Deborah Bloomfield

Three ancient galaxies have been caught in the act of merging around a so-called “extremely red quasar”, providing fascinating new insights into how modern galaxy clusters may have formed. The event – which was spotted by NASA’s JWST – occurred some 11.5 billion years ago in what may have been one of the densest areas […]

Urine therapy (or urotherapy) is a longstanding practice based on the concept that urine can be drunk, bathed in, or otherwise applied to bring good health or even heal the body of certain ailments. Unusual as it may sound to most people, it’s an idea that persists even today. And like most things of this […]

You may have heard of the carnivore diet, and the claims it is beneficial for our health. Many diet trends, such as the paleo and Atkins diets, advocate high protein and low carbohydrate intake. But the carnivore diet takes this trend to the extreme. Advertisement So what is it, and is it bad for your […]

Some twins are born as mirror twins, which is when one twin has physical features that are the mirror image of those of the other twin. This can be in the form of the layout of moles, the direction in which their hair curls, or even the layout of their internal organs. It’s thought to […]

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has been busy playing around with an unconventional new type of lander that’s designed to crash onto the surface of Mars. In a newly released video, engineers have shown a prototype of the accordion-like lander being dropped from a tall tower – with some interesting, bouncy results.  The experimental lander […]

This week, we see footage of a never-seen-before melanistic Canada lynx, the Pillars of Creation are revealed in one of JWST’s greatest images to date, and we ask the puzzling question: why aren’t there any green stars? First-Ever Melanistic Canada Lynx Caught on Camera The animal kingdom is no stranger to colors of all kinds, […]

Death is the one certainty in life, but the point at which our time comes is almost always a mystery. Particularly in nursing homes, residents often give no indication at all that they may not see another day and slip away without time for a loving goodbye from friends and family.   Predicting death is […]

Last week, the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition 2022 winners were announced. They included stunning photos of an embryonic Madagascar giant day gecko, and of the blood vessel networks in the guts of a mouse. But what really grabbed people’s attention was a close-up image of an ant’s face by Eugenijus Kavaliauskas, which was awarded […]

Jupiter has a frankly ridiculous number of moons. So many, in fact, that we haven’t even bothered officially naming the last 23. Of the moons, you are probably most familiar with Europa, Io, and Ganymede, but there are 80 moons in total that we know of. A new video has put the scale of those […]

“Ay me!” as Lysander once famously said to Hermia. “For aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth.” To put it more succinctly: love stinks. But it doesn’t have to! Despite their undeservedly asexual reputation, mathematicians have had a way to […]

There are more than 1.5 million biographical articles on Wikipedia, covering the lives of some of history’s most notable scientists, inventors, politicians, artists, and so on. It’s undeniably a vast number – but out of those 1.5 million, less than 285,000 are about women. Even fewer are estimated to be about non-white people. And even […]

In school, math is one of those polarizing subjects that people either love or hate. For each person complaining they will never use Pythagoras theorem outside of class, there is somebody else pointing out that math is actually about learning skills like problem-solving. In this episode, host Dr Alfredo Carpineti asks a controversial Big Question: […]

An Indian summer refers to an unseasonably warm and hazy spell during late October and early November that occurs across the central and eastern United States, and in parts of Europe. Contrary to its name, this weather system isn’t actually found in India, so where does the phrase “Indian summer” come from? In the United […]

The virus behind the next pandemic could be quietly lurking in the High Arctic, ready to be released by thawing ice due to climate change.  Arctic ice is known to harbor an array of viruses, many of which are unknown to science. Whilst they’re locked in ice, they pose little threat to us or any […]

The Netherlands has become the first NATO country to deploy armed uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs) into an operational environment in which the tracked robots will join a military unit and become part of the defense force. Some are unarmed, while others are carrying large automatic machine guns for use in firefights.   “We have deployed […]

A follow-up observation from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has shown a curious new development from the asteroid system a spacecraft smashed into last month: a newly developed second tail of ejecta. On September 26, the first-of-its-kind DART mission saw an uncrewed spacecraft collide with asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, a small body just 160 meters (530 feet) […]

Greta Thunberg has said in an interview that she does not want to go into politics, calling it too “toxic”. In an interview with the BBC, the prominent climate crisis activist also described being seen as the face of a global movement as “too much responsibility” for a teenager to take on. Thunberg is no […]

The star cluster NGC 4755 is popularly known as the Jewel Box because its stars look like sapphires with the occasional ruby and diamond through a small telescope. There are, however, no emeralds. That’s not just an omission of this collection of 100 or so stars. Irrespective of the achievements of environmentally active celebrities or […]

Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, iodine sales have been on the rise across Europe, with shortages recently being reported in Finland. Here, the government recommended that every household has a single dose of iodine tablets, in case of a nuclear event, leading to the shortages in pharmacies.  Elsewhere across Europe – including […]