]

Long before birds ruled the sky, a giant dragonfly-like beast earned the title of being the largest known insect of all time. Known as Meganeuropsis permiana, this extinct bug had an estimated wingspan of 71 centimeters (28 inches), around the size of a well-fed pigeon. Remains of Meganeuropsis permiana suggested it looked a lot like […]

It’s October, which means it’s spooky season and in some fantastic astronomical timing, the Sun, Moon, and Earth have all lined up to give us a Blood Moon partial lunar eclipse this weekend, where the Earth will appear to take a bite out of the Moon like a cosmic vampire. Lunar eclipses occur when the […]

Just a few days ago we reported on how spiders are masters of not getting tangled in their own webs – but that doesn’t mean the silken traps are safe spaces for them. In the first known case of its kind, scientists have witnessed a spider being attacked and killed on its own web by […]

During World War II, the seabed started moving. At least, that’s what it looked like to sonar technicians who couldn’t figure out why the ocean depth kept changing dramatically from night to day. We now know that this “false seafloor” was the result of deep scattering layers, walls consisting of millions of animals that undergo […]