Deborah Bloomfield

Metals like gold and platinum are precious because they are so rare in the Earth’s crust and mantle. However, they’re not as rare as we would expect them to be. Existing models of the Earth’s formation indicate many heavy metals should have sunk to the core. Humanity’s only exposure should then have been to tiny […]

A geology PhD student at Utrecht University has reconstructed an ancient and previously unknown tectonic plate, thought to once have been a quarter of the size of the Pacific Ocean. As tectonic plates move, large ancient oceanic plates can fall underneath other plates, known as “subduction“. Though largely hidden from the surface, these ancient subducted […]

Being a successful goalkeeper in football, or soccer, requires not only the capacity to leap and catch, but to make decisions faster than other athletes, let alone the rest of the population. For the first time a study reveals goalkeepers see the world, and process information they receive, differently from everyone else. “Unlike other football […]

Asteroid Psyche has been known about for almost two centuries but it’s only in the last few decades that it became clear this was a very weird world worth exploring. This week, NASA is set to launch the Psyche spacecraft, which will travel 3.5 billion kilometers (2.2 billion) miles to visit its namesake in the […]

One of the things we first learn about the animal kingdom is the difference between warm and cold-blooded animals. While reptiles bask in the sun to get warm, mammals – including those in the sea – must eat regularly to gain the energy needed to sustain a constant internal temperature. However, one mammal, trapped on […]

The brain is wired to recognize when a noise we’re expecting to hear doesn’t sound quite right. You go to close your car door, but don’t push it hard enough – you know you’ve made a mistake when you don’t hear the characteristic thump and click. Until now, scientists weren’t sure exactly how the brain […]

On April 7, 1989, a Russian nuclear submarine sank off the coast of Norway after a fire broke out on board as a result of a short circuit. At the time, the sub was carrying two nuclear torpedoes which it took with it to the cold depths of the Arctic Ocean. To this day, neither […]

The garish prints of public transport seats are pretty hard to miss. Zany, vibrant, often with asymmetric and chaotic patterns, you’ve got to wonder what inspired such eccentric designs. As it turns out, it has a lot to do with grime. The patterns of fabric used on the seats of trains and buses vary across […]

JWST images are nothing if not stunning, bringing incredible resolution to the infrared universe. Showcasing faint nebulae or distant galaxies has a curious side effect: usually, closer and definitely brighter stars appear to gain spikes, six big ones and two small ones. The effect is so iconic that you can use it to confirm at […]

Researchers have discovered a giant reservoir of water, hidden beneath the Pacific Ocean. The find may explain why nearby New Zealand experiences “slow-motion” earthquakes, which can last up to months, while causing relatively little or no damage to the surrounding area. New Zealand’s Hikurangi Subduction Zone, where the Pacific tectonic plate falls underneath the Australian […]

Two dazzling new snail species have been discovered by scientists diving in the Florida Keys and Belize. The two snails looked very similar, leading scientists to suspect they were the same species, but sequencing their DNA revealed big differences. The Florida Keys are made up of a string of tropical islands that are home to […]

Towards the end of the last Ice Age, the Sun experienced a solar storm of staggering power, bombarding the Earth with charged particles that produced a surge in radioactive carbon. Subfossil trees in the French Alps carry the legacy of this event, revealing it as the most powerful of which we can find a record. […]

Archaeologists have recently discovered a remarkably well-preserved child’s nightgown complete with unusual “knots” that is estimated to be about 1,900 years old. The garment was found in the famous Cave of Letters in Israel, which has previously yielded other important archaeological finds that provide insights into Jewish history. The Cave of Letters was first discovered […]

The past 17 years have seen some unusual rises in levels of methane gas in Earth’s atmosphere – and this surge might be a messenger for something bigger, according to new research. It’s not certain what this methane increase means exactly, but scientists argue it’s reminiscent of past “termination events” in Earth’s climate system that […]

A man accused of smashing two second-century Roman statues at the Israel Museum was experiencing “Jerusalem Syndrome”, according to his lawyers. The 40-year-old tourist from the US was arrested following the alleged destruction of two statues, including one of the goddess Athena. After questioning, the Israeli police say that the man broke the statues as […]

At some point in your life, whether on the Internet or watching Family Guy, you have probably come across the rumor that Walt Disney had himself cryonically frozen after his death, in the hopes of one day being thawed out and revived. You may also have come across a secondary conspiracy theory that Disney released […]

If someone were to invent “smellovision”, it seems we might all end up watching the same show slightly differently – researchers have discovered that our sense of smell can affect how we perceive color. Humans are constantly bombarded with sensory information: the whirr of the computer fan as you work; the bright white of that […]

Octopuses, squids, and other super-smart cephalopods may soon receive the same legal protection in the US as other animals used in scientific research, such as monkeys and rodents. Last month, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) put out a call for information to help shape their proposed guidelines for the protection of cephalopods used in […]

Earth’s worst day at the start of the Permian extinction saw the planet’s surface transformed into a fiery hellscape. However, at other times in its history, Earth has become a ball of ice and snow. “700 million years ago, Earth was a giant snowball cloaked in ice from pole to pole – a global deep […]