Deborah Bloomfield

The spicy history of the chili pepper may have just been rewritten following the discovery of a rare fossilized berry, Lycianthoides calycina. It’s a member of the chili pepper tribe Capsiceae, which was originally thought to have emerged in South America 15 million years ago, but now looks as if it was heating up North […]

Dark matter is a hypothetical substance that is expected to surround galaxies, outweighing regular matter five-to-one. It’s invisible so the only way to see its effects is through gravity. Its existence was proposed to explain the weird rotation of galaxies and, assuming its existence, can explain a lot of what the universe is like – […]

It’s a credit to how good Isaac Newton was at physics and math that people rarely mention that time he threatened to burn his mother’s house down, or the equally-baffling time he stuck a number of needles into his own eyeballs to see what would happen. Yes, when Newton wasn’t revolutionizing our notions of motion […]

The Martian liquid core is smaller, denser, and probably smells worse than previously thought, the InSight lander has revealed by capturing seismic waves originating on the other side of the planet. Our knowledge of Earth’s core comes from more than a century of studying the distorting effect it has on waves from earthquakes on the […]

Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos. The two potato-shaped objects have puzzled planetary scientists for a long time. What is their origin? Are they captured asteroids or were they once part of the Red Planet, like the Moon was part of ours? Now, the closest images ever taken of Deimos appear to indicate the […]

There is a piece of rock in the UK called the “Stone of Destiny” (and occasionally the far less fun “Stone of Scone”) which is involved in the ceremony of crowning new kings and queens. The big slab of red sandstone was originally used in the coronation of Scottish kings dating back to sometime around […]

The Vatican has created a new observatory that will study and attempt to validate alleged mysterious “apparitions” and other phenomena of the Virgin Mary, so that they can be authenticated by the Catholic Church.  Created by the Pontifical Marian Academy Internationalis (PAMI), the new “observatory” will study mythical Marian phenomena like Virgin Mary statues weeping […]

Deepfakes inspire a range of responses, from fascination and entertainment to outright fear. Their increased appearance online raises all sorts of moral, social, and legal challenges – but psychologists have recently taken an interest in their potential as tools to promote positive social and political policy-related change as well. Deepfakes are seemingly realistic, digitally created […]

Microplastics can cross the blood-brain barrier and enter the brain after being ingested, a new study on mice reveals. The brains of mice fed micro- and nano-plastics (MNPs) were found to contain them just two hours after ingestion via a mechanism previously unknown to science, suggesting that the tiny plastics found almost everywhere could be […]

Long before Suzanne Collins dreamed up the notion of sending young tributes into deadly Hunger Games, the Aztecs devised their own system for pitting selected combatants against one another in highly organized mortal encounters. Known as xochiyaoyotl, or “Flower Wars“, these ritualized skirmishes are believed to have been held in order to secure a continual […]

Mathematical motifs feature in many of Shakespeare’s most memorable scenes. He lived and wrote in the late 16th century, when new mathematical concepts were transforming perceptions of the world. Part of the role of the theatre was to process the cultural implications of all these changes. People in Shakespeare’s time were used to the idea […]

A plesiosaur known as “Eric” has given palaeontologists a leg up in understanding the diet of these prehistoric marine reptiles that lived between 208 and 66 million years ago. Taking a close look at Eric’s last meal using X-rays, researchers discovered 17 vertebrae of a previously undescribed teleost fish, demonstrating plesiosaurs were indeed pescatarians. Eric […]

“Every once in a while a book lands on your desk that changes the way you perceive the world you live in, a book that fundamentally challenges your understanding of human history.” So began the blurb that came with this book. Aha! I thought. The usual advertising hyperbole, a gross exaggeration. Yet Pathogenesis did challenge […]

From shamanic rituals in remote forests to chemical highs cooked up in hippie labs, psychedelic substances have been ingested in myriad contexts over thousands of years. And with interest in the medical value of these drugs now taking off big-time, tripping looks set to finally emerge from the underground and enter the mainstream.  Yet while […]

Being horny may make people more willing to have sex with robots, finds a somewhat obvious but interesting study into attitudes toward sex robots. The study, from researchers at Concordia University, found that men would be more open to sex robots than women would be, and that sexual arousal is a strong influence on whether […]

As anyone who’s ever spent time with little kids will know, you only have to take your eye off them for a second before they get themselves into all sorts of mischief. As they investigate and explore the world around them, it’s common for kids to get minor cuts, scrapes, and grazes. Most of the […]

SpaceX launched the largest rocket ever built into space yesterday with record-breaking thrust (before spectacularly blowing up). While the historic launch was heralded as a success, it wasn’t a good day for someone’s car. A remotely operated camera from a parking lot near the launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, shows a flurry of debris […]

Months or years after the immediate burst of radiation put out by supernovas has passed, nearby planets face a further threat. X-rays produced by core-collapse supernovas can damage planets up to 160 light-years away, according to new evidence collected by NASA’s Chandra Observatory. Although there are no supernova candidates anything like this close to Earth […]

In late January 2022, a mass mortality event struck the long-spined sea urchin (Diadema antillarum) population of several islands in the Caribbean. By June the problem had spread to Florida, USA, Curaçao, and most of the Greater Antilles.  These sea urchins live in warm shallow waters and feed on algae. Affected urchins showed problems with […]