Deborah Bloomfield

Just like her tumultuous life, the death of Cleopatra VII has become the stuff of legend. So the story goes, the Queen of the Nile took her own life by forcing an asp (aka an Egyptian cobra) to bite her on either August 10 or 12, 30 BCE, after suffering a crushing defeat against the […]

Archaeologists believe they have found the world’s oldest runestone in Norway. With inscriptions dating back 2,000 years, this laptop-sized stone could shine a light on the development and use of runic writing in ancient Scandinavia.  The runestone was first discovered at an ancient grave near Tyrifjorden in eastern Norway during the autumn of 2021 by […]

The new COVID-19 variant CH.1.1, named Orthrus, may be running rampant across the UK, and could soon take over from the current most dominant variants, according to government data. Orthrus may be responsible for around 25 percent of all COVID-19 cases in the UK, but some regions may be seeing it in 100 percent of […]

Look upon a group of iguanas and words like “shambles” or “disorganized” spring to mind. These animals are usually solitary, but in one biodiverse corner of the globe they amass in great numbers, spilling over one another in a tangle of scales and tails. So, what do you call a group of iguanas? The answer […]

While a lot of research has been done investigating how electronic sensing devices can be manufactured to sniff out scents better than anything biological, nothing currently beats the power of the natural world, be it dogs or ants, in sniffing out all kinds of chemicals and even detecting diseases. Therefore, scientists have been inspired to […]

It’s increasingly difficult to find a dark sky area to indulge in a spot of star gazing already, but now scientists report further bad news regarding the visibility of stars in the night sky. A new study suggests that in general, the sky is getting brighter at a rate of 9.6 percent every year, meaning […]

It’s the day everyone feared: Boston Dynamics’ robots have moved on from fun dance parties and have started doing actual jobs. In their latest video, the Atlas robot is shown hopping around a “construction site” (a set built at Boston Dynamics’ facility) doing manual labor, throwing tool bags around, and building a little pathway for […]

The Face Lab at Liverpool John Moores University and an Egyptian mummy expert and radiologist have teamed up to reveal the face of Ramesses II. To recreate the pharaoh’s face, head of radiology at Cairo University Dr Sahar Saleem reprocessed old CT scans of the mummy she had taken between 2005 and 2009, and then […]

After more than five years, the second data release from the Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey (DECaPS2) has been published and it was certainly worth the wait. Astronomers have imaged a staggering 3.32 billion objects in this new survey of the galactic plane of the Milky Way.  This incredible astronomical feat is publicly accessible and […]

The idea of an infectious cancer might sound like the stuff of post-apocalyptic video games, yet a number of transmissible tumors have been documented in real life. Fortunately, none have ever been reported in humans, although a rapidly-spreading facial tumor has driven the Tasmanian devil to the brink of extinction. The most widely-studied contagious cancer […]

Meteorite hunters in Antarctica have recently discovered five new space rocks that crash-landed to Earth, including one that weighs a hefty 7.6 kilograms (16.7 pounds). Around 45,000 meteorites have been located in Antarctica over the past century, but only about a hundred or so are this size, meaning the find is pretty special.  “Size doesn’t […]

After over 15 years of research, scientists have at last revealed the secrets of a very special synapse. Buried deep in the inner ear, these synapses can process signals faster than any others in the body, but neuroscientists could not figure out how this was possible – until now. Humans, along with many other animals, […]

The most dazzling astronomical event of January is almost upon us. The conjunction of Venus and Saturn will take place on Sunday, January 22. The two objects will be so close to each other – less than a degree apart – that even with a small telescope you will be able to see them in […]

All good things must come to an end, and it’s best to plan beforehand. Revolutionary as the JWST has been, it has a much shorter life expectancy than the Hubble Space Telescope, let alone ground-based instruments. NASA has revealed plans for what could be the replacement to its replacement at the American Astronomical Society’s 241st meeting.  […]

Here’s a fun little fact: Google Images was created because of Jennifer Lopez, aka J. Lo. This bit of Internet history trivia was recently brought to our attention by Twitter user mattxiv. This can’t be true, can it? Well we dug around a little and discovered that yes, this is basically the case. Advertisement In […]

At the end of every year, I gather statistics on the most viewed Wikipedia articles of the year. This helps me, a computational social scientist, understand what topics captured the most attention and gives me a chance to reflect on the major public events of the year. I try to use data to determine how […]

If you’ve been on the internet recently, you’ve probably heard people throwing around “Moore’s Law” and whether it is “dead” or not. The concept of Moore’s Law has become a hot debate in the face of recent Nvidia statements and in the realm of technology hardware, but what does it actually mean?   What is […]

A grainy photograph taken in 1864 shows a group of Japanese samurai standing in front of the Great Sphinx of Giza in Egypt. This jolting image messes with our sense of history – the traditional Japanese clothes, the ancient Egyptian monument, and the European camera just don’t seem to add up. As unexpected as this […]

On Saturday, the new Moon will be at the closest it has been to Earth since the Middle Ages. According to calculations by timeanddate.com, the new Moon has not been this close to us in 993 years and will not be this close to us for another 345 years.  The New Moon, due to its […]

What gives a pink lake in Australia its bizarrely vibrant bubblegum coloration has been pondered since before bubblegum was even invented. In 1802, Matthew Flinders became the first to suggest Lake Hillier’s pink color came from its salinity, but in the few hundred years that have followed, science has revealed that this is just part […]