Deborah Bloomfield

Today we recognize that handwriting is unique to each person. From the way we form our letters to the amount of pressure we place on pen and paper, the details of our individual writing can be used to identify us. The same, it seems, is true for ancient runesmiths, which has allowed archaeologists to finally […]

Water and sediment in the Cliff Cave system, Missouri, are contaminated with microplastics, scientists studying student-collected samples have found.  Reports of microplastic contamination are depressingly common these days, even in the most remote places. What makes this finding exceptional, however, is that no one has been able to enter the system for three decades prior […]

NASA’s Perseverance rover has set a new speed record, leaving the previous Mars rovers eating its Martian dust. Since successfully landing on Mars in February 2021, the Perseverance Rover has achieved some notable firsts, including producing enough oxygen to keep a small dog alive for an impressive 10 hours on the Red Planet. According to […]

You’ve been on a few dates, it’s going well, and you’re happily ensconced in that first flush of love. You think this could really go somewhere. Maybe it’s time to take it to the next level… but how can you be sure? It’s a question we all ask ourselves at the beginning of a relationship, […]

New supercomputer simulations support the idea that catastrophic satellite destruction is behind the formation of the beautiful rings of Saturn. This new work envisions two moons similar to what smallish Saturnian moons, like Dione and Rhea, look like today. Those moons smashed into each other, releasing a cloud of ice and rocks. And that ice […]

An expedition near the town of Kardzhali in Bulgaria led to the discovery of a curious and complex cave. Named the Utroba (утроба) Cave, which is Bulgarian for “womb”, it’s marked with carvings and rocky niches, one of which looks remarkably similar to that of a human vulva – so was it born of natural […]

Oxford students were the most lethal and violent of all the contemporary social and professional groups in medieval Oxford, London, and York, new research suggests. A digital mapping project led by Cambridge’s Violence Research Centre has plotted crime scene locations from three of medieval England’s largest cities. The Medieval Murder Maps project draws on 14th-century […]

Carbon microcrystals with “unique morphological peculiarities” have been lurking in the dust left behind by a meteorite that exploded over southern Russia in February 2013. Measuring 18 meters (59 feet) across, the Chelyabinsk meteor blew apart high in the atmosphere, creating a dust plume that circumnavigated the entire planet within four days. After recovering some […]

In decades gone by, rumors swirled around the forests of Africa that spoke of a strange chimpanzee-gorilla hybrid, known as koolakamba. They’ve been the subject of a small handful of studies since the 19th century, but hard proof – or even sturdy evidence – of their existence has continued to allude scientists. One of the […]

Astronomers have used the observations by the Gaia satellite from the European Space Agency (ESA) to work out exactly how much mass the Milky Way has. And it turns out it is less than previous estimates, placing the total at 206 billion times the mass of our Sun. The Gaia data is the most detailed […]

The supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the heart of galaxy M87 has been found to spin, causing its jet to oscillate by around 10 degrees. The newly released findings confirm one of the most important features of black holes that astronomers have suspected for a long time but have not previously been able to confirm […]

Aside from the possibility of accidentally overdosing on wasabi, eating sushi is usually a relatively safe activity. However, as with all uncooked foods, raw fish can contain bacteria and other pathogens that have the potential to cause food poisoning, and the results of a new study suggest that we should be taking these harmful microbes […]

At least nine orcas have died after getting trapped in commercial fishing equipment off the coast of Alaska in 2023 so far. This figure is already significantly higher than many previous years combined, raising speculation that the increase in fatalities could be the result of a “new behavior” within the species. NOAA Fisheries released a […]

For decades people have been stumped by the existence of “fairy circles”, strange circular patterns found in arid regions of Namibia and Western Australia. Various explanations have been proposed over the years for the formations – from harvester termites to Turing mechanisms.  Complicating the mystery, or perhaps giving us the information we need to solve […]

The closest supernova to Earth in the last decade has provided astronomers with intriguing new insights into what happens to these stars just before they go boom. And it turns out that some of them lose a lot of weight in an incredibly brief window of time. SN 2023ixf exploded in the Pinwheel galaxy, a […]

This article first appeared in Issue 12 of our free digital magazine CURIOUS. The rate of decomposition of the human body varies enormously depending on where it lies after its last breath. Kept in the cool conditions of a morgue, you can buy yourself time to plan a funeral and even embalm the body to keep […]

Japan’s “Moon Sniper” mission has sent back an eerie photo of the Earth, testing the cameras that will help the lander with an ambitious landing on the lunar surface. Usually, when probes land on the Moon, the missions behind them are attempting to land in a zone that is kilometers wide. Earlier this month, the […]

Researchers have found a way to extract audio from still images and soundless video after a professor was inspired to do so by the sci-fi TV show Fringe. In the TV show, the FBI is able to extract recorded sound from a melted pane of glass. Den of Geek called the idea a “ridiculous pseudo-science […]

It turns out humans aren’t the only ones who enjoy a cheeky spa day – whales have been spotted having a grand old time frolicking about in seaweed, appearing to use the slimy sea algae as a body cleanser as well as for play. Although it’s been well-documented that many cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) […]

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) is a collection of floating trash about twice the size of Texas. It’s perhaps the most dramatic example, but by no means alone when it comes to islands of floating trash – and yet there’s something else to be found here other than discarded human garbage. The diversity of […]