Deborah Bloomfield

The laws of physics have been broken (or appear to have been broken) by all manner of things, from balancing rocks to Seinfeld’s apartment, and now, by human sperm. The latest law-breakers defy Newton’s third law of motion, distorting their bodies as they swim in a way that elicits no response from their surroundings. Newton‘s […]

Indigenous people in Australia may have domesticated dingoes thousands of years ago, with new evidence indicating that the dogs were given human-like burials by ancient communities. These findings may help to shift the long-standing impasse in the debate over whether dingoes are a truly wild species or just a domestic dog lineage that has become […]

A cave in Ireland’s County Roscommon is believed to be the site of some seriously spooky goings on. Oweynagat cave, also known as the Cave of the Cats, is said to be Ireland’s “Gate To Hell”, a place that acted as a portal to the otherworld each year on October 31. That belief dates back […]

A Christian tattoo has been discovered on the body of a person buried in Sudan during the medieval period, perfectly highlighting Africa’s long and deep relationship with Christianity.  The inked-up individual was found during a 2012 to 2018 expedition at the site of Ghazali, a Christian monastery in the Bayuda Desert of northern Sudan that […]

Uranium, after briefly being primarily used as a colorant in pottery following its discovery in 1789, is now in great demand for its use in the nuclear energy industry, and in medicine. It’s more abundant than gold, and easier to find, due to the radiation signature it gives off as it decays. Generally, supplies of […]

Geologists believe that around 155 million years ago, a 5,000-kilometer (3,107-mile) long chunk of land, dubbed Argoland, broke off from Western Australia, but what happened to it after that was unknown – until now. Our planet’s continents aren’t stationary; because of plate tectonics, over the course of millions of years, they can join each other […]

Over the last few years there has been a dramatic collapse in the Bering Sea snow crab population, with numbers declining by an astonishing 10 billion between 2018 and 2021. The fall in numbers, thought to be among the largest losses of its kind, prompted the Alaskan Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) to close […]

Earlier this month, representatives of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and Chile buried a time capsule at the construction site of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which is located in Cerro Armazones in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The Extremely Large Telescope is halfway through construction and is on schedule to begin observing the universe in a few […]

Light is something in our world that we are very familiar with, and yet it can still throw some incredible curveballs when you look at it in detail. A newly discovered one comes from a pretty well-established phenomenon: what happens when light passes through an interface? That could be glass, water, or something completely different. […]

After a powerful earthquake roughed up Mexico City, a giant stone snake head arose from the rubbly soil still gleaming with its bold original colors.  At lunchtime on September 19, 2022, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck the Mexican states of Michoacán and Colima. Its heavy rumbles were felt 400 km (250 miles) away from the epicenter […]

The sounds of Pando, the tree that is its own forest, have been released in an effort to promote awareness of this astonishing plant and the threats it faces. Recordings of humpback whale songs released as records in the 1960s helped turn public opinion in most of the world against whaling and save not just […]

Bobi, the record-breaking world’s oldest dog, has passed away at the ripe old age of 31 years, 165 days. Earlier this year, Bobi was officially crowned Oldest Dog Ever by Guinness World Records. Born in 1992, Bobi had a rocky start in life. He was one of a litter of four pups, but the dogs’ […]

The US Endangered Species Act (ESA) turns 50 in 2023. While it has been highly effective at saving endangered species across that time, unfortunately, it has not been enough to save all of them. The Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that 21 species have been removed from the act and not for a good […]

There is a lot that we do not know about the formation of the Moon. It’s thought that it formed in a major impact between Earth and a planet the size of Mars, called Theia. When that happened, however, is a bit uncertain, but a new analysis of crystals in rocks collected by Apollo 17 […]

We know that our early human ancestors lived on meat that they could hunt, supplemented with any other foodstuffs that could be gathered off the land. We also know that in this scenario, it was the men doing the hunting and the women doing the gathering – right? Well, it might be time to rip […]

We all know that social media can be a breeding ground for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and pseudoscience. But how dangerous is it really? Well, according to a new book by two psychologists, the spread of pseudoscientific mental health “therapies” represents a real problem that needs to be addressed. The threat of pseudoscience  The internet is […]

People have been asking why space is dark despite being filled with stars for so long that this question has a special name – Olbers’ paradox. Astronomers estimate that there are about 200 billion trillion stars in the observable universe. And many of those stars are as bright or even brighter than our sun. So, […]

Thousands of kilometers below your feet, there lies a red-hot ball of solid iron. Simply known as Earth’s inner core, the metallic heart of our planet remains relatively enigmatic despite the advances of modern science. The innermost depths of our planet are too distant, not to mention too hot, to probe and collect samples from. […]

On January 15, 2022, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano violently erupted beneath the Pacific Ocean, launching a never-before-seen volume of water vapor into the atmosphere. Now, a new study has found that the vapor sparked a large, rapid depletion in the Earth’s ozone layer. Last year’s eruption was record-breaking in a number of ways – […]

Diamonds aren’t just a girl’s best friend – turns out they can be pretty useful to geologists too. In fact, as a new study found, some diamonds can even reveal secrets about the evolution of the Earth. As the hardest known natural mineral, diamonds can and have survived a lot, including the creation and destruction […]