Deborah Bloomfield

If you haven’t heard of the Fermi Paradox, it goes something like this: Given the vastness of the universe and the probability that implies of life evolving elsewhere, how come no alien civilization has ever gotten in touch? We have found many exoplanets in the brief time we’ve been looking. Surely there must be someone […]

A machine learning program trained to differentiate between living and non-living things has a 90 percent success rate at differentiating the products of biology from those of non-living origin. Naturally, the makers could only train it on Earth-based life forms, so we can’t be certain it will be similarly successful when exposed to alien life, […]

On Saturday, an interview with Guardians of the Galaxy and Parks and Recreation actor Chris Pratt caught everyone’s eye.  Pratt told Vanity Fair that part of his fitness routine involved drinking a glass of water for every pound he weighed, daily, adding that he was “peeing all day long, every day” and that “that part was a […]

A big new update to ChatGPT will enable the chatbot to interact with voice conversations and respond to images. That’s right, the artificial intelligence (AI) will be able to hear your questions, see the world around you, and respond accordingly.  OpenAI, the non-profit group behind ChatGPT and DALL-E, announced the “multimodal” update in a blog […]

The Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission is one of the most ambitious projects that NASA, in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA), has planned. The idea is to get two helicopters to Mars to pick up samples collected by Perseverance, pack them in a rocket, attempt the first rocket launch from another planet, get […]

The animal world is full of unusual species, from tarantulas with electric blue hair to deep sea octopuses hidden beneath the waves. While most species stick to breeding habits within their own kind, just occasionally, a set of circumstances will occur that causes a hybrid to be born. While hybridization in the wild is rare […]

At about 40 light-years from Earth, there is the TRAPPIST-1 system. Seven Earth-sized worlds orbit very close to a red dwarf, much dimmer and cooler than our Sun. Three of these worlds might have the right conditions for life, and astronomers are very interested in studying all of these exoplanets. Observations so far, though, point […]

A few weeks ago, the world was baffled as journalist and UFO researcher Jaime Maussan presented “mummified aliens” to the Mexican congress, claiming that they were a thousand years old.  The objects – looking suspiciously not-unlike E.T. from the film E.T. – have since been sent for scans by a forensic doctor with the navy, […]

A holly tree that had been lost to botanists for almost two centuries has been found after a six-day search operation in Brazil. The four trees that were rediscovered are thought to be the only ones left of this species, so that fateful day back in March of this year was an emotional one for […]

Southern Africa holds possibly the greatest human genetic diversity on Earth and new research reveals that diversity is in better shape than had been suspected. When some languages from the Namib Desert died out, anthropologists feared the populations that spoke them had gone too, but new research indicates the people have maintained a genetic identity […]

The humble feather lies at the heart of a new study, in which palaeontologists have revealed that feathered dinosaurs and modern birds are even more similar than we thought. Previous studies of fossilized dinosaur feathers have suggested that they had a different protein composition to that of modern birds. It was thought that ancient dinosaur […]

Whether it’s archaeologists, or just some lads on the beach creating a hole mistaken for an asteroid impact, people can’t help wondering what’s underneath sand. The answer differs depending on the sand, of course. By the shore, the constantly churning sea grinds up rocks over thousands or millions of years, creating sand. Underneath the ocean […]

The rapid rise of electric vehicles has created alarm, both about where we will find the raw materials to build so many batteries, and what we will do with them when their time is done. Both questions need to be asked, but it seems likely the second won’t become a problem as soon as many […]

Humans have a long history of monogamy. Our ancestors have been coupling off for millennia, but this mating strategy is actually something of an outlier when compared to other species. So why do we do it?  Can monogamy be explained by simple biology? Or is it more complicated than that? As it turns out, the […]

A parasitic worm that can jump from its usual host species into mammals is becoming more widespread in rats in the southern USA, sparking concerns about the risks to humans. The rat lungworm, Angiostrongylus cantonensis, typically moves between snails and rodents to complete its life cycle. Rats eat snails infected with worm larvae, which then […]

The “wholphin” is the nickname for a hybrid born as a result of some unlikely canoodling between different species of cetacean, most often a bottlenose dolphin and a false killer whale. However, this isn’t the only known example of interspecies mingling that’s been documented among this infraorder of animals. From the narluga to dolphin hybrids, […]

In millions of years’ time, a new supercontinent will form when all of our existing continents converge. This, according to a new study, will have a series of catastrophic impacts that will make Earth inhospitable to land-based mammals and will likely lead to a mass extinction. No more mammals? Greenhouse gas emissions caused by human […]

There is a truly astonishing molecule that has puzzled scientists for decades. Its name is azulene and it is known for its strikingly beautiful blue color. But it is its physical behavior that is utterly peculiar. It seems to stubbornly defy Kasha’s rule, the principle that explains how fluorescence or phosphorescence takes place.  This is […]

Scientists are talking to plants through light-based messages to see if they can prewarn them of impending dangers and trigger defence mechanisms that could mitigate the damage. Working with the tobacco plant Nicotiana benthamiana, they were able to activate the plant’s immune response using light as a stimulus in an achievement that could revolutionize our […]

Hopes are fading that the Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover will reawaken after the long lunar night, as the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) continues to attempt to establish contact. In August, India became the fourth nation to touch down on the Moon, and the first to land near the lunar south pole. Since landing, the […]