Deborah Bloomfield

Until recently, it was thought that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals split off from their last common ancestor around 600,000 years ago, but a prehistoric skull from China has just shattered that narrative. Dated to a million years ago, the cranium belongs to an extinct human clade which encompasses the Denisovans, indicating that we had already […]

In 1964, physicist Arno Allan Penzias and radio astronomer Robert Woodrow Wilson picked up a persistent hum in their radio telescope readings. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. The noise – like static on a radio – seemed to be there, no […]

In spectacularly good timing a coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun is about to collide with an object which came from outside of the Solar System. On July 1, 2025, astronomers spotted an object moving through the Solar System at nearly twice the velocity of previous interstellar visitors ‘Oumuamua and Comet Borisov. The object, […]

Physicists have made an array of 6,100 neutral-atom qubits held in place by lasers, marking a dramatic increase in potential quantum computing size. Nevertheless, the qubits have not yet been entangled, and cannot operate as a computer until this occurs. The bits in classical computers can either represent ones or zeros, but qubits can combine […]

Astronaut Reid Wiseman, who will serve as Commander on NASA’s upcoming Artemis II mission to the Moon and back, has explained why he “hopes” that the crew will be forgotten by history. On Monday, NASA announced its schedule for the second stage of the Artemis II, the second stage in the space agency’s project to […]

These giant, guitar-shaped fish have not been spotted in this part of the world since the 1990s, leading many to assume they had vanished in the region. However, to the surprise of locals and scientists, the body of a largetooth sawfish recently washed ashore, dispelling some myths about the species’ demise. The rest of this […]

It’s not always easy inferring behavior from the fossil record because most often all the squishy bits are gone and we’re left to fill in the gaps from the odd bony bits n’ bobs. Sometimes, however, ancient creatures make palaeontologists’ lives a bit easier by remaining virtually complete for say, oh I don’t know, 240 […]

There are a lot of spookily named animals living it up on planet Earth: the vampire squid is neither vampire nor squid, vampire finches do actually eat blood, and vampire bats can run surprisingly fast as well as flying – so then what about the vampire deer? The rest of this article is behind a […]

To millions of Hindus, the Ganges River is more than a body of water – it is treated like the goddess Ganga Ma in physical form, a source of spiritual cleansing and blessings. But beyond its spiritual significance, the river is a lifeline for over 600 million people, providing water for drinking, farming, and industry. […]

A new study has attempted to pin down the properties of interstellar comet 3I/Atlas, finding it is “anomalously massive” at around 33 billion tons.  On July 1, 2025, astronomers spotted an object moving through the Solar System at nearly twice the velocity of previous interstellar visitors ‘Oumuamua and Comet Borisov. The object, which was confirmed […]

An experimental new gene therapy for Huntington’s disease has shown promising results in phase I/II trials, with 75 percent less disease progression observed in the patients receiving the treatment. If further trials continue to produce such positive results, we could be looking at a remarkable breakthrough for this incurable, life-limiting disease. Key takeaways AMT-130 is […]

In 1981, while conducting a redshift survey of the distribution of galaxies, astronomers spotted something (or nothing) that they weren’t expecting. “[W]e discovered that the redshift distributions in each of the three northern fields showed an identical 6,000 [kilometers per second] gap. Because these fields were separated by angles of ~35°, this suggested the existence […]

De-extinction. It’s not a word many of us were thinking about just a decade ago, but it’s one that we’re getting ever more familiar with. The de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences has set its sights on de-extincting five key species whose extinction is thought to have either been caused, or heavily contributed to, by humans: the […]

NASA has announced its schedule for the second stage of the Artemis missions, returning humans to the Moon, and it’s earlier than expected.  In a press conference yesterday, NASA officials gave an update on Artemis II, the second stage in the space agency’s project to land humans on the lunar surface. In the update, they […]

Physicists have unveiled a new type of time crystal that is governed by quantum behavior that conflicts with classical models. Quantum connections between particles maintain the regular movements of the crystal, conserving its status. Traditional crystals are defined by their order, with atoms bound in a regular repeating structure, in contrast to the liquids they […]

In 1984, a team of scientists were studying a group of dolphins and whales at the National Marine Mammal Foundation (NMMF). During their research, staff had started to notice weird, human-like noises coming from inside the enclosure. They described it as sounding like two people speaking. Things got even weirder when a diver pulled themselves […]

Mammoth species in North America repeatedly interbred over thousands of years, creating hybrid offspring, a new fossil analysis has revealed. The findings alter what we know about the evolution of these Ice Age giants and how they responded to dramatic climate shifts. It has generally been assumed that the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), which lived […]

It’s easy to forget that plants are living, moving, reactive organisms when to the human eye they appear to swoosh about so passively. Every now and then a species comes along that reminds you of this – most recently Vincetoxicum nakaianum, the plant that pretends to be an ant. The rest of this article is […]

Stations on planet Earth have sent and received messages beamed via laser from NASA’s Psyche spacecraft over 350 million kilometers (218 million miles) away. This breakthrough in optical communication shows that NASA is laying the groundwork for high-speed data links for future human missions to Mars. NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications technology has recently demonstrated […]

A man who sought medical attention after being unable to urinate discovered that he had become home to one of the largest known parasites to infect humans, a case report explains. The 35-year-old man showed up to the emergency department, complaining of retention of urine and a fever that had lasted for two days. Retention […]