Deborah Bloomfield

Money doesn’t grow on trees, so the old saying goes, but gold just might on the Christmas trees of Lapland. In a new study, scientists have uncovered a clear link between bacteria living in Norway spruce needles and the formation of gold nanoparticles. If harnessed correctly, this knowledge could help guide gold hunters to hidden […]

Spiders are remarkable creatures. Resilient, innovative, and packed full of biological engineering that makes biomimeticists hot under the collar (and occasionally create grim “necrobots”). For some, however, they trigger the heebie-jeebies, and unfortunately, I don’t think the fish-eating spiders will help here. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or […]

We have known about Comet 3I/ATLAS for just over four months, and astronomers across the world have been giddy with excitement. This is only the third known interstellar object to have crossed the Solar System, among the thousands that should be here every day. Researchers have been using many different observatories to study this comet, […]

Perhaps we should not be surprised by the strange ideas of conspiracy theorists, but we have recently come across a particularly odd belief that has stuck around for decades; musical instruments are tuned to the wrong frequency, and it is affecting human behavior. According to the conspiracy theory, it all goes back to the Nazis.  […]

Life that has been frozen in Alaskan permafrost for up to 40,000 years has been “woken up” by scientists. In a recent mission to study our ever-changing world, scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder headed to the Permafrost Tunnel Research Facility, a 106-meter (350-foot) tunnel that burrows deeper into the frozen ground beneath central […]

In May 2025, China began the construction of a new satellite constellation for what will eventually be a first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer array in space. The first satellites of the Three-Body Computing Constellation were released in June, set to test the capabilities of an in-orbit data processing center. This could be the first dozen […]

The winners of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics are John Clarke, Michel Devoret, and John Martinis, for the discovery of “Macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit.” The prize is worth 11 million Swedish kronor (around $1,170,000 USD at the time of publishing), which will be shared equally between the […]

It’s obvious the Sun is the source of both almost all the light by which we see, and most of heat that makes the Earth a warm oasis in the deep cold of interstellar space. In recent centuries we’ve learned the Sun releases other sorts of energy: high frequency radiation such as ultraviolet light and […]

Drinking alcohol, even in small amounts, likely increases dementia risk – that is the conclusion of a huge new study, based on data from over half a million people.  Previous research, based on observational studies, hinted that light drinking may have a protective effect on the brain; some have suggested there may even be an […]

An amateur astronomer looking through data from NASA’s Perseverance rover may have spotted interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it passed overhead.  3I/ATLAS was discovered on July 1, this year, moving through the Solar System at nearly twice the velocity of previous interstellar visitors ‘Oumuamua and Comet Borisov. The object was confirmed to be an interstellar comet […]

The Falkland Islands, now famous for its sheep, was once home to just one native mammal: the Falkland Islands “wolf”. I crack out “these guys” because we’ve since learned that these strange, tame creatures weren’t wolves at all, but the final stronghold of a curious species of domesticated fox that started out in South America. […]

For the first time, a wolf-dog hybrid has been confirmed in Greece, marking a new twist in the species’ controversial comeback to European landscapes. The hybrid was documented near Thessaloniki by Callisto, an environmental and conservation organization, while analyzing 50 wolf samples from the Greek mainland, AFP reports. One individual reportedly registered as 45 percent […]

George Smoot, who won a Nobel Prize in Physics for his role in the “discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation” in 2006, has died at home at the age of 80. Certain discoveries in science feel like they have been known about for a lot longer than they […]

Astronomers have discovered a new odd radio circle (ORC) that is more powerful and distant than any discovered before. What is even stranger is that this object doesn’t appear to live up to its name, looking like a spread-out smudge, because two near-circular rings overlap like a Venn diagram. ORCs are one of the completely […]

In 1715, a gang of Spanish ships crashed in a storm off the American coast, sending an eye-watering fortune in gold, silver, and jewels to the bottom of the Atlantic. Now, more than 300 years later, ocean explorers have uncovered a fresh trove from the legendary fleet. The rest of this article is behind a […]

Astronaut and keen astrophotographer Donald “Don” Pettit has shared a stunning image of the “Belt of Venus” he took whilst on board the International Space Station (ISS). The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. Pettit, a NASA astronaut and chemical engineer, is probably […]

You’re all alone. It’s dark. It’s near-silent – except for a quiet, rhythmic tapping that seems to be coming from inside the walls. The creature making that sound? The deathwatch beetle (Xestobium rufovillosum), and if some tales are to be believed, its soft patter is a harbinger of death. The rest of this article is […]

Albert Einstein, recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the photoelectric effect and the great physicist behind general and special relativity, once said: “The exaggerated esteem in which my lifework is held makes me very ill at ease. I feel compelled to think of myself as an involuntary swindler.” Given his […]

The idea that the menstrual cycle is synced with the phases of the Moon is a controversial one, and one that’s generally considered to have little scientific evidence to support it. A new study, however, has proposed that periods were once significantly linked up with the lunar cycle, but that the rise of light-emitting diodes […]

Astronomers have witnessed the second-closest asteroid fly-by ever measured. Or at least we think they have, with government shutdowns preventing NASA from releasing a statement. Luckily, the European Space Agency is still on the ball and caught it. Once again, however, we only noticed the visitor after it had already passed us. The rest of […]