Deborah Bloomfield

The Dark Ages has a bad reputation. In fact, it’s possibly the only period of history literally named after its bad reputation: the title, as we all learn in school, is a reference to the idea that, after the Roman Empire fell in the West, everyone spent the next few centuries in the metaphorical dark […]

Issue 17 (December 2023) of CURIOUS is out now, bringing you science highlights for the month plus deep dives into intriguing topics, interviews, exclusives, diary dates, and explanations for some of Earth’s most perplexing natural phenomena and landscapes. In This Issue… Advertisement OUR COVER STORY: Are No Two Snowflakes Alike? Snow crystal development is complex […]

The Fermi Paradox puts forward the following puzzling question, if humans are not special and civilizations can rise commonly in the cosmos, why are we yet to find anybody else?  A science paper has a bold answer. Even if there are tens of thousands of civilizations out there, they need to survive for thousands of […]

If living in the future has taught us anything, it’s this: that no matter how smart you think you are, you’re always just one well-placed social media post away from having your mind blown by some completely basic life skill or fact that has somehow passed you by. In the last year alone, for example, […]

A study has identified a pattern of gradual relationship decline prior to one person having an affair – and that once the affair happens, very rarely does a healthy relationship occur afterward. The results suggest that there are clear decreases in well-being prior to such a dramatic event, which may help explain and identify why […]

The discovery of 6,770 ancient bones belonging to 52 different animals dating to the Iron Age left archaeologists with a big question: what on earth went on here? In a new study, researchers in Spain believe they might have a clear answer. The jumbo bone pit was recently excavated at Casas del Turuñuelo, a site […]

Here’s an unusual fact that takes a bit of explaining. The center of the Earth is around two and a half years younger than the surface. About 4.6 billion years ago, a hot cloud of dust orbiting the Sun coalesced and cooled. As it did so, the heavier elements formed the center of the Earth, […]

Traces of ancient DNA appear to have been found within the 6-million-year-old fossil bones of an extinct turtle. This is staggeringly old evidence of DNA and may suggest that genetic material can last much longer than previously appreciated. Found along the Caribbean coast of Panama, the fossil consists of a broken shell, but the remaining […]

Picture yourself at an amusement park, hitting one of those boxing arcade machines. Think of the energy of that punch. Now imagine giving that energy to a single particle, which traveled across space from the local void and slammed into our planet’s atmosphere, showering the Telescope Array detector in secondary particles. The particle was called Amaterasu, […]

A mystery that has dogged materials science for 200 years has finally been solved. A mineral found in many ancient rock formations had stubbornly resisted the efforts of scientists to grow it in the lab, even though they could recreate the conditions they thought formed it in nature. Now, a team has cracked the problem, […]

Do you know what the padlock symbol in your internet browser’s address bar means? If not, you’re not alone. New research by my colleagues and I shows that only 5 percent of UK adults understand the padlock’s significance. This is a threat to our online safety. The padlock symbol on a web browser simply means […]

If you thought a tree-dwelling, coconut-cracking giant rat was the stuff of fiction, you’re about to be proven wrong – researchers have captured the first-ever images of the rare, but particularly sizeable, Vangunu giant rat. The photos of this rodent of unusual size were captured using a set of nine camera traps, placed strategically in […]

The recent death of Frank Borman, commander of Nasa’s Apollo 8 mission in 1968, has focused attention on that incredible first voyage to the Moon. It took place eight months before Apollo 11, where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin explored the lunar surface for the first time. However, the impact of Apollo 8’s “Earthrise” picture […]

The temperature of the universe is surprisingly varied, with some places far from any star being a lot hotter than you might expect, but what about the other end of the scale? Absolute zero (0 K, -273.16°C, or -459.68°F) represents a theoretical limit on how cold things can get, but what is the practical limit? […]

The euthanasia of Pole Pole, the last elephant at the UK’s London Zoo, inspired the creation of Born Free, an organization that’s long held a principled position on animals in captivity. It’s been 40 years since Pole Pole’s death, and this November, Born Free is inviting the public to explore whether we can deliver greater […]

Have you ever heard of a moose with so-called “Devil’s Antlers”? Although it may conjure images of some monstrous misshapen animal lurking in the wilderness, the term actually appears to refer to a real phenomenon that further demonstrates how cool antlers are. How to make antlers If you look for this term online, you will […]

The formation of Libyan desert glass (LDG) has been at the center of a big debate in planetary science. Lighting, weird geological processes, and even volcanos on the Moon have been suggested as possible sources. Over the last 25 years, researchers have been focusing on two scenarios: either it was created by a meteor slamming […]

Men are hunters: they are biologically superior, and stronger and so on, right? Well this myth has a long-enduring history and is still common among many people. But it is not true, despite the force with which some people hold onto it. There are uncontroversial average biological differences between the sexes, and while ones favored […]

The designs for future Mars helicopters are currently being tested, and for the first time, researchers are using tests on two worlds to design the necessary improvements for the next generation of flying explorers. On Earth, new blade materials are being rotated to close to the speed of sound. And on Mars, Ingenuity is going […]

The world’s biggest iceberg – larger than the state of Rhode Island – is on the move for the first time in over three decades.  Measuring 4,000 square kilometers (1,500 square miles) and some 400 meters (1,312 feet) thick, the city-sized iceberg A23a was created in August 1986 when it was calved from the Antarctic […]