Deborah Bloomfield

A new virtual reality (VR) experience allows curious onlookers to take a glimpse inside the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a “doomsday-proof” shelter in the Arctic that was set up to protect the world’s seeds from disaster and environmental devastation. The online experience was launched earlier this month by the Virtual Tour Company as part of […]

War is a lucrative business, which also means that mistakes can be costly. One of the priciest screw-ups in recent military history comes from the US army, which reportedly wasted heaps of dollars developing a stylish-looking new camouflage, only to discover it didn’t effectively hide their soldiers.  The Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP) was designed in […]

Gravitational wave observatories have measured many collisions between the dense objects in the universe. Most of them have been black holes, but there have been two detections of neutron stars merging with each other. One of them was also seen by regular observatories, providing incredible insights into these extreme events. But astronomers want to know […]

As clocks march ahead and daylight saving time begins, there can be anxiety around losing an hour of sleep and how to adjust to this change. Usually an hour seems like an insignificant amount of time, but even this minimal loss can cause problems. There can be significant health repercussions of this forcible shift in […]

The Texas Department of State Health Services has launched a search after a camera containing radioactive material went missing in the Houston area.  According to the department, the camera went missing on March 9, 2023, with the last confirmed location being 4040 Little York Road in Houston. The Statewide Maintenance Company lost the camera, which […]

Kiska the orca, the last of her species to be held in captivity in Canada, has died at the approximate age of 47. For the last four decades, Kiska had been living at Ontario theme park Marineland, after having been captured in Icelandic waters back in 1979. She was famously captured alongside another orca, Keiko, […]

Prehistoric cave paintings have helped researchers identify the ancient creatures that once co-existed with humans across Eurasia, although rock art in South Africa appears to contain a few single-horned curveballs. Apparently depicting unicorns, these rupestrian sketches once fueled a colonial hunt for the mythical creatures, and researchers are still uncertain as to what these artworks […]

Cousin marriages may be taboo to most of us in the West, but historically, unions between first and second cousins were once commonplace in some parts of the world. Our ancestors really did give Game of Thrones a run for its money in terms of incest: the ancient Greeks were at it, Tutankhamun married his […]

Spinning great apes are the focus of new research that suggests getting dizzy may be a way of these animals altering their cognitive state. If true, it could indicate that we were seeking mind-altering activities before Homo sapiens even evolved, and raises questions about how their use may have influenced the evolution of the human […]

Line up the skulls of grizzlies and black bears and they’ll look like spuds compared to that of the southern elephant seal (something Steve Backshall handily did in a video for BBC Earth back in 2007, in case you want to take a look). They are the biggest seals on the planet, weighing up to […]

Centuries before freight ships and telecommunications, the far-flung corners of Eurasia were hooked together by a network of trade routes known as the Silk Road. It ran from some 1,500 years from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century CE and became a hugely influential force in the modern world. After all, it wasn’t […]

A relatively simple protein model could answer one of the most important questions in science: how did life emerge from non-life? If so, it would not only settle a question that has troubled humanity for thousands of years, leading to so many creation stories, but it could also aid the search for life on other […]

A California congressman has put resubmitted a bill to make a four-day work week a federal mandate, in order to re-balance how workers’ happiness and health are prioritized alongside company profits. Rep. Mark Takano told CNBC that he believes this move will “increase the happiness of humankind” by reducing the number of worked hours per week, […]

Science fiction writers once imagined Venus as a world of oceans or swamps underneath all that cloud. It’s possible they were not so much wrong as very, very late. Modeling suggests the planet closest to Earth in size and distance from the Sun may not only have oceans, but they could have survived for more […]

Most people get taught in school that certain animals eat certain things: the lion hunts the antelope, the spider catches the fly, and the herbivores of the animal kingdom happily chow down on the tastiest leaves they can find. Not that this is necessarily wrong, but the truth is a little more complicated. Take the […]

According to the leading model of the Universe, there is an invisible substance that outweighs regular matter, which makes us, by five-to-one. This is known as dark matter because it doesn’t interact with light. The properties of this substance are still uncertain with no experimental evidence showing it exists. And researchers have considered some pretty […]

A Japanese astronomer has captured a video of a meteorite slamming into the Moon. Curator in charge of astronomy at the Hiratsuka City Museum, Daichi Fujii, recorded the moment of impact from his home in Hiratsuka.  “I was able to catch the biggest lunar impact flash in my observation history,” Fujii wrote on Twitter, as […]

What is the source of the River Nile? While that might sound like a straightforward question, the origin of the longest river on planet Earth has befuddled people for thousands of years. Even today, in an age of prolific satellites and geophysical know-how, the romantic conundrum of the Nile’s source is still not as simple […]

Disney have demonstrated a retractable lightsaber at tech, film, and music festival South by Southwest (SXSW). Videos from the talk show Chairperson of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Josh D’Amaro fire up and then retract the device in front of the crowd. “I have the coolest job in the world,” D’Amaro told the audience, adding […]

Babies’ eyes are still developing when they come into the world. In the first few months of life, their visual acuity and light perception will change, but what about color? It’s an often-repeated myth that all babies come into the world with blue eyes, but the truth is that eye color depends on genetics and […]