Deborah Bloomfield

A big new update to ChatGPT will enable the chatbot to interact with voice conversations and respond to images. That’s right, the artificial intelligence (AI) will be able to hear your questions, see the world around you, and respond accordingly.  OpenAI, the non-profit group behind ChatGPT and DALL-E, announced the “multimodal” update in a blog […]

The Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission is one of the most ambitious projects that NASA, in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA), has planned. The idea is to get two helicopters to Mars to pick up samples collected by Perseverance, pack them in a rocket, attempt the first rocket launch from another planet, get […]

The animal world is full of unusual species, from tarantulas with electric blue hair to deep sea octopuses hidden beneath the waves. While most species stick to breeding habits within their own kind, just occasionally, a set of circumstances will occur that causes a hybrid to be born. While hybridization in the wild is rare […]

At about 40 light-years from Earth, there is the TRAPPIST-1 system. Seven Earth-sized worlds orbit very close to a red dwarf, much dimmer and cooler than our Sun. Three of these worlds might have the right conditions for life, and astronomers are very interested in studying all of these exoplanets. Observations so far, though, point […]

A few weeks ago, the world was baffled as journalist and UFO researcher Jaime Maussan presented “mummified aliens” to the Mexican congress, claiming that they were a thousand years old.  The objects – looking suspiciously not-unlike E.T. from the film E.T. – have since been sent for scans by a forensic doctor with the navy, […]

A holly tree that had been lost to botanists for almost two centuries has been found after a six-day search operation in Brazil. The four trees that were rediscovered are thought to be the only ones left of this species, so that fateful day back in March of this year was an emotional one for […]

Southern Africa holds possibly the greatest human genetic diversity on Earth and new research reveals that diversity is in better shape than had been suspected. When some languages from the Namib Desert died out, anthropologists feared the populations that spoke them had gone too, but new research indicates the people have maintained a genetic identity […]

The humble feather lies at the heart of a new study, in which palaeontologists have revealed that feathered dinosaurs and modern birds are even more similar than we thought. Previous studies of fossilized dinosaur feathers have suggested that they had a different protein composition to that of modern birds. It was thought that ancient dinosaur […]

Whether it’s archaeologists, or just some lads on the beach creating a hole mistaken for an asteroid impact, people can’t help wondering what’s underneath sand. The answer differs depending on the sand, of course. By the shore, the constantly churning sea grinds up rocks over thousands or millions of years, creating sand. Underneath the ocean […]

The rapid rise of electric vehicles has created alarm, both about where we will find the raw materials to build so many batteries, and what we will do with them when their time is done. Both questions need to be asked, but it seems likely the second won’t become a problem as soon as many […]

Humans have a long history of monogamy. Our ancestors have been coupling off for millennia, but this mating strategy is actually something of an outlier when compared to other species. So why do we do it?  Can monogamy be explained by simple biology? Or is it more complicated than that? As it turns out, the […]

A parasitic worm that can jump from its usual host species into mammals is becoming more widespread in rats in the southern USA, sparking concerns about the risks to humans. The rat lungworm, Angiostrongylus cantonensis, typically moves between snails and rodents to complete its life cycle. Rats eat snails infected with worm larvae, which then […]

The “wholphin” is the nickname for a hybrid born as a result of some unlikely canoodling between different species of cetacean, most often a bottlenose dolphin and a false killer whale. However, this isn’t the only known example of interspecies mingling that’s been documented among this infraorder of animals. From the narluga to dolphin hybrids, […]

In millions of years’ time, a new supercontinent will form when all of our existing continents converge. This, according to a new study, will have a series of catastrophic impacts that will make Earth inhospitable to land-based mammals and will likely lead to a mass extinction. No more mammals? Greenhouse gas emissions caused by human […]

There is a truly astonishing molecule that has puzzled scientists for decades. Its name is azulene and it is known for its strikingly beautiful blue color. But it is its physical behavior that is utterly peculiar. It seems to stubbornly defy Kasha’s rule, the principle that explains how fluorescence or phosphorescence takes place.  This is […]

Scientists are talking to plants through light-based messages to see if they can prewarn them of impending dangers and trigger defence mechanisms that could mitigate the damage. Working with the tobacco plant Nicotiana benthamiana, they were able to activate the plant’s immune response using light as a stimulus in an achievement that could revolutionize our […]

Hopes are fading that the Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover will reawaken after the long lunar night, as the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) continues to attempt to establish contact. In August, India became the fourth nation to touch down on the Moon, and the first to land near the lunar south pole. Since landing, the […]

Nobody wants to die, but when we do we hope for two things: that it’s painless, and that a thousand years later somebody doesn’t study your remains and tell your ancestors “this guy was heavily constipated”. No such luck for one man, who archaeologists discovered in 2019 had suffered a fatal case of constipation, swelling his […]

When geologists set out to probe beneath the old coal-mining region of Southeastern France, they were hoping to find a trove of fossil fuels locked deep within its subsoil. Much to their surprise, they stumbled across something even more enticing: what might be the world’s biggest known deposit of white hydrogen. If their estimations are […]

A reunion with a puma named Petaka and a perilous time beneath the waves filming mini “surfing Godzillas” are among the highlights of wildlife filmmaker, presenter, and National Geographic explorer Bertie Gregory’s new series, Animals Up Close. The series set out to focus on the lives of individual animals to get a comprehensive view of […]