Deborah Bloomfield

Some animals look more like Pokémon than Pokémon do, and this is surely true of the hammerhead bat. With the intimidating species name Hypsignathus monstrosus, it sounds like a villain, but the hammerhead bat is a fruit-slurping sweety. Also known as the hammer-headed fruit bat, or – our personal favorite – the big-lipped bat, it […]

An infrared aurora has been spotted on Uranus for the very first time, providing insights into the strange magnetic fields that can be found on the solar system’s distant icy giants.  Down here on Earth, aurorae are caused by solar winds clashing with highly energetic charged particles in the atmosphere, resulting in the particles emitting […]

Just in time for Halloween, NASA has just released this image of a ghoulish face that emerged on the planet Jupiter.  The image was taken on September 7, 2023, during the 54th close flyby of Jupiter by NASA’s Juno mission. It was snapped up over the gas giant’s far northern regions, called Jet N7, when […]

Thought to have originated around 162 million years ago, jewel wasps now represent one of the most diverse groups of insects on the planet. However, their fossil record only went back 100 million years – until now. A lump of amber has revealed a 130-million-year-old family of jewel wasps, and with it, insight into their […]

Life On Our Planet has landed on Netflix, introducing some of the biggest and beastliest creatures from the history of life. Its narrator Morgan Freeman was amazed to learn that millipedes have existed for more than 300 million years, and of all the varieties they’ve churned out in that time, the most impressive has to […]

How many close friends would you say you have? Ever wonder if that number is smaller or bigger than the average? Well, wonder no more, because new data from the Pew Research Center has you covered. They asked a panel of US adults to talk about their friendship groups, and some of the results may […]

Sometimes the creatures of the deep find their way onto our shores, ready for some poor passerby to get an early morning jumpscare. The latest to wash up? A Pacific Football Fish, aka the freaky, teethy anglerfish of nightmares. Quite aptly, the sharp-mouthed marine monster washed up on the shores of Crystal Cove State Park, […]

What was Mars like billions of years ago? The presence of liquid water is undeniable, but there are many open mysteries about how the water moved around the planet. New research argues that Mars might have been a planet of rivers, suggesting that there are more fluvial structures on the Red Planet than previous observations […]

Just meters from the shores of the Japanese islands of Okinawa, a colorful array of coral reefs plays host to a wealth of amazing sea creatures. Two new species of pygmy squids have recently been discovered amongst them, and they’re pretty adorable to boot. The new species were dubbed the Ryukyuan Pygmy Squid and Hannan’s […]

Having NASA’s InSight on Mars has delivered a completely new understanding of what the Red Planet is like. Its seismometer used quakes as sonograms to study the interior of Mars. Initial data from weak close-by quakes suggested a preliminary, but incorrect, picture. Mars was believed to have a larger and less dense core. New data […]

When you are firing a spacecraft at an asteroid, touching the spacecraft down on that asteroid very briefly to collect a sample, and then returning the sample to Earth, there are a lot of opportunities for problems. Despite the difficulty of the task, NASA successfully returned a sample of asteroid Bennu to Earth in late […]

Gravity affects the trajectory of light. This was a crucial test of Einstein’s theory of general relativity and it has been proven time and time again. Cosmic objects that pack a large mass in a relatively small space produce the most dramatic effects, gravitational lenses. Space-time is warped so much that it acts like a […]

Three heavy elements have been observed in the aftermath of a gamma ray burst (GRB), the first time synthesis of these elements has been observed, helping fill in the origins of more of the periodic table. The origin of elements with atomic masses heavier than iron has been something of a mystery for a long […]

While insects are perhaps the most overlooked animal group in the world, they are also by far the most numerous. From butterflies to beetles, they inhabit almost every ecosystem on Earth and there’s one group that might have created the largest civilization right under our feet. The Formicidae family contains roughly 12,000 species of ants. […]

New research on deepfake videos about the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown they are distorting people’s perception of reality, creating a dangerous atmosphere where many users do not trust any media they see. Fueled by this deep distrust, conspiracy theories and paranoia are being allowed to flourish. Manipulated images in political propaganda are nothing […]

Scientists may have found the culprit behind the death of hundreds of African elephants back in 2020: an obscure bacterium known as Bisgaard taxon 45 that’s never been seen in wild elephants before. In May and June 2020, a total of 350 elephants in Botswana mysteriously dropped dead. Following this mass die-off, a further 35 […]

If a skunk had a baby with a scorpion, you might just end up with something like a giant vinegaroon. These bizarre arachnids are named after the potent acid they spray that stinks to high heaven of acetic acid, the same thing you get a whiff of from vinegar. Now, three new members have joined […]

Earth is the only planet we know of that has ever had a fire. While there may be volcanos pushing out hot magma on the surface of Venus, the hottest planet in the Solar System, there has never been a fire there. Nor on Mercury, nor Jupiter, nor any of the other planets surrounding our […]

The planet 55 Cancri e has puzzled astronomers who have observed evidence of an atmosphere during some secondary eclipses, but not others. Geochemical outgassing from its magma ocean may provide the answer.  Most of the planets we have found would be pretty unpleasant places for humans, but few are quite as bad as the super-Earth […]

The mighty moa was an avian giant that stalked the Earth as the tallest bird in history. Despite its enormous size, it’s believed to have gone extinct before Europeans first reached its native home of New Zealand, and yet alleged sightings of the bird endured long after their arrival. Cryptozoology is a fantastic field of […]