Deborah Bloomfield

The importance of the UK’s first meteorite in 30 years, collected after being seen falling, has been confirmed with the discovery of amino acids – organic compounds essential for life on Earth. The concentration of amino acids and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is not as high as in some other asteroid remnants (just 1.1 and […]

A surgeon who has previously made plans to conduct head transplants (or should that be body transplants?) has claimed in an editorial that whole brain transplants are now “technically feasible”. Neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero hits headlines every now and then, usually due to claims about taking heads from one thing and placing them on the body […]

Over the last several years, radio astronomers at the Green Bank Telescope have been working on developing a prototype system to use radar to create images of distant bodies of the Solar System. That includes planets and moons, but also asteroids and comets, including those that could be dangerous to us. A full version of […]

Intermittent fasting in a 16:8 routine could result in a number of positive health outcomes and reduce fatigue, according to a study. The study followed participants who fasted for 16 hours for five days a week over a three-month period and found that multiple markers of good health increased, alongside a decrease in a marker known […]

On the outskirts of Rome, there is the Colli Albani: a series of towns renowned for their delicious traditional regional cuisine. But we are going to suggest that if you’re passing through Marino, you stop at a McDonald’s – because underneath it, you can explore an ancient Roman road and see the burial place of […]

If you haven’t tried it yet, go and test out OpenAI’s ChatGPT – it’s scarily good at writing. It will write a semi-original article (the information will be taken from internet sources but it passes plagiarism checkers just fine), cite sources within the text, and the grammar is almost spot on. The AI is so […]

A new report describes a case of a rare neurological condition called sixteen syndrome, one of a family of disorders with similarly numerical names. The condition is so unusual that only a handful of cases have appeared in the medical literature before – and, in this particular case, the patient’s symptoms could also help medics […]

You wake up in a haze. Head pounding. Stomach churching. The stale smell of last’s night overindulgence on your breath. You wonder, how long can this go on? Well, according to this medical case report, perhaps up to 4 weeks. In 2007, doctors in Scotland reported the case of a man who experienced a headache […]

As you drift off to sleep, you may have experienced the feeling of falling, accompanied by an involuntary jerk that forces you awake again. If you have, you are not alone. It has been a topic of discussion on Twitter this week, after author Holly Seddon tweeted about it, and others said they’d had the […]

A myth passed down by Indigenous Australians for 7,000 years may be a record of an actual event. For thousands of years, the Gugu Badhun Aboriginal people have lived in the upper Burdekin River valley in Northern Queensland. Surviving likely from before the written historical records of Egypt or Mesopotamia, several tales of death, destruction, […]

Eating boiled peanuts followed by roasted peanuts could be enough to help children overcome their allergies, according to new research. The idea goes that creating a weakened version of a peanut in which the immunoreactive parts are partially destroyed by heat could act almost like a vaccine, training up their immune system until handling a […]

Planes built for Saturn’s largest moon, self-growing building blocks, deep space satellite mega-constellations, and oxygen pipelines on the Moon are just a few of the 14 experimental projects selected by NASA to receive more of their funding in a push to advance the agency’s exploration of space. As part of the Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) […]

A viral video on TikTok shows the bizarrely flappy faces of muntjac deer in all their glandular wonder. While it might look like the facial anatomy dreamt up by James Cameron’s Avatar, they’re actually an adaptation these animals have evolved to be able to scent mark their way through the wilderness.  The Reeves’s or Chinese muntjac, […]

Two spotted salamanders seemingly holding hands as they bob in a carnivorous pitcher plant jacuzzi at matching stages of decay have scooped the Close-Up Photographer Of The Year (CUPOTY) Competition for Canadian photographer Samantha Stephens. Her winning shot, taken in Algonquin Provincial Park, won Stephens the £2,500 (~ US$3,000) cash prize and the CUPOTY 04 […]

Predicting the future is a risky business in science, but if we are looking at the long-term evolution of the Solar System, astronomers and planetary scientists have a reasonable idea of how that will pan out. It’s not like we know what will happen at 10:04 pm on November 12 in the year 88,000,001,955. But […]

The Russian space agency, Roscomos, has confirmed that the Soyuz MS-22 will have to leave the International Space Station empty following the leak to its coolant.  The leak happened last December 14, possibly caused by a micrometeorite hitting it just right. A review was initiated to work out if it was still safe for cosmonauts […]

Friday the 13th is considered an unlucky day in western superstition. Theories on why it has become known as unlucky range from there being 13 people present at the last supper according to the Bible to Loki being the secret 13th secret guest at a dinner party for the Norse gods before generally causing all […]

Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean is home to one of the world’s weirdest lakes. Not only is Pitch Lake brimming with bizarre microbial life, but its “waters” are also such an odd consistency that you can walk across it.  Found near La Brea on the southwestern tip of Trinidad, Pitch Lake is around 40 […]

No rhinos in the Kaziranga National Park were lost to poaching in 2022, marking a first for the protected nature reserve since 1977. The reserve is the world’s largest for the great one-horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) and is home to around 2,200 of them, making up the majority of their global population. The park, in […]