Deborah Bloomfield

People are once again discussing the placebo effect, where patients appear to improve after being given a dummy treatment, such as a sugar pill, rather than conventional treatment. X (formerly Twitter) user zeta_goblin started the conversation, asking their followers about a weird aspect of it: the effect has still appeared in studies where it was […]

Despite its name, the mammoth was not the largest Pleistocene land animal. That status goes to its relative, the straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), which, due to weighing up to 13 tonnes, was twice the size of a modern African elephant and lived across Asia and Europe until around 100,000 years ago. Anthropologists have sought evidence […]

A newly-identified ape, named Anadoluvius turkae, may challenge our origin story once more, according to a new study. The fossilized ape, found in an 8.7-million-year-old site in Türkiye, suggests that the ancestors of humans and African apes evolved in Europe before migrating to Africa between 9 and 7 million years ago. A well-preserved partial cranium, […]

It may have crossed your mind while at the beach or in a desert that you don’t really know what you’d reach if you kept digging. Would you find sand, rock, soil, or just piles of treasure guarded by the genie Jafar? The answer, of course, varies based on where you are. Some sand dunes, […]

The Batagaika Megaslump is the biggest geological feature of its kind (at least that scientists know about). It sticks out of the Siberian wilderness like a tadpole-shaped slash in the land, surrounded by the green boreal forests of rural Russia. While this so-called “Gateway to Hell” is exceptional in its size and stature, it’s not […]

Hundreds of bees, mummified inside their cocoons for almost 3,000 years, have been discovered on the southwest coast of Portugal. In a cruel twist of fate, these pitiful pollinators were sealed and impeccably preserved inside their sheaths without ever having seen the light of day. The bees, which belong to the genus Eucera and were […]

Issue 14 (September 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: Can We Learn To Be Happier? While we can’t necessarily […]

This week, India became the first nation to land at the South Pole of the Moon, the mystery of missing flight MH370 might be one step closer to being solved thanks to some surprising sea creatures, and a new 167-million-year-old dinosaur was discovered in India and could be the oldest of its kind in the […]

The Royal Society has issued a report examining the effects of various non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) – not vaccines or medications – in reducing the spread of COVID-19, and their results are conclusive: wearing face masks, social distancing, and lockdowns “unequivocally” lowered the spread of the disease. The aim of the report was to “assess what […]

Though the legend of El Dorado fueled European ambition during the conquest of the Americas, direct evidence for a golden metropolis in the Andes has never been found. In all likelihood, that’s because El Dorado wasn’t a city at all, but instead referred to an ancient ritual involving a man covered in gold dust. However, […]

If you’ve been on TikTok in the last couple of months, it’s likely you’ll have come across a bottle-smashing video. With a simple concept racking up millions of views, you might be wondering what makes them so appealing. The answer could lie in how human brains process sound. Bottle-smashing content features an array of satisfying […]

X-ray light is used to study the cosmos at its most extreme. The hottest plasma around stars and between galaxies, the behavior of black holes, and even energetic aurorae on the gas giant planets are all topics that require X-ray observations. And from tomorrow there will be a new telescope in orbit to do just […]

The loss of sea ice in Antarctica in 2022 caused the complete failure of four out of five known emperor penguin breeding colonies. The worst hit areas were in the central and eastern Bellingshausen Sea region, where some parts witnessed a 100 percent loss of sea ice concentration. In a devastating new study produced by […]

Paper cups and straws are fast becoming the norm – gone are the days of plastic straws in pitchers, now replaced by their paper siblings. It might be a bit annoying when the rim of a paper cup or straw goes soggy, but at least it’s helping the environment, right? Two new studies suggest that […]

Back in April, a Tiktok trend about mirrors had people spooked, thinking that these silvery contraptions might have the somewhat magical ability to see behind obstructions. The reality of it was not magic but science – specifically, optics, the set of rules that we have worked out to explain how mirrors and lenses work. Based […]

Psilocybin, the psychoactive component of magic mushrooms, has shown itself to be a possible game-changer in the treatment of major depression, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions as to what it does to our brains. A new preprint, which is yet to undergo peer-review, could have some of the solutions, and it’s […]

A surprising number of new species of plants, animals, and even fossils are discovered every year. Some, like the geckos of Madagascar, are hiding in plain sight, while others spring from previously discovered species thanks to advances in genetic technology and DNA sequencing. However if you’re part of the team to discover a new species, can you name […]

There have been cases before of well-intentioned humans rescuing “dogs” from precarious situations before realizing it may not be a dog after all. Like the time people rescued a “dog” from a freezing river and it turned out to be a wolf. Or an adorable puppy dropped by a bird of prey that turned out […]

For the first time, researchers have been able to track the behavior of triplons, a quasi-particle created between entangled electrons. They are very tricky to study and they do not form in conventional magnetic material. Now, researchers have been able to detect them for the first time using real-space measurements. Quasi particles are not real […]