Deborah Bloomfield

Uranium, after briefly being primarily used as a colorant in pottery following its discovery in 1789, is now in great demand for its use in the nuclear energy industry, and in medicine. It’s more abundant than gold, and easier to find, due to the radiation signature it gives off as it decays. Generally, supplies of […]

Geologists believe that around 155 million years ago, a 5,000-kilometer (3,107-mile) long chunk of land, dubbed Argoland, broke off from Western Australia, but what happened to it after that was unknown – until now. Our planet’s continents aren’t stationary; because of plate tectonics, over the course of millions of years, they can join each other […]

Over the last few years there has been a dramatic collapse in the Bering Sea snow crab population, with numbers declining by an astonishing 10 billion between 2018 and 2021. The fall in numbers, thought to be among the largest losses of its kind, prompted the Alaskan Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) to close […]

Earlier this month, representatives of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and Chile buried a time capsule at the construction site of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which is located in Cerro Armazones in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The Extremely Large Telescope is halfway through construction and is on schedule to begin observing the universe in a few […]

Light is something in our world that we are very familiar with, and yet it can still throw some incredible curveballs when you look at it in detail. A newly discovered one comes from a pretty well-established phenomenon: what happens when light passes through an interface? That could be glass, water, or something completely different. […]

After a powerful earthquake roughed up Mexico City, a giant stone snake head arose from the rubbly soil still gleaming with its bold original colors.  At lunchtime on September 19, 2022, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck the Mexican states of Michoacán and Colima. Its heavy rumbles were felt 400 km (250 miles) away from the epicenter […]

The sounds of Pando, the tree that is its own forest, have been released in an effort to promote awareness of this astonishing plant and the threats it faces. Recordings of humpback whale songs released as records in the 1960s helped turn public opinion in most of the world against whaling and save not just […]

Bobi, the record-breaking world’s oldest dog, has passed away at the ripe old age of 31 years, 165 days. Earlier this year, Bobi was officially crowned Oldest Dog Ever by Guinness World Records. Born in 1992, Bobi had a rocky start in life. He was one of a litter of four pups, but the dogs’ […]

The US Endangered Species Act (ESA) turns 50 in 2023. While it has been highly effective at saving endangered species across that time, unfortunately, it has not been enough to save all of them. The Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that 21 species have been removed from the act and not for a good […]

There is a lot that we do not know about the formation of the Moon. It’s thought that it formed in a major impact between Earth and a planet the size of Mars, called Theia. When that happened, however, is a bit uncertain, but a new analysis of crystals in rocks collected by Apollo 17 […]

We know that our early human ancestors lived on meat that they could hunt, supplemented with any other foodstuffs that could be gathered off the land. We also know that in this scenario, it was the men doing the hunting and the women doing the gathering – right? Well, it might be time to rip […]

We all know that social media can be a breeding ground for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and pseudoscience. But how dangerous is it really? Well, according to a new book by two psychologists, the spread of pseudoscientific mental health “therapies” represents a real problem that needs to be addressed. The threat of pseudoscience  The internet is […]

People have been asking why space is dark despite being filled with stars for so long that this question has a special name – Olbers’ paradox. Astronomers estimate that there are about 200 billion trillion stars in the observable universe. And many of those stars are as bright or even brighter than our sun. So, […]

Thousands of kilometers below your feet, there lies a red-hot ball of solid iron. Simply known as Earth’s inner core, the metallic heart of our planet remains relatively enigmatic despite the advances of modern science. The innermost depths of our planet are too distant, not to mention too hot, to probe and collect samples from. […]

On January 15, 2022, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano violently erupted beneath the Pacific Ocean, launching a never-before-seen volume of water vapor into the atmosphere. Now, a new study has found that the vapor sparked a large, rapid depletion in the Earth’s ozone layer. Last year’s eruption was record-breaking in a number of ways – […]

Diamonds aren’t just a girl’s best friend – turns out they can be pretty useful to geologists too. In fact, as a new study found, some diamonds can even reveal secrets about the evolution of the Earth. As the hardest known natural mineral, diamonds can and have survived a lot, including the creation and destruction […]

Living amongst the stars and traveling across the endless expanse of the cosmos has long been a dream for humankind. Both scientific communities and science fiction alike have spent over a century exploring this ideal. Lifetimes of scientific research, inventions by the most innovative minds, and billions of dollars spent, have meant reaching that monumental […]

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered a configuration of graphene layers with some exciting magnetic properties and an electronic property that has not been seen before in a material. Graphene is an atom-thick layer of carbon that has some pretty unusual properties in itself. The atoms are arranged in a hexagonal lattice […]

Queen Meret-Neith was one of the most powerful women in the world during her lifetime and perhaps even the first woman pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. Little is known about her story, but her extravagant tomb certainly suggests she had immense power – and a taste for booze. Recent excavations at the Abydos archaeological site have […]

A colossal aspen stand in Utah that holds the distinction of being the world’s largest living thing appears to be fragmenting as a result of overgrazing. Known as Pando, the enormous organism is predominantly preyed upon by mule deer and cattle, and new research indicates that human efforts to protect the stand may be exacerbating the problem. […]