Deborah Bloomfield

Polygraph tests are everywhere. They spring up in police interrogations, screenings for government jobs – there are even entire reality TV shows based around the results of a single polygraph. It may surprise you to know, then, that the science behind polygraphs is flimsy at best – so flimsy that they should definitely not be […]

The last time Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was visible in our skies Neanderthals still roamed the Earth, 50,000 years ago, so if you don’t want to have to wait another 50 millennia, the time to see it is now. Well, maybe. But more on that later. The comet is now just under the average limit […]

There is a lot that we don’t know about the Sun and its behavior but something that might be especially shocking is that we have never seen its poles. Detailed investigations of these regions will happen in the coming years, but until then we can just marvel at some of the peculiar events that happen […]

Every year, February 11 is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. This year, we have asked some of our team who their favorite female scientist of all time is and why.  Answer by Laura Simmons, Editor and Staff Writer Advertisement Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923) was a mathematician, inventor, suffragist, and someone who didn’t let […]

NASA’s Voyager mission in the 1980s discovered that the rings of Saturn get temporary “spokes”, smudgy areas within the rings that are either darker or lighter than the surrounding material. The spokes happen only during a certain period, the years right before and after an equinox. The autumnal equinox for Saturn’s northern hemisphere is coming […]

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has said he believes ChatGPT will “change the world” on a similar scale to the advent of the personal computer. Let’s not forget, however, that Microsoft has poured heaps of cash into the development of ChatGPT and has some vested interest in its success.  Speaking to the German business newspaper Handelsblatt, […]

Humans weren’t the only beings doing it tough with mental health issues during the pandemic. Our pets suffered too – particularly dogs, who are known to pick up on and share our own anxiety and stress. In 2022 owners reported increased fear in their dogs towards both other dogs and unfamiliar humans, as well as […]

How much do you like the color green? It’s beautiful isn’t it, the color of alligators and peas. But if your answer wasn’t “I would literally die for it” then you aren’t as big a fan as the Victorians, who spent decades getting killed by the color and their own unwillingness to go outside for […]

Have you ever suffered through tales of greatness from a self-absorbed “friend” who reminds you of Michael Scott from “The Office” – and not in a good way? Have you been betrayed by a colleague out of the blue, undermined on a project by the office mean girl, or had a work friendship dropped altogether […]

A video posted to Twitter and Reddit reportedly shows birds acting strangely prior to the earthquake which hit Turkey and Syria on Monday.  The video is as yet unverified and there are of course reasons to be skeptical of it (think about how after every flood disaster, someone claims that a shark has made its […]

If you go walking beneath the Betsy Ross Bridge along the Delaware River, you will be met by a cascade of over 20,000 gravestones. The stones have been repurposed as rip-rap, foundational material that sits at the base of a breakwater or bridge, like the Betsy Ross. But how did they come to be here, […]

Females of a population of orcas (killer whales) have been found to invest an astonishing amount of effort in their male offspring, to an extent never previously reported in nature. Their daughters get much less support. The sacrifices are so large the mothers are much less likely to successfully raise younger children, of either sex, […]

Along the shores of Lake Victoria in Africa, archeologists have uncovered the oldest ever evidence of human ancestors using tools to butcher the meat of ancient hippopotamuses. Dating to roughly 2.9 million years old, the Stone Age toolkit shows the earliest found evidence of hominins chowing down on very large animals. It also raises questions […]

Science has a magical way of coming up with Hollywood solutions to everyday problems. The death of farmed fish in aquaculture from infections is astronomical each year, stretching into the millions, but now researchers have come up with a way to protect catfish from illness: by casually chucking a bit of alligator DNA into their […]

The Curiosity mission team has discovered the clearest evidence of ancient water ripples yet. Billions of years ago on Mars, waves on the surface of shallow water shook sediment at the bottom. As the water evaporated and the planet dried, the impression of waves turned into rocks that have now been spotted by the NASA […]

The fortifications of Xi’an are an archaeological marvel and one of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites. The fortress was built during the 14th century by Zhu Yuanzhang, the first Emperor of the Ming dynasty, and it has been kept and refurbished several times since its construction. But to see the areas that might need interventions, researchers […]

When exploring some eroding boulders on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island with his son, Alan Tennyson of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa found fossil remnants of 57-million-year-old giant penguins. That would be exciting enough – but as other scientists assisted in unscrambling the finds, it became clear there were […]

A peculiar mummy was unearthed in 1975 during the renovation of the Barfüsser Church in Basel, Switzerland, as the remains of Anna Catharina Bischoff were found beneath the floors. She had died aged 68 way back in 1787, though exactly what caused her death has been the subject of some debate. Part of the reason […]

Believe it or not, this is a photo of sand. At 10 times magnification, sand from the beach at Point Spencer, Alaska, looks like a handful of glittering gemstones. This dazzling, colorful array can tell us much about the history of this wild, remote region. An ancient crossroads Nestled between the Kotzebue Sound to the […]